Slaughter and Guy-With-Dog not included. Not seen: Some losers I don't care about.
I bought the BBTS-exclusive Slaughter’s Marauders box set months and months ago. It feels like decades. They’ve just been sitting unopened next to my desk in a pile of other stuff. The problem was I couldn’t find my goddamned Sergeant Slaughter. And I refused to let myself open up the box and take the dudes out until I found him.
I hadn’t seen Slaughter since we moved to this new place. And I knew he was one of the last things to get packed, which meant that he probably wasn’t with my G.I. Joes, but in a separate, unique spot all his own. And, indeed, I had torn apart all of my toy bins, one by one, several times just to look for him, to no success. And I have a loooooooooot of toy bins, and they are laaaaaaaarge. And so my Marauders went unopened.
Until I was digging through my photos and found an image from the middle of the move of just my Masterpiece King Grimlock and Sergeant Slaughter sharing an otherwise empty spot on a shelving cube unit near our television! Aha! This was his last location! This might be a clue! I checked my MP Grimlock box, no dice, but ultimately found Slaughter in the bottom of one of those canvas storage cubes, under a bunch of Wii crap. Huzzah! Opening time, at last!
Look, I don’t know who most of the guys in this set are, but I am pretty sure they weren’t all Marauders. Sure, there’s Lowlight, Spirit, Barbecue… but who’s this football guy? Was Falcon in the team and I’d forgotten? And some other folks. Naw. According to the Internet, these are just guys who hang out with Sergeant Slaughter in the animated film, retroactively considered Marauders, and taking up spaces that REAL Marauders could have had! I coulda had a Footloose and Mutt! Instead, I borrow my normal Mutt. I have no Footloose. (There’s apparently only a movie-style one, but he came in another box set.)
So screw those non-Marauders. They can stay in the box. …maybe I’ll keep the football guy. For the football. We’ll see. The rest need to stop taking up space in my house. This is a hollow threat, because I’m pretty damn sure I have a pile of other Joe box sets I’ve bought and taken one or two figures from and then abandoned.
But seriously! Slaughter’s Marauders! These were THE EFFIN’ GUYS when I was a kid. I realize I am probably fairly alone on this. But I latched onto these guys pretty strongly. I was already a fan of Sergeant Slaughter, and these were his dudes! And they were older dudes who I hadn’t owned, so I built up this personal mythology about how they were so awesome just based on the strength that they were older toys who were so awesome that they got to be rereleased as Slaughter’s posse.
They were also so awesome that they could apparently get away with looking like they’d rolled around in some spoiled neapolitan ice cream. Despite this, nobody messed with them. Needless to say, these newer versions are an improvement.
Anyway, I’m happy, because I am the biggest fan of these guys. I was such a big fan I had to look up to see if Falcon really was on their team and who these other dudes were and who I was missing. …yeah. Okay.
Nostalgia, folks.
I’m pretty confident the “Football Guy” is William “The Refridgerator” Perry.
This look right?
http://www.thesameintensity.com/?p=1356
Naw, he’s Red Dog. Believe me, I would be excited about The Fridge.
I guess if I’d been bothered enough to look at your link..
Don’t make me post the lyrics to the “Super Bowl Shuffle”.
Don’t forget about the awesome vehicles they came with!
http://www.yojoe.com/action/subteams/marauders.shtml
And those of us who remember the 1987 movie probably prefer the Renegades as a team for Slaughter, since they actually acknowledged them as a team. Slaughter’s Marauders only ever showed up in the DiC mini-series Operation: Dragonfire, and even then, they never mentioned that they were an actual team. Though their commercial is pretty bad-ass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlQBqgb-P_Y
The Equalizer is badass. Having just watched Operation: Dragonfire I can tell you that Sgt. Slaughter DOES refer to them by their team name of Slaughter’s Marauders. I think he only does it once though or at least I only noticed that he did it once.
HA! I’d forgotten about Python Patrol playing volleyball. That’s awesome. I also like how the use of “camouflage” is demonstrated by Sgt. Slaughter going “shh” as they sneak up on the Cobra jungle camp IN TANKS.
And shame on you, Willis, for forgetting who the Renegades are. They’re totally appropriate retroactive Marauders. Even Falcon makes some amount of sense, since a big chunk of the movie was about him training with them.
One of the only things I liked about the animated movie was Mercer, the ex-Cobra Viper.
It’s weird. I love the hell out of the awesome animated TF movie, but hate hate the G.I. Joe one.
I was confused by this because I thought “football guy” was a marauder. But I think it was part of the original “Slaughters Renegades” 3 pack.
there’s a joe club membership exclusive footloose. you may see people with it at botcon
Huh. Will have to look into grabbing one of those some time.
Red Dog, Mercer & Taurus are the original members of Slaughter’s Marauders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAlt4Xp3oq8&feature=related
No they weren’t! They were members of Slaughter’s RENEGADES. Totally different team! …until this box set mushed it all up.
Must it be the same continuity? Just sayin’.
Ooooooooo one of Renegades was from my home town so I always dug Sarge cause of that fact alone
For me it was the opposite. When the BBTS exclusive Slaughter’s Marauders and Dreadknok sets were announced, I had little interest in the Joe set at first because I didn’t really care about repaints of a bunch of Joes I already had. Though to be fair, as it turns out, only Low-Light is a straight repaint. Barbecue and Spirit both have new parts and/or gear to set them apart from their respective 25th Anniversary and Pursuit of Cobra action figures.
But really, it was Falcon and the Renegades that sold me on the set. Falcon was needed, while he’s not in his traditional green camouflage, he’s still a vast and welcomed improvement over the Anniversary comic pack version. And what were odds of ever seeing the Renegades at retail? No, this set fills a lot of holes in my collection. I really like Mercer and Taurus, but Red Dog here is kind of my favorite. Mostly because I always hated his original figure.
It just didn’t impress me. He was small, and didn’t seem as tough as his bio claimed he was. And he had that oversized head with a face that made him look sleepy… Or stoned, depending on your point of view. The new Red Dog is a big improvement. He looks like the big, imposing guy with a bad attitude his filecard made him out to be back in the day. A pity I never managed to snag a Sergeant Slaughter. And he’s a little to prohibitively expensive for me on eBay.
So, did you get the Dreadnok set as well?