While looking for Guzzle (and succeeding, yay Meijer) I also checked the GIJOE pegs.  Holy crap, they had a Steel Brigade dude!  Man, I don't pay any attention to GIJOE anymore.  He was a surprise.  Anyway, I totally grabbed him.

Steel Brigade was this promotional thing when I was a kid.  You send in this form where you fill in a name and choose a primary and secondary military specialty and also send in some money, and a few weeks later you got this Steel Brigade dude with a personalized filecard.  It was pretty damn sweet, not gonna lie.

Anyway, my guy's name was Tyranno.  Look, I don't know, I really liked dinosaurs.  If I recall, his primary specialty was something related to flying and his secondary was probably related to weaponry.  So,  yes, he was a guy named after a dinosaur who flew and had lots of weapons.  Maybe this is why I dig Wexter so much.  I mean, he is clearly the trifecta.

I am assuming that, true to Steel Brigade Guy's origins, that Steel Brigade is a bunch of mixed existing parts and a new helmet.  The new helmet goes over a masked face, probably Beachhead's.  The new Joes continue to come with a buttload of stuff.  This means he comes with two backpacks, which feels even stranger to me than more guns than he can carry.  I'm not sure why.  Anyway, one of them's full of removable rockets for his rocket launcher and the other is clearly for camping. There's also two black rifles, one of which can sit in the tripod.

Since Tyranno was a weapons expert, I gave him the backpack with rockets and the rocket launcher.

That's right, I'm calling him Tyranno.

Y'know, I actually still enjoy The Simpsons, but my cartoons don't always agree with me.

But this is the last TNI strip!  I told myself long ago I'd run until the 250th installment, probably "conclude" the old Robo-J.O.E. "storyline," and  here I've kept to my internal promise.  I hope you've been enjoying them!  Jay Cochran at ToyNewsI has always been a saint to me, and I had fun doing them as well.  Good feelings all around.

Man, why did #250 have to land on the weekend we finish moving out of our house.  That is the worst timing.

Just a link this week.

And no botched lyrics in this one, I promise.

Personally, I find Justin Bieber to be pretty inoffensive all around, but whatcha gonna do.

Here's some odds and ends that don't really fit into the Transformers Wiki's coverage.

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During the G.I. Joe portion of the introductory presentation, a memorial clip was shown that mourned the loss of Renegades character designer Clement Sauvé.  A piece of music was composed just for the presentation, a Sad Piano version of the Renegades theme song.  It was very touching and I'm glad they put that together.

Hasbro has a new Totally Not Lego brand coming out soon called "KRE-O," and this section was put in a tiny room away from everything else and heavily guarded.  No photographs were allowed.  Hasbro was afraid that somebody from LEGO might get inside and find out how to make construction bricks or something.  And then they put a bunch of photos of three of them in their press kits.  Well, yeah, sure, but now LEGO will never know that Hasbro is also making kits of Jazz, Ratchet, Prowl, Cliffjumper, Megatron, Sideswipe, and Sentinel Prime!

Crap.

Anyway, it looks really neat, and I will probably get Ratchet. I loves me some Ratchet.

Addendum: "KRE-O" must be pronounced as if you are Dr. Cliff Huxtable yelling at your son.  I've decided this.

Hey, remember last year when Tfwiki.net and Allspark.com put their money together to get a 25-year-old catalog off eBay and put the unused money towards Hasbro Childrens Hospital?  Well, we're auctioning it back into the wild, with the full proceeds going towards that same charity.  Go take a look.

Oh man.  I was just lookin' through this guy's DeviantArt account a few days ago.

Clement Sauvé is the character designer on G.I. Joe Renegades, the new show currently running on The Hub.  He was only 33, and he died of cancer on Wednesday.  That really blows.  I'll be watching the new episode on Saturday (and the rest of the season) with a heavy heart.

The visual style was a huge part of why the new series appealed to me.  It's sad that we're not only losing the dude, but also the potential for more of his work.

Damn.

Today I found the new "Pursuit of Cobra" wave at Target and picked myself up an Arctic Threat Destro, who you may remember from this past week's Toy News International strip.

He comes with a lot of accessories!

I'm not a big fan of getting more accessories than a character can hold or holster.  These new G.I. Joes seem to be really pushing the concept of having as many accessories as possible, so it doesn't really suit my fancy much, but I'm happy for those who enjoy having a variety of accessories with each figure.  Me, I just lose them if they're not stowed somewhere.  Hell, I lose them even if they are!  Also, if all the accessories are awesome, it forces me to choose between them.  How hard-to-please am I.

Arctic Destro does come with quite a few awesome accessories.  Okay, the climbing picks I can take or leave, but they seem to store okay on the backs of his shins (immobilizing him in theory), so no harm no foul.  But his squirt gun is awesome.  His larger gun is connected to his backpack via a tube, and I noticed while playing with him that there's a big button on the backpack you can depress with some effort, plus a small  hole on the front of the gun.  That's pretty neat!  Water squirter!  Destro also comes with a smaller gun that looks like it has a canister of ooze or something in the front, like he uses it to vaccinate people.  That one's okay.  But what's pretty awesome is the drill.  He comes with a drill!

Now, he can't hold both the drill and the gun and the other gun... These are hard decisions!  Unfortunately, to get him to hold all of his accessories with none left prone on the shelf next to him, I have to shove the awesomer drill through the tube on his backpack to stow it, while putting the less awesome canister gun in his one empty hand.  Not my preferred hierarchy, but apparently I value complete weapons storage over awesomer weapons.

He also comes with two pieces of ice that you can attach to other figures to simulate Destro having used his freeze gun/water squirter on them.  That's pretty damn neat.  I kinda want to stick them on him, too, as if he's just really really cold, but the one that hooks up and around the shoulder doesn't fit on him at all, what with the winter jacket's hood.  So it has to go on another Destro or something.  As shown.

Oh, and the goggles.  He has goggles.

P.S. There's Shortpacked! strips tomorrow and Sunday.

I am eagerly anticipating Arctic Destro.

Hey, dudes, I am totally in Canada right now.  The wifi here kinda isn't, and so I'm just on one of the lobby terminals.  They let me have 45 minutes online for free!  Hooray!

I got to see the Canadian Joe Convention dealer room setup this evening, and I really shouldn't have, because I remembered that I'm short a lot of Destros and they kind of have them.  Uh oh.  Also, woo, one table has a big pile of Funskool stuff, and that tickles me.  Tomorrow morning I'll get my booth set up and then start saying hello to you folks.

I'm, like, a special guest or something like that.  Because I'm awesome?  Their other special guests include Larry Hama and the original cartoon voices of Lady Jaye and Zartan.  That means I'm as cool as they are, I've decided.  I'm up-cooling myself through the transitive property.  That's right.  Go ahead and stop me.

Oh, and one of their exclusives is the Cobra North SNAKE.  Look at it.  Love it.

See you folks tomorrow at 9am, eh?