[roshan]

What you are about to see is a GI Joe figure that has been sold for more money than any other GI Joe figure in history. Yet this figure never even saw store shelves. Three times they attempted to release it, yet it was too badass to allow itself to be in toy aisles. It's name: Vortex.



Now, hyperbole aside, most of that paragraph is true. In 1994, Hasbro ended the 1982-1994 run of the GI Joe line, but not without leaving a lot of unproduced items on the drawing board for 1995. Some were so close to stores they were fully produced with packaging for dealer samples, and were listed as 'coming soon' on the back of produced Star Brigade card backs. These figures were the Manimals, and alongwith the canceled Ninja Commandos are the most sought after unproduced figures in the GI Joe collecting community.



I remember first seeing the full line at a GI Joe convention in the 1990's. Charles Griffith (the name used for Double Blast's file card YOJOE.COM | Filecard Gallery - Double Blast) had a display of all of the figures in one glass case (which he still brings to every joe con each year), and at first sight I was hooked on trying to get all of these figures.
Unfortunately, one figure makes that extremely difficult: Vortex.



What makes this figure so unique amongst the other six Manimals is it's play mechanic. All the Manimals had an action feature, but Vortex's action feature was very brittle. His shell was supposed to open and close revealing the mini alien controlling the bigger figure protecting him. But this shell broke often in play testing so there are less Vortex's in existence in working shape compared to the other six. This Vortex you see, I only cracked open the shell slightly to see the alien once I bought it and have never touched it since for fear of breaking the shell.

Now to address the boasts I made in the first paragraph. The figure you see in the pictures is not the first Vortex, it is actually the second attempt. In 2001 Hasbro attempted to release the grails of the collecting community at last, and KB Toys picked them up as an exclusive. Whether to preserve the original rarity or not I'm not sure, all six figures were repaints of the original 1995 canceled series. So instead of being green, the second release Vortex was pink. The 1995 Zig Zag you see in the first picture of the spotlight was repainted green, and so on. But when the first three Manimals were released in stores (warwolf, Iguanus and Slythor) they did poorly at retail. Really really poorly. So much so that you can still find those Manimals for next to nothing on ebay. Yet their repainted original counterpart still commands close to $1000 loose. Given the poor sales, Hasbro did not release the second series, so once again, Vortex remained unreleased.

Finally, a few years later, Funskool toys, an international manufacturer of GI Joe figures in India, was set to produce the last three Manimals. Once again, they were repainted in different colors of the 95 and the 01 figures. I'm having trouble locating a pic of that series so if someone has one who can upload one, that would be cool, because I can't remember the color scheme of it. But, like all the others, this series never saw the light of retail and was cancelled.


(CREDIT: Yojoe.com preproduction archive)

As for Vortex being the most expensive joe ever, an original carded version of the figure like the one above sold a year or so back for $20,000 on ebay. It was relisted soon after and sold for a much lower $12,000 which was the real sale price of the figure. Looking at the history of rare preproduction and international figures, not even the great White Cobra Mortal has reached prices that high, and unless either the white or regular Cobra Mortal could be found carded, I doubt they will ever reach that price.



See ya on Wednesday!