Navy SEAL's of the G.I. Joe Team

I've been asked several times about a group photo, so here they are!











Left to Right: Harpoon, Tracker, Depth Charge, The Chin, Torpedo, Wet-Suit, Wet Down, Mariner and Night Fox.

The Chin (Navy SEAL)

Every team needs a leader. For some time now, I've been working on assembling a G.I. Joe sub-team of Navy SEALs. Lots of collectors have done this and they have used a wide variety of characters for their team leaders. I decided to create my own. About a year ago, I obtained a cast of the Army of Darkness Ash head as an unexpected "extra" in a trade. A pretty good likeness of the actor, Bruce Campbell. As soon as I saw it, I knew what I was going to eventually use it for. You see, my wife and I are both big fans of USA's show Burn Notice, in which Bruce Campbell plays Sam Axe - a semi washed-up, former SEAL who is the friend of the show's main character. Axe is portrayed as wise-cracking, hard-drinking and irreverent, yet an extremely competent warrior when he needs to be. For his codename, I used "The Chin", which is a nickname given not only to the character in the show, but also to the actor in real-life.

Parts: Head (Army of Darkness Ash), Entire figure, Fins, Dive Knife & Silenced Pistol (RoC Deep Six), Webgear (PoC Jungle Assault Duke), Dive Mask and Air Pack (RoC Wet-Suit), Assault Rifle (Marauder Gun Runners.

Harpoon (Navy SEAL)

Harpoon was released in 1996 as part of the G.I. Joe Extreme series. In my opinion, all of those figures were utterly horrible, but the line did provide another SEAL character for my squad. Harpoon was suggested to me by Topside, a fellow member at HissTank.com. All he needed was a very serious makeover.

Parts: Head (Star Wars Luke Skywalker), Entire figure, Dive Knives & Fins (RoC Wet-Suit), M-249 SAW (PoC Jungle Assault Duke), Mask & Airpack (RoC Deep Six).

Depth Charge (Navy SEAL)

Depth Charge is the latest addition to my G.I. Joe SEAL squad. The character was originally introduced in 2003 as part of the Spy Troops line.


















Parts: Entire figure (RoC Deep-Six), Submachinegun (Depth Charge v1), Dive Knife, Pistol, Mask, Airpack & Fins (RoC Deep Six).

Night Fox (Navy SEAL)

My kids recently bought me the Pursuit of Cobra AWE Striker for my birthday. It's a very cool item, but I felt like Hasbro kinda missed the mark on a couple of things. I ended up giving it a new paint-job, but that's a different story. The driver, Night Fox, is another Navy SEAL and a Hispanic character. I've always thought the Joes needed more diversity within their ranks, so I'm always happy when Hasbro gives us more characters of varied ethnicities and nationalities. My only real problem with the figure is that they gave him a masked head. Really? Another one? Seriously? A smaller issue was that the gunbelt would not allow the tactical vest to sit properly on his torso. I solved this by dumping the gunbelt in my fodder box. It's a very cool accessory - and it will work well on a different figure.

Parts: Head (RoC Tunnel Rat), Entire figure (PoC Night Fox), M4 rifle (PoC Jungle Assault Duke).

Wet Down (Navy SEAL)

Like Tracker, Wet Down is another character that I had never heard of until 2010. He was released in the A Real American Hero Collection line during 2001. The figure was nothing more than a repaint of the original 1983 Torpedo figure - even the accessories were identical. When I set about doing my Wet Down, he was also going to be a repaint, but I wanted to jazz him up just a little bit. After all, he's going to end up displayed with the rest of my divers and I need to be able to tell him apart from Torpedo, right? So I added some new accessories and deviated just a bit from the original paint scheme.

Parts: Entire figure (RoC Deep-Six), MP-5 Submachinegun (25th Anniversary Cobra Diver), Parachute Harness (25th Anniversary Snow Serpent), Dive Knife, Pistol & Fins (RoC Deep Six), Mask & Airpack (25th Anniversary SRO Lt Torpedo).

Tracker (Navy SEAL)

Tracker is a character that I had never heard of until 2010. He was released in the A Real American Hero line during 1991, well after I had stopped collecting Joes. I had a few extra RoC Deep-Six figures, and decided to flesh out the rest of the G.I. Joe Team's Diver and/or SEAL characters. Tracker is the first of these.

Parts: Head (RoC Pit Commando), Torso & Arms (PoC Jungle Assault Duke), Legs (25th Anniversary SRO Torpedo), MP-5 Submachinegun (bbi Elite Force), Pistol Harness (RoC Copperhead), Dive Knife, Pistol, Fins, Mask & Airpack (25th Anniversary SRO Lt Torpedo).