Well, What’s on Joe Mind is all over it!  We are your “one stop shop” for any Convention information you might need, and we got started bright and early with Special Edition #12.  Gary and Justin break down the entire convention brochure and provide some insight as to what you can expect on every page and just how much of your hard-earned money you should be grasping onto prior to the end of June.

So check it out at our Podbean Site or via the embedded player(s) below.

Flash Embed

HTML5 Embed

SHOW NOTES

“The JoeCon Brochures are out!”  Those 5 words are just as potent to a Joe fan as “Gentlemen, start your engines!” is to a race car driver, because to us it means JoeCon is drawing closer and registration time is near.  Print off your forms and follow along with Gary and Justin, who between them share their nearly 20 years of JoeCon experience.  Our dynamic duo will attempt to help you understand the brochure and read between the lines on this annually anticipated document.  From the con sets, to the package choices, to the guests, to the pre-con tours, they’ll break it down for you in tinier, much easier to swallow morsels.  Now all you need to do is print out the brochure and follow along!  We’ve been on the road to New Orleans for a couple of weeks now, but the city lights are now visible in the distance.  We’re your Golden Ticket to a successful JoeCon.  It all starts here…!

G.I. Joe Convention 2012

• GIJoeCon.com Website
• The GIJoeCon Brochure
• GIJoeCon 2012 Convention Exclusives
• The G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club GIJoeCon FAQ

Keep checking GIJoeCon.com for the latest details, and I’ve also mirrored an image of the box art below.

The G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club has ended a relative silence over the past month or two with a whopper of an update!  The 2012 G.I. Joe Convention website has officially launched, and they’ve posted a teaser image.  That teaser image is HUGE.

It looks like none other than Daina from the Oktober Guard.  Wow.  A modern era style Oktober Guard is something fans have been clamoring for over the past few years, and by the looks of things, we’ll be getting our wish.  I wonder who they might be battling against?

We know that o-ring tooling is more or less gone, so it stands to reason that we’ll be getting a modern era update for these classic characters.  The interesting thing to me will be how the Club writes these characters into the modern mythology.  If they do end up doing updates for the classic characters like Horror Show or Brekhov or Stormavik, will they try and write them into their modern universe considering they died back in the Special Missions comic?  Or are we only going to get Oktober Guard members who are still alive like Daina, Gorky, Misha, and Dragonsky.

I really hope the Club does ignore some of the deaths and gives us modern updates of those classic Oktober Guard characters, but I guess time will tell how they handle it.  I’m just excited that there is some Convention news to discuss!

Check it all out right here, and make sure you keep looking there, as more teasers are bound to be posted, not to mention the full blown convention brochure coming up soon.  JoeCon reveals!  One of my most favorite times of the year!

A week or so ago, The Commander over on the G.I. Joe Collectors Club forums revealed that the Convention location and time frame would be revealed by the end of the month, and he stayed true to his word.

The GIJCC sent out the email this evening, and we are confirmed, ladies and gentlemen…  The Official G.I. Joe Collectors Convention returns to New Orleans, Louisiana June 21st – 24th!  Featuring special guests, awesome panels, and a heavy helping of flat out fun with your fellow Joe fans, the Convention is the G.I. Joe place to be.  Dropping so close to the premier of G.I. Joe: Retaliation, one also has to wonder if a movie night might be in the wings.

The Collectors’ Club promises more information to come, so stick with GIJoeCon.com for the latest and greatest.  Yo Joe!

Joecon 2011 is done.  So what’s next?

I know everyone gets excited over the new figure reveals, and I’m certainly no different.  Some of these new toys look amazing.  I love that G.I. Joe is using so many great pop culture elements, and by far the best aspect of this is it’s really starting to cross collector boundaries.

What do I mean by that?  Well, it a degree, I think G.I. Joe has a pretty specific narrow collector base.  You find a lot of Joe collectors that also happen to buy Transformers, Masters of the Universe, or Marvel toys, but by and large, from my experience, it doesn’t necessarily work in reverse.  That seems to be changing.

As I traversed the internet trying to dig up convention news, I kept running across folks who aren’t normally Joe fans, and these collectors are all extremely intrigued by what they’re seeing, and eager to check out some G.I. Joe figures, possibly for the first time.  A fellow toy blogger and reviewer Poe Ghostal even remarked on his site that he has never once collected G.I. Joe, even as someone in the hobby for as long as he has been.  Yet the new reveals at JoeCon are starting to convert him.

This is good.  This is really good.  If G.I. Joe as a brand is going to thrive, it needs to start appealing to some of that demographic.  Lord knows the retailers don’t appear to be putting their full support or emphasis behind the brand, so perhaps it is time for Joe to narrow its focus.  Really look into becoming that high end collector brand at a normal MSRP price.  Draw in the fringe toy collector who gets a figure, becomes interested in it, and decides to buy more.  This is a big part of the reason why I’m so disappointed about Renegades being pushed aside.  Anyone who knows marketing knows that a big draw for the toyline is for collectors (or kids) to buy everyone they see on TV.  Time and time again I hear fans who are looking specifically for the cast of characters in their favorite cartoon or movie, and are willing to buy figures they might not have normally purchased just to “fill that hole”.

Where’s the incentive for that without an ongoing cartoon?  Are those fringe collectors really going to care about a fairly generic looking Scarlett, without the Renegades cartoon for her to be attached to.  Don’t get me wrong, Scarlett is an amazing figure, but to the non-Joe collector, it’s just another Scarlett.  Figures like the Zombie-Viper appeal because of the crazy accessories, wild appearance and pop culture appeal.  Without a supporting form of media, the Renegades figures don’t have that.  G.I. Joe fans are loving them and all over them (myself included) but I really think the failure to put some faith behind the Renegades series will impact Hasbro’s pocketbook, which only looks bad for G.I. Joe as a brand.

Let’s face it, none of us knows what’s coming in 2012, and frankly I think most of us aren’t particularly looking forward to finding out.  Perhaps we’ll all be surprised, and I hope we will, but Paramount is going to have to convince me.

Good news came out of the Convention in the form of the Collectors’ Club subscription service.  I think this has the potential to be very cool.  Yes, price is a consideration, but with some low production runs and reasonable costs, the opportunity to finally get some figures that weren’t originally going to see the light of day is fantastic.  We can all come up with a handful of awesome figures that got killed before their time, and this is a great opportunity for the Club and for us.

So beyond this editorial, I don’t have a lot more to report about JoeCon.  Along with new figures there were so many other cool things to see over the weekend, that I feel bad for folks who have never been able to experience it.  It’s not just news, it’s not just a new batch of toys, there is so much more.  I’ll link to some places to hop around below, but please just trust me, if you think JoeCon is just a “Toy Show” you’re doing yourself and the Con a disservice.  It really is a three day experience with fellow fans, the creators, the new toys, the voice actors, and many of the folks who had a hand in this amazing property over the past three decades.  As a G.I. Joe fan do yourself a favor and at least try to make it to one of these.  I took the chance in 2003, and I’ve only missed 2 Cons since.

Check out the links below for some other cool elements of this year’s JoeCon:

• The Customs (Toy News International)
• Customs and Dioramas (HissTank.com)
• G.I. Joe Cosplayers (Toy News International)
• GIJoeCon.com “Virtual Con” (GIJoeCon.com)
• JoeCon 2011 Parachute Drop (GIJoeCon.com)

This is just a small sampling of the fun had by all.  I’ll plan on seeing all of you there next year!