Toy Bender

As you might have guessed by the huge number of posts I’ve done on G.I lately is that I’ve been digging on G.I. Joe A Real American Hero like Michael Jackson digs on young boys (ha ha! Michael Jackson is a child molester!) and I thought I’d start to learn more about the collecting aspect of the line. I found The Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe 1982 - 1994 by Mark Bellomo on Amazon.com and I thought I’d give it a shot and see what I could get out of it.

This is only the second book/reference manual for collecting that I’ve ever had in my life. The first was a Tomart’s guide to Star Wars collecting that has some horribly out of date prices, but contains an amazing amount of color photos of everything that was released in the world of Star Wars up until publication. So just keep in mind I don’t really have any qualifications to review a book like this, I’m just some jerk that has a blog.

The first thing you should know is this is not a book for casual fans of G.I. Joe. This is a collecting manual through and through. That’s not to say that there are some great facts and cool trivia about America’s top fighting force, but all that stuff is really secondary to it’s function as a guide for G.I. Joe collectors.

The book’s layout is very simple and intuitive and you can get around fairly quickly to find what Joes you’d like, which is a huge plus if you want to figure out if a certain figure has all all it’s accessories ASAP. The information presented for the figures and vehicles is pretty informative. Bellomo explains what is rare and why, and what is popular and what is not with collectors. There are also some nice personal thoughts sprinkled throughout the descriptions. The majority of the book is more geared towards those collecting loose Joes than the mint on card crowd, but there should be enough information to please both kinds of collectors.

While there is some good stuff in here, you don’t have to read every description in the book to get a hang on the Joe universe. I’m not sure how valuable it would be to a tried and true Joe collector, but for an newbie like myself I found it extremely useful. I found that the real value in The Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe is as a catalogue of figures and their accessories. I would have no clue as to whether a playset or a vehicle I was looking at included all of its parts or not if I didn’t have this book. Yes, there are websites that have this same information like YoJoe.com, but how are you going to take a website with you to flea markets and garage sales? Unless your fancy computer McMan, you’re not.

The danger of having a price guide like this is that the values of the toys will change over time. From the online auctions that I’ve been following, it seems like many of the prices I looked up are still holding fairly well since the book’s publication. This will change over time, but it’s nice to get an idea of what the minimum you might expect to pay for a particular item.

One of my very few complaints I have is that nearly all the vehicles and playsets are pictured from a top down perspective. When you’re not that familiar with with them it’s a little hard to recognize them from another perspective. Plus, there are no real size references. When the Jet Pack jump station gets a bigger picture than the Tactical Battle Station, you might be lead to believe that the small one is bigger than the larger one.

Another problem is that through no fault of Bellomo’s, but because of Hasbro’s ineptness with the Joe line, about half of the book is filled with a lot of Joes I cared nothing about. Still, it’s nice to have pictures of all Eco-Warriors so I can know exactly what to avoid.

In the end this is a good book if you’re interested in collecting Joes. It’s not a definite history by any means, but it does the job for a collector.

Score: 4 Yo Joes out of 5

toy, toy collecting, G.I. Joe, Hasbro