I have lauded the Sigma 6 line in several posts now. I showed the three Adventure Team sets: Pyramid of Peril, Terror of the Swamp and Danger in the Jungle.
But in doing some web searching concerning the Sigma 6 Adventure Team sets, I stumbled across a concept sketch that caught my eye:
Clearly this showed an Adventure Team Sigma 6 set that had not hit the market. And it made complete sense since it was another homage to the original Adventure Team sets.
It was never released, but some searching did turn up this image, seemingly shot for the cover of the set:
It has the same styling of the three released set photo images.
Pyramid of Peril was an analogue to Secret of the Mummy’s Tomb (with a little Indiana Jones thrown in).
Terror of the Swamp was clearly an homage to Mouth of Doom, and other sets featuring an alligator.
Danger of the Jungle is an homage to the White Tiger Hunt set.
And clearly, the unreleased gorilla set was to be reminiscent of Capture of the Pygmy Gorilla.
But then when you look at the centerfold map in the book that comes with the Sigma 6 Adventure Team sets, you can clearly see six red dots on the map. Three of them coincide with the three released sets.
A fourth clearly depicts a gorilla (Ituri Forest, central Africa).
So then there are two other red dots. One depicts a scorpion (Atacama Desert, South America), and one a shark (Great Barrier Reef, Australia). (Sharks were often used in vintage Adventure Team sets.) Clearly the Sigma 6 line was an homage to the original AT line. Except for the scorpion. There was never a scorpion. There were giant spiders, though.
Were these two to be made into sets as well?
Armed with this knowledge I did some Google searching and came up with this concept sketch, clearly done by the same people who did the gorilla concept. Clearly this was to be the Atacama Desert Scorpion set:
And armed with this knowledge, I found out that this set was to feature Dusty. In fact, this is a picture of a prototype of the set, again, never released:
And here is the scorpion (not on his back):
You can search and find more images, including castings of the individual pieces of the set. There was some nice gear intended to go with this set, including a somewhat oversized Leatherman pocket pliers set, with swing-out blades at the bases that most people would love to have for 1:6 figures.
And I also saw this concept, clearly intended to be the Great Barrier Reef Shark set:
And lest people think that all of this concept work and prototype work was in vain, note that in 2010, the GI Joe Collector’s Club released what I think is their finest Convention Set ever: Escape from Spy Island:
Observe the shark.
What does this mean?
It means the shark was actually tooled, even if not ever produced, because the GI Joe Collectors’ Club could not have afforded to have had it tooled in a factory, but it could easily use the molds Hasbro had access to. So the mold was finished.
This leads me to wonder, (if they still exist) could the GI Joe Club create a convention set that uses the scorpion or the gorilla? Another Pygmy Gorilla wouldn’t be too crazy, but something new and unique like the Scorpion might do quite nicely.
Man Sean, you really did your homework on this one – well done.
Yo Joe!
Thanks, Jerry.
I really loved the Sigma Six AT sets, and when I found out that the Spy Island (Convention Set) shark was from an unproduced S6 set, I did some digging and found a few photos, and wonderfully, the concept sketches from the unproduced sets. I wish they had created them! I’d have them all!