I hope you and your families have a happy and safe Independence Day, and let’s not forget those who have, and are currently laying their lives on the line to provide that Independence to us.

Enjoy your barbecue, your fireworks, or your day off, but most importantly don’t take advantage of those freedoms we all hold dear.  Lots of blood, sweat, and tears went into granting them to us.

Happy Fourth!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I’ll be getting some content up tonight.  While I’ve had fun and made some great connections on my trip to KC, I’ve been way too busy for web stuff.

That should change tonight as sessions wrap early and I get ready for my return flight home.

Thanks for sticking with me.

As I begin the day getting ready to truck the family over to the in laws, I wanted to take a minute to say thanks to all the folks who stop by the site on a regular basis.  Considering what’s going on with the world economy and the world in general these days, I have lots to be thankful for, though I won’t bore anyone by listing them all here.

I hope everyone has a fantastic holiday today.   Happy Thanksgiving.

Hey, folks. I know the page here has been unusually quiet over the past couple of days.  Had a very long shift at work that ended with some potential changes to my current position.

Good news is, it’s a pretty big promotion, bad news is, that means quite a bit more responsibility, probably a bit more stress, and might mean somewhat fewer updates from time to time, depending on work stuff going on.

Don’t worry, though, I’m not going anywhere, I’ll just have to find more creative ways to get content out there.

Thanks for sticking by the site as always!  You guys are all the best.

Every day, it seems, I complain about work.  But I have an okay paying job that essentially lets me sit at a computer all day and update this website.

Every day, it seems, I complain about my commute.  But I have a 15 minute drive over paved roads without risk of life.

Every day, it seems, I complain about finances, but at least there are finances to complain about, a country that allows me to spend (or mis-spend) how I see fit, and work as hard as I need to earn the income I want.

Thanks to everyone who has served, it is you who made this possible.  Not the politicians in Washington, but the guys and girls with boots on the ground, metal under their feet, a boat in the water, or wings in the air.  It is because of you that this country is what it is.

Thank you.

When it comes to this time of year, I find myself having a lot less free time, for obvious reasons…being a father of two young children, certain things take priority during the holiday season, and honestly updating my G.I. Joe website isn’t necessarily on top of the list. 

Over the past two days, we’ve had several Christmas “celebrations” more caloric intake than I care to admit, plenty of family time and lots of love and adoration from my two beautiful little girls during a time in our family’s “real life” that could use a bit of an uptick.

The commercialization of Christmas goes overboard, of course, and the celebration is purely about being close with the ones you love, but there’s something about the look in your four-year-old’s eyes when they see the tree first thing Christmas morning that is unlike anything else that happens that year.  It’s not just the “stuff”, it’s the spirit.  I do regret that I haven’t had more time in the past 72 hours to update the site, but hope to rectify that a bit this coming week, and now that the holiday rush has slowed down, I foresee more opportunitys for more content in the coming days.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

I know the site has been somewhat vacant the past few days…been a whirlwind couple of days in the “real world” (yeah, there is a distinction…  ).  Deploying a new mail server at work, revamping the IS budget at work for 2010 with a hard deadline, all alongside a 2 month old that decided to stop feeding from the bottle and a wife whose back went totally sideways, leaving her bedridden has made for an interesting week.

Of course, amongst all those events, I managed to make a toy run.  Boy, I got my priorities straight, don’t I?  :/

In all seriousness, I had to go south for work on Monday, so I had another chance to zip through an number of Targets, Toys “R” Us’ and Wal-Mart cruising through southern NH…and honestly?  I was quite a bit more impressed and optimistic than I was the last time through.  Obviously, as everyone is aware, both Wal-Mart and Target have slashed prices on the single packs, and I think it’s helped.  A lot of those wave 1 pegwarmers had cleared out, at least somewhat, and many of them were replenished by the much improved later assortment offerings.  I saw numerous Pit Commandos, Rex “The Doctor” Lewis (all black coats), Helix, Flash, Elite-Vipers, Eels, etc…  I mean, I saw them in abundance.  Pit Commandos were still the most rare, as I only saw 4 of them total in two different locations, but nearly every place I stopped had a nice assortment of Wave 3 items mixed in.  Heck, I even found some Wave 4 Charbroils and Night Adders!  Two Night Adders, one with blue tats, one with black, so I still have no clue which one is rarer.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and roses.  Still didn’t see any Wave 2 Alpha’s at all (and I really want that Sky Sweeper!), and never touched either of the new TRU exclusives (Bench Press and Snow Serpent).  No Wave 5, even though I hit a couple of K-Marts expressly for that purpose, and none of the Wal-Marts I hit had a hint of the Battle Station exclusives.  Out of the 4 TRU’s I stopped at, one of them in Salem, NH had the Troop Builder 5-Packs, which was cool to see.  Speaking of which, reviews of those should be going up next week, hopefully…

The week’s looking up.  The Pats play the Colts on Sunday night, we actually have no plans this weekend, and the wife thinks she’ll be out of bed for Monday, but just in case you see spotty updates for the next couple of days, that’s why.

For folks like me who are video game fans and toy fans, Toys “R” Us has launched a very cool program in the same vein as video game retailers like Electronics Boutique, Gamestop, etc…  Toys “R” Us will now take in used video games in exchange for a store credit gift card that can be used on any item in the store.  The full information on the new program pulled from Toy News International is at the “Read the Rest of the Story” link below:

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FAO Shwarz, a fairly famous, but small chain of high-end toy retail stores has been under danger of bankruptcy for some time now, but has just been purchased by Toys “R” Us, a move that will benefit both entities.  While there’s no way to really determine what impact this will have (if any) on anyone’s toy buying habits, it’s nice to see some news on toy-specific retailers these days, seeing as how many of them have already gone under.

With the recent news that Wal-Mart is cutting the size of their toy departments, perhaps toy-focused retailers will start coming back into vogue?  Let’s hope.  I’ll buy toys whereever I can find them, but there’s nothing in the world that beats shopping at a dedicated toy store.  There’s just something about it…

Click here to read the full article.

GeneralsJoes was born many years ago with a very specific purpose and foundation.  The original Angelfire site (yes it’s still up, amazingly enough, and the profiles page and customs page can still be accessed) was originally a showcase for my customs that evolved into a figure profile and review site after I was the first person to find the new Joes at a local Toys “R” Us in late 2000.  From there, it spawned into my dio-story hub, while reviews continued along.

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