Street Fighter II G.I. Joe Edition
Hasbro 1993
Odd as it is most people aren’t aware that there was a Street Fighter game that came out before the smash arcade hit Street Fighter II, but there was. It was a very toned-down version of what most of us arcade brats would come to adore. Street Fighter II emerged in 1991 and was one of those games that revolutionized the gaming world ushering in a stream of knock off games, cartoons, a feature length movie (not a good one but you know) and of course, action figures.
Since the game was such a hit who better to produce the toys than Hasbro, the same guys who delivered unto us G.I. Joe!
At this point G.I. Joe was losing sales and so it seemed like a no brainer to merge the two lines and so, between 93 and 94, Capcom and Hasbro teamed up and released a couple of lines of GI Joe figures branded, and sculpted, to “look like” Street Fighter characters. The problem was Hasbro wanted to cut cost and so they decided to use existing molds for most of the characters. the figures were redesigns of previous Joe molds, most of them coming from their Ninja Force sub-line. They were repainted and new heads added, although a few were totally new molds. Most the figures also included either spring-loaded weapons or spring-loaded moves.
It was cool that a line of Street Fighter figures was out there, but aside from a select few they were just not good.
There was Ken, Ryu, Chun-Li, Bison, Guile, Blanka, Zangief, Dhalsim Balrog, Sagat, Vega and Hondo, and out of those only 3 were unique sculpts and arguably the best of the line.
Ryu- Ninja Force Slice
Ken Masters- Ninja Force Storm Shadow
Guile was a mix of molds from 1986, 1987 and 1991
Chun-Li- Ninja Force Scarlett
Blanka- 1988 Road Pig
M. Bison was a mix of molds from 1988 and 1992
Zangief was a mix of molds from 1989 and 1991
Vega- Ninja Force Banzai
Balrog- 1987 Big Boa
Sagat , Edmond Honda and Dhalsim were all original molds.
Along with the figures came vehicles, of course. There was the Street Fighter-branded Guile's Sonic Boom Tank and Blanka's Beast Blaster.
After the horrible 1994 live action film starring Jean Claud Van Damme, Raul Julia, Kylie Minogue and Ming Na-Wen they released a second, slightly better line where Bison had a cape, Vega had claws, Zangief was bare chested and Chun Li lost the acrobatics outfit in exchange for her actual game outfit.
BTW Mortal Kombat also released a series of G.I. Joe figures in a similar vein. We’ll discuss them later.
Loose these go for $8-10 and on card $15-20 typically.
And there you have it, the first Street Fighter figures that looked bad and yet I still want to own them.
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Jason Emmitt, signing off.
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