ARAH for me, with
very few exceptions. Why? Well, nostalgia for one. I was an avid Joe collector as a kid and in my adult years I began re-buying the ones I loved as well as my most coveted figures/pieces that I did not have. There's an undeniable sense of achievement and self-satisfaction in acquiring a vintage piece most prominently because you can't walk into a Target and buy it. It has to be found at a yardsale, or ebay, or some god-awful comic shop that thinks a loose Dee-Jay is worth 20 bucks. Secondly, the almost endless extent of the items available to ARAH figures is uncanny. The only other line that could argue to have more figures/accessories/vehicles/playsets is freakin’ Barbie.
I was a huge supporter of the 25th anni. guys long before most folks here really got into them. They were considerably frowned upon around here when they first came out. The irony is I now find about 85% of those figures to be sadly disproportioned. Tiny heads, long skinny legs; there's an almost wannabe anime feel to them. That, coupled with the ridiculous reuse of parts (almost everyone w/ short sleeves has either Duke or Shipwreck arms
). I’ve always been convinced that Hasbro puts a lot more of their money into Star Wars and less into Transformers and even less into Joe and it really shows in their products as it trickles down. Hell, Hasbro at the start planned two 5-packs for the 25th anni. series and nothing else, wave 1 was a tack-on comprised of repainted figures. That, in a nutshell, is how they feel about Joe. They
do not know what they have on their hands. Eventually I lost interest and eventually returned to, if not wholeheartedly basked in, the glory of my beloved ARAH O-Ring style originals and their subsequent offspring.
Aside from Joe...let's see:
-vintage SW
-new Hasbro SW
-1/6
-MOTU
-DC (Super Powers through DCUC)
-Thundercats
-various 1/12 movie/comic figures
-FF7