The old battle stands are kind of neat, for years it seemed like the only way to find them was if they came with the old accessory packs of the 1980's, or with the battle field units.
I thought it was great when the figures started to come with them. I kind of thought of these figures as a sort of "deluxe" figure, at the same price in the year of 1991. These were figures who also came with action gimmicks. These figures were Snake eyes, Tracker, the B.A.T., and Mercer. Each of these single figures has the battle stand, and each has a spring fire accessory (the raft, in Tracker's case). Other figures had spring-fire accessories, too, but just a few had the battle stand. I would like to know the reasoning behind why some had battle stands, but most did not. And I suppose even why some did not have "action accessories" and some did.
And as I look back at the yojoe.com 1991 archive, I see that the Super Sonic Fighters also came with stands.
Whatever the end reasons for including battle stands in 1991, 1992 figures seemed to all get a battle stand. These are where most of my stands came from during these years, I was buying figures, and GIJOE toys as a whole, the most in the years between 1991 and 1994 compared to any other years previous. Mostly this was due having more cash, but also due to being in a more populated city!
1993 figures continued the trend of battle stand inclusion, but that was kind of the nice thing about the "accessory tree." Even the big Armor Tech figures had them on their trees. And 1994 kept the battle stands coming.
1997/98, and the RAHC years also had battle stands.
I'm debating on sorting out my battle stands. There are such slight variations on many of the black stands that make it a little more challenging figuring out which belong with which years of origin. There was a Yojoe.com thread that someone had started that was really good information on that, but I couldn't find it. Arrgh.
Some stands are easy, like the two somewhat translucent ones that originally came with my old (and gone for several years now) Shadow ninjas.
EDIT; ADDITIONAL
I totally forgot about the GvC, Spytroops, and VvV stands, not to mention the TRU multi-packs that had stands, too.
I found the YOJOE.COM thread, too, that contains some great information on the battle stands.
I did a quick sort on my stands, and I found some 1992 date stamps, and one 1993 stamp. One stand had nothing, just blank on the stamp area. The colored battle corps stands were easily separated.
The 1988 date stamps are going to be the challenge if I do sort these out. I did find some 1988 date stamps that were a softer plastic, and did separate those.
Well, let's see if this is a project of what...
About HQ icebreaker
- icebreaker
- This is a very random bunch of thoughts based from my collecting of GIJOE: A real American hero figures and vehicles. Contained here are memories, experiences, recent thoughts, completely random thoughts, and other random things on top of that. While one company has made, and makes, our shared interests, we all add into that interest with our own creativity. You, the reader, will find many, many, excellent sites among the links to see what other GIJoe fans are doing, hit them up! For GIJOE stuff that is more random in topic, you'll find it here.