G.I.Joe Classified Repaints (and more!) on the way for 2021

Toy Wizards were invited to a roundtable discussion with Hasbro’s lead guys on G.I. Joe Classified and Transformers teams– Ben Montaro (Senior Director, Global Brand & Marketing), Lenny Panzica (Design Manager) and Mark Maher (Product Designer). And during that discussion, it was Toy Wizards that broke the news to them during the talk that the repaints for Scarlett and Roadblock were leaked online. They pleaded the 5th to this… and a couple of other things.

However what news was very interesting is that they acknowledge the fact some items in the line were very hard to get this year. This was double down on the fact Hasbro (and all other manufacturers) make toy lines years out. Hasbro even mentioned working on stuff today that is three years from the shelves, and what we have coming is amazing.

Remember– this year’s toy production was complete and ready to go pre-COVID-19 and the last time G.I. Joe toys were on the shelves (before Classified) was ten years ago. In a nutshell, Hasbro did not expect to see this amount of interest from the collectors market. Orders were small and supplies were limited. This has made them hard to restock, as G.I. Joe Classified Series’ popularity was astonishing to the team.

That said, Hasbro confirmed that several hard to get Joes and Cobras will be re-released as second runs in 2021. The Cobra Soldier was a example of this as is the two new pictures leaked today of Scarlett and Roadblock. Hinted at but not officially confirmed was the possibility of other highly sought after figures like Baroness, Beachhead, and Storm Shadow.

Quote from the event: “If any of you are scalpers in here, get your high price now”.

These are the first looks of a newer design of the color palettes as well. I had asked directly looking at the colors and design of Wave three figures Zartan, Lady Jaye, and Flint if fans could expect colors and design to be Neo Classical (a categorizing I made up, but the team seemed to enjoy) and step away from what we got in wave one’s Operation Breakout video game theme.

The response was yes– they needed to know what the G.I. Joe collector wanted. It was clear out the gate fans didn’t like Operation Breakout but wanted classical colors and designs that were more modern. We can expect to see a darker look going forward compared to wave one with more repaints of hard to find figures. Wave three figures including Repaints of Scarlet and Roadblock are set to be released March 2021