Blood for the Baron!

I've been pondering something lately.

Big Ben in the 1991 series of GIJoe wasn't intended to have any connection to the Action Force SAS, that's obvious, but I wonder if Hasbro in the US might not have been inspired by Palitoy's toy line of yesteryear when they decided GIJoe needed an SAS operative on the roster. If so it was probably lost in the end of the planning for the '91 line-up, long before they gave the name to Larry Hama to write the filecard for. Now, he obviously took a real world-based approach to writing Staff Sergeant Brenner's bio and he created one bad ass foreign Joe in the process.

But part of me thinks now that some sort of retroactive continuity should have come into play for BB in the DDP comic they way it did for the Red Shadows with Vaugh being the former Black Major. There were tons of reasons in 1991 that prove that Big Ben was his own character... OI mean the AF line had been rolled into Joe years before that, most the SAS guys of the toyline just kind of disappeared in the merge, right? He was wearing green and based closely on the real world SAS force where he was just tasked out to GIJoe; and I'm not even sure if the SAS that Blades and Sparrow Hawk and the rest belong was supposed to even actually be tied to the real like Special Air Service. But now looking back in 2009, I think it would have been neat to have seen a black suited repaint of BB at point in the toyline at least... maybe not one with a yellow logo anyhwere on it but at least one that was like a silent nod to the fans of GIJoe that did know what Action Force was.

well I love love love BIG BEN, hes a great character and should definatly now be a part of Action Force,

A black and gray version of him with a yellow SAS logo on him would be awesome!!

on a side note, there was a mail away offer in the States with Big ben Budo and Spirit that was labled as Action Force

jamarmiller wrote:on a side note, there was a mail away offer in the States with Big ben Budo and Spirit that was labled as Action Force

wow, I used to own that set and I never realized it was called that! awesome to know

He's been on my to get list for quite a while. Never read any of his stories, but the idea of an SAS character is cool enough for me.

Here's a pic for Big Ben V2 from Yo Joe;



Cool or what? Maybe we should push for a Black Big Ben to be released with Hasbro?

Oh ya I knew I was missing one BIG BEAR Too, i loved / love this set, just for the concept on the international Action Force team idea

jamarmiller wrote:Oh ya I knew I was missing one BIG BEAR Too, i loved / love this set, just for the concept on the international Action Force team idea

I'm a big fan of the international concepts too. (although Budo aka Michael Jesso was born in San Fransisco but whatever)

where do y'all stand on the Oktober Guard?

Oktober Guard were in all the best Joe comic stories..& sould of been made into a Joe sub line back in the 80's/90's like the Dreadnoks or Destros private army did.

i f*cking hate the name. they obviously wanted a 'british' name but that was the best they could come up with?

jee-sus...

I think it was a nod to the October revolution...