A while back, the legendary Gyre-Viper shared a picture of a carded sample of a 1983 Breaker with a unique headsculpt. The story was that all of the original figures were intended to have unique heads, but cost cutting led to cutting back and reusing heads. When the line was a success and the figures were tweaked with swivel arms for their 1983 run, the unique heads were going to be reintroduced. However, before the new figures shipped, someone at Hasbro yanked the idea. It is speculated that it was thought the head changes would confuse people, even though they would have more accurately reflected the figures' portrayal in the comic.

Gyre Viper showed us the Breaker figure. He also knew and had seen a sample of Zap (If anyone out there has a pic of that, I and everyone else would LOVE to see one!) Obviously, Stalker, Scarlett, and Snake Eyes got unique heads, so that leaves eight figures who share three heads between them.

Further, Gyre had some pretty reliable intel that certain 83-84 figures were sculpted by the Hasbro artist who worked on the 82 Joes, and had sculpted them concurrently with the 82 Joes that were released. This would lead us to believe that perhaps some of those 83-84 figures were intended to be used on some of the O13. Based on comic depictions that were originally based on pre-release concept art, Gyre had concluded that Doc's head was originally Short Fuze and Thunder was going to be Clutch. Since Clutch and Breaker were now accounted for, Rock N Roll must've received his intended head.

That leaves us with Grunt and Grand Slam sharing a head, and Flash, Hawk, and Steeler sharing a head.

As for the possible 83-84 figures, Gyre confirmed that Duke, Mutt, and Deep Six were sculpted by an artist who didn't work at Hasbro when the 82 Joes were being sculpted. I think we can also eliminate Gung Ho, Tripwire, Torpedo, Snow Job, Wild Bill, Recondo, Roadblock, Cutter, and Spirit due to the fact that they look nothing like any of the O13.

That leaves us with Airborne, Ace, Rip Cord and Blowtorch, all of whom have heads that could be argued resemble an O13 character and who happen to easily snap into the O13 helmets just like the 82 heads.

So, my question to everyone is: Whose head would you use on which O13 figure?

Does Grunt or Grand Slam get the receding hairline look that they both shared, and would you use Airborne, Ace, Rip Cord or Blowtorch in its place?

Who gets to keep their head, Flash, Hawk, or Steeler? And who do you replace them with?

Here's what I was leaning towards:

Grunt keeps his head based solely on personal taste... Grunt was my first Joe.
Flash keeps his head based solely on personal taste.
Blowtorch's head doesn't look right on an O13 body and looks REALLY out of place, so I was thinking of tossing him out.
Steeler gets Rip Cord's head due to what I see as a resemblance in both his comic and animated appearance.

I have no idea about what to do with Hawk, Grand Slam, Airborne, and Ace. Hawk is a closer resemblance to Ace, but Grand Slam doesn't really have enough appearances to recemble either Ace or Airborne.

I have built up plenty of of 82-84 fodder and intend to do some parts swapping and light repaints to have a set of unique head O13. What is everyone else's opinion?

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This is what I put together after talking it through with Gary, as I was going to do something similar:

Short Fuse = Doc
Hawk = ???
Grunt = Thunder
Stalker = Stalker
Scarlett = Scarlett
Snake Eyes = Snake Eyes
Grand Slam = Grand Slam
Zap = original
Breaker = original
Flash = Flash
Clutch = original
Steeler = ???
Rock N Roll = Rock N Roll

There may have been another revision to that list that came later, but I lost it off my phone.

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Very interesting list.

I'm curious, was this list before or after Gary's post on here with the pics of the Breaker head? I seem to recall he had Thunder pegged as Clutch. Was there a reason that changed? Also, do you recall if he said anything about Ace or Airborne?

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Man, I know it's been a long long time, but wasn't Ace's head the same as Steeler/Flash/Hawk?

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It looks quite similar, but is a bit different. Slightly more detailed hair, deeper "laugh lines", eyes slightly closer together. But it does look similar enough to make me think that the sculpt was done by the same person and probably around the same time as Flash.

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Yes. By original, I mean an original sculpt, unreleased, not the head that the figure was actually released with. There have been preproduction promo material that showed Clutch with a totally different looking head. It's kind of hard to see because of the Vamp roll bar, but based on that, I think it was decided that Clutch was some unreleased head.

I asked about both Ace and Airborne, because I thought the same thing, but Gary said they were pretty sure those two were used as intended.

Bear in mind, that my list was based on best guesses at the time. There may have been new info unearthed since I put it together.

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Seeing the bit about a pre-production photo with a different head partially obscured by a rollbar got me thinking... I thought I had seen something like that somewhere, and I was pretty sure I recall thinking how Clutch's head looked very different.

Here's an image from yojoe's preproduction archive...



That may have been the image I recall seeing. I know the captions on the page say that the head is merely painted differently, but the contours of the sculpt look quite different than the production piece. It is especially more apparent when you compare this to the image of Rock N Roll's pre-production head, which looks much closer in appearance to the production head than Clutch's.

Another question... did Gary say much about the reasoning behind assigning Thunder's head to Grunt? One reason I ask is because one of the earliest 2-up sculpts that has ever been revealed is a sculpt of Grunt/Grand Slam/Zap's head with a sculpted on helmet with a ridge on top. The interesting thing is that it has often been said to be the first sculpt, meaning this would be "The" GI Joe. It would make sense to me that that sculpt be assigned to Grunt since Grunt was something of the headline character in the 82 series as his card art appeared on a lot of the licensed product. I seem to recall having some soap and toothbrush with Grunt on them. I guess I just can't see the first sculpt, intended to be a definitive character assigned to Grand Slam.

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That really does look like a different head, great find!

So this came up today in the Facebook discussion group. Looks like Doc is ruled out as Short Fuze.

Nomad posted this:

"As far as I'm concerned, the original head sculpts line up like so...
Breaker - unused Breaker head
Clutch. - unknown
Flash - Flash figure head
Grand Slam - later used for Thunder
Grunt - Grunt figure head
Hawk - unused unknown sculpt with scar
Rock n Roll - Rock n Roll figure head
Scarlett - Scarlett figure head
Short Fuse - unknown
Snake Eyes - Snake Eyes figure head
Stalker - Stalker figure head
Steeler - unknown
Zap - unused Zap head"

It's a little off from what I had, but he's the one to trust.

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Aw man... I really need Facebook again...

Thanks for sharing that as I wouldn't have been able to see it otherwise.

I guess the Zap head is still incognito online?

And, was the unused Hawk head going to be a nod to the earlier incarnation of Joe ( because of the scar) ?

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I believe that's the theory.

I've seen cell phone shots of the Zap head from the presentation Declassified did at the convention, but I've never seen it anywhere online

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