ARAH photo section
 

Is that particular section catering to all that is o-ring?

Or is it only for the figures made before 2002?

(Cuz in 2002, Hasbro re-launched the GI Joe brand with what fans of then called "The Bastard Era", "Nu Skulpt Era" and/or "The Theme Years". While retaining the o-rings (for the most part), a lot of the figures had new construction and sculpting. "bastard era" title came from the fact that GI Joe seemed to be in transition in terms of their builds.)

It was themed after Craig's Flickr group, which was for any o-rings.

Nobody except you calls them the "b*stard era"

I call it the " I spent way to much money on a lot of crappy figures Era".

Actually a lot of guys on the JBL used that term, especially in chat. And the original old guard here tended to call it that too. :P

I feel that way with 90% of the vehicles from that era. Talk about getting sucked into JUNK!

Bingo!

I've seen plenty of people on several boards refer to it as the "Bastard Era."



It seems like the good figures from that era were really good, but the bad ones just sucked out loud and dominated the line.
Same with the vehicles, there were a lot of really good ones, but some really craptacular ones as well.

The list of short-torso'd figures is really long. And the rash of pretty lame figures and even their personalities were poor too.

Samples of the good and bad.
Hi-Tech. Say what you want about him, but I actually like the guy. The figure is pretty lame but seeing how Mainframe (or Dataframe) wasn't made, I kinda had to use this. He got some fun airtime in Valor vs Venom and in Sigma6, he was pretty cool.

Sgt. Hacker. Part of the Spy Troops theme, he was a horrible figure and didn't do much for the case of new characters being cool. Card art has him wearing glasses but the toy didn't have 'em. His Spy Troops disguise, iirc, was supposed to be Firefly.

Crosshair. Replaced LowLight as the sniper. Great design and the figure, to some, was the bomb. I found the figure hard to use in that "what gun can he actually hold with those crappy hands?". The hairstyle killed it for me and if you took him apart, he had a really big head too. Still, he was a welcome addition to the mythos unlike this guy...

Dr. Link Talbot. Made for VvV, he was a veternarian. Yeah, he was a SEAL at one time but he still got beat by Scarlet. My experience, NOBODY liked this wingnut.

Alley Viper v2. These short-torso'd dudes were an attempt at... uh... Let's say Hasbro was experimenting with the construction of their figures having removable weapons on their upper body. In the AVs case, it was a knife. The figure seemed half done in that, he prolly should have had some sort of mask or visor. The pegs on the head indicate that.

Viper (reimagined). Also part of the VvV theme, these guys were... Personally I liked 'em tho the other 95% of the JBL community (and then some) hated them. I still wonder why there are 2 small holes on the side of their heads (again, prolly for some sort of visor).

Hard Drive. MAYBE the design on paper was ok, but the final execution was horrible. Soft edges, horrible paint apps (in both color and how it was applied most of the time), and an uninteresting character didn't garner any love for him.

Barrel Roll. I personally prefer the 1st sculpt but the brown/red is much better than the Cobra Blue (he was a Spy Troops and was supposed to fit in Cobra-wise). HIS DTC version was pretty bad even if they based his likeness on one of the sculptors. What made this guy popular was... Uh... I think the fact that his brother was the sniper bad guy (forgot his name).

Bombstrike. Finally, a new female to the Joe ranks and she came off pretty good. My only beef with her is the big GI Joe logo on her shirt. Besides being female, she was Barrel Roll and whatshisname's sister which made an interesting dynamic in the comic. NOT that she got much time, as far as I know.

That's enough characters there for ya.

As far as THIS sites goes. (see what I did there) He does have a point. Regardless of JBL or this mythical old guard That term really hasn't been used here except for your posts.

Just sayin.