{"id":4123,"date":"2023-07-17T03:00:54","date_gmt":"2023-07-17T03:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huxter.org\/words\/?p=4123"},"modified":"2023-08-16T14:34:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T14:34:28","slug":"huxter-labs-super-joe-unlimited-arctic-danger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.huxter.org\/words\/?p=4123","title":{"rendered":"Huxter Labs Super Joe Unlimited – Arctic Danger"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2021, Greg Brown<\/strong> of Cotswold Collectibles<\/a><\/strong> put together a new set for GI Joe – except this one held a bit of a twist. He had been working on ideas for Super Joe<\/strong>, a 9-inch figure that Hasbro produced after the 12″ GI Joe line petered out. Super Joe was not quite as world-popular as the original GI Joe line, but people did enjoy the figures and the wonderful gear sets that were produced at the time.<\/p>\n

Greg’s idea was to continue the Super Joe idea, but in 12″ scale.<\/p>\n

So he had planned an Arctic Set, partly surrounding a blue Arctic dragon-like monster creature from Safari Limited.<\/p>\n

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The Set<\/h1>\n

The set would include a figure with flocked hair, a white snow suit with blue striped accents and fur-lined parka hood, white Kung Fu Grip hands, white boots, a white mask against the sheer arctic cold, a futuristic rifle. The box art was by David Howard.<\/p>\n

He also wanted a revival of my Communication Backpack, which was repurposed from a metal Lowe’s Gift Card holder, that I had done some time earlier. Only this time it would hold a drone. With it, he wanted the extended Wrist Cuffs I had made for a space set some time before.<\/p>\n

I also provided a blue clear resin eye piece for the face mask, which had no visor, but was open, which for an arctic set, was less than ideal. I can’t fault that mask, though. I’m not sure who made it, but it was very nice.<\/p>\n

Mattsquatch Customs<\/a><\/strong> made the rifle, and a clever twist was that each boxed set would come with a randomly packed futuristic rifle, from, I believe, 3 options.<\/p>\n

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The Drone<\/h1>\n

Greg wanted a drone to fit into a backpack, and he wanted the backpack to be a slight revision of the Lowe’s Gift Card pack Communications Backpack<\/a><\/strong> we had done a year or so earlier. He and I both had a small stock of those backpacks left, (and Lowe’s was no longer selling them) so we thought we would use the remaining stock in this set.<\/p>\n

The original: This one came empty and was used only to store gear.<\/p>\n

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First, I needed a new drone. I wanted a new version that had fewer parts and was easier to assemble, as well as, I was kinda getting tired of the old one.<\/p>\n

So I created this new drone and tried a few sizes:<\/p>\n

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It turned out that the biggest one was too large, the smallest one, but as is often the case with stories, the middle one was just right<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

To make this fit into the backpack, I created an insert that would fit the drone, but also the two antennas that slot into the top of the backpack have slots for storage too.<\/p>\n

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I created a new cover for the Lowe’s logo at bottom right (here, covered by a widget), and made a screen for it.\"\"<\/p>\n

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A problem with the last batch of Communicator Backpacks always bothered me. I tried gluing the harness braces to the back of the aluminum pack, but I always worried it would not be strong enough to hold permanently. Experiments with Super Glue and Binary Epoxy both yielded iffy results. It may never be an issue, but I was able to pull them off with some force. Likely no one else ever has, but that’s just me.<\/p>\n

So I went the extra step of updating those braces to hold a rivet. And I bought a rivet gun, rivets and rivet washers, to make damn sure these would never come off. In addition to the Super Glue (which was actually quite strong) I riveted the upper and lower braces onto the box.<\/p>\n

The top one here is covered by the standard Huxter Labs harness, but you can see the rivet in the bottom brace. Both braces are identical parts, flipped.<\/p>\n

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Drone Control<\/h1>\n

Greg saw a cuff I had made previously for an Astronaut set I worked on. I extended the arm cuff to contain a screen that fits over the back of the hand. We used this for the Drone Control Cuff for this set, rather than going with the original.<\/p>\n

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With this equipment, the Arctic Danger<\/strong> set was complete.<\/p>\n

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