This is what the GIJoe team had in 1991.
This is an older picture I took in 2009, most every figure stayed pretty much the same since them.
The only additions I made that are not in the picture are, Skymate. I also did not put in my Talking Battle Commander General Hawk in the picture.
There's a lot of things going on with this years assortments. In 1990, it was really a solid release of figures with a lot of accessories. With the exception of Rapid Fire (and Capt. Grid-Iron, to an extent), nothing was too far out there in 1990.
In 1991, I think a few figures really carried similar 1990 stylings. Dusty, Sci-fi, Red Star, Heavy Duty, and Hawk, really carried through solid design form and a good amount of accessories that ranged from specialized weapons to removable headgear. I don't have the 1991 release, but Low-light is another figure that has a lot of gear, and really seems to fit in with the 1990-style figures. Lots of gear and rather simple, solid figure design.
However, 1991 was also the introduction of the spring-fire missile launcher figure accessory. While I am not a fan of these, and they were on Transformers years prior, SOME of these are pretty darn good.
Red Star's RPG-style launcher is really a nice looking launcher. Heavy Duty's "man-portable" weapon system is fairly technical looking, and I thought it was interesting that the missile-tubes were also used on the Sonic Apache!
Sci-fi got a launcher, but in his case, it seems like this accessory was less a rocket-shooter, and more a true "energy" blaster. The yellow rocket (actually "energy?") makes me think this.
Was 1991 more a transition assortment....
Some figures had a little less "1990-style" to them, too, but these were still fairly straight-forward figures, except their accessory list included some kind of new-specialized equipment. And these figures also bring in some of the "neon" that is often moaned about, but more in the guns and such. The figure package backs often led me to think this, like the back here, you can see which 1991 figures are on it, and which are not....
Mercer for instance, is really straight-forward, despite the "orange" weapons. The backpack with the mechanically moving missile tube that swings out to the side is where the specialized accessory angle starts to come into play.
Snake eyes also gets the same straight-forward figure-style, but instead of "just" a backpack, he gets a spring-fired grappling hook launcher with a string. Spring-fired, but it's not a missile. Would you say it is an "action accessory?" Snake eyes also has the "orange" weapons.
Tracker brings an orange weapon into play, too, as well as oars. Instead of a spring-fired action accessory, Tracker gets an inflatable raft. To me, this is an "action accessory."
Grunt falls close to feeling like a 1990 figure, but like the 1992 Duke, his "elbow-out" arms have sort of bugged me. His (to me) Army football pants really feels like this guy did leave the team and is not just getting back from his engineering college days, and as "Infantry Squad Leader," the guy feels like he could be a leader of some sort.
Grunts "action accessory" is some kind of huge massive mortar tube, or some kind of huge massive anti-armor bazooka. And the gun, which is also huge, attaches to the massive spring-fired launcher. But he does have a removable helmet, but I'm not sure if he would fit with the accessory spread of a 1990 figure, or if he is more a step into the realm of a 1992 figure (where spring-fired action became the norm).
Rise of the "action-accessory" and other gimmicks
This is where the often-called gimmicks really start to kick in, and these often get separated out with their "sub team" labels.
I'm talking the Super Sonic fighters, where Zap and Psyche-out are actually really good figures, but unlike their 1990 Sonic Fighter counterparts, the Super Sonic Fighters got sounds AND LIGHTS to compliment their original weapon accessories. Unlike the 1990 Sonic Fighters that simply got a sound-emitting backpack and re-issued weapons, these 1991 Super Sonic Fighters actually have some unique equipment to employ.
Of course, the other action features that are out this year are the water-activated-battle-damage Eco-Warriors. While this color-changing feature was more known to me with Hot Wheels color-change cars, they put it on the action figures. This is something I did not mind. This was kind of neat in that I could use "toxic sludge" to fight with. The "toxic sludge" was actually water. And the figures got mini-squeeze-activated water gun backpack accessories.
And while I'm mostly talking about the figures, and limiting myself by faction (Joe or Cobra), I think a good note to make is about the vehicles that also contained these same features were out there. The Septic Tank and Eco-Striker both have water shooting capability.
The hole in the plot, though? Is the stuff that the "good guys" are using an anti-toxic-sludge "sludge?" In reality, it's all water getting shot around, but, are we fighting sludge with sludge? (Like in Ghostbusters, positively charged slime against the bad ghoul?)
And the "action accessories" don't stop there!!!
If you remember the motorized action packs from 1987 and 1988, "action accessories" are obviously not a new concept in the GIJOE line.
Heck, even 1984's Deep Six figure was a whole "other" type of figure.
Now, do you remember the motorized vehicle packs?
When does an accessory become a vehicle? When it is the Air Commandos or Battle Copters!
By itself, I guess I never considered the battle copters a vehicle in a sense, like I would consider the Dragonfly a vehicle. I've never had the opportunity to try on of them out, but I'm more the guy who would NOT be sending my GIJoe figures up into the air outside. I would be more worried about losing them or their guns!
To me, the Battle Copters really feel like more of an "action accessory," big ones.
And this applies to how I thought of the Air Commandos, too. I've never had the chance to fly these, either. Nor have I even seen an original glider from the very early days of GIJOE, but, even the 1991 gliders don't feel like "vehicles" to me. And I'm not the type of collector/ fan/ person that would be tossing his vehicles around.
Where 1990 was a straight-forward year for the most part, 1991 really starts to split things up where a lot of it fits great with the 1990 figures, but the others sit firmly in with what we got in 1992.
While I very much enjoy all things GIJoe, I will admit that even in my own thinking, I tend to stay between 1985 and 1991 for most of it.... and with my recent organizing project of a small team, I find really taking a close look at the whole and seeing what I really like about each.