Soon Forget: GI Joe Retaliation Ultimate Gift Set

This is the latest in a series (of indefinite length and regularity) of blog posts memorializing cancelled toys. Our subject today is the GI Joe Retaliation Ultimate Gift Set.

Following in the footsteps of another Retaliation four-pack and the animated-style Renegades set, this set was briefly listed on Amazon in 2013 before being quietly unsolicited. No pictures were ever seen, but the lineup was known: Cobra Commander, Roadblock, Nunchuck and Slice.

Slice and Nunchuck have both been made available through the GI Joe Collectors' Club and their Figure Subscription Service, and we got a different "Ultimate" Roadblock in the actual movie line, but that movie-accurate Cobra Commander has never appeared anywhere.

And while we're on the subject, that Roadblock may have been nice, but it wasn't as good as this one. Not only did it come with an alternate "1986-style" vest, look at the three heads it would have had: The Rock, classic ARAH, and most infuriating of all, Renegades! Renegades Roadblock was the only member of the team we never got as an action figure, and this set would have remedied that.

The existence of these prototypes suggests that, at the very least, Hasbro paid to tool the figures, so there's an outside chance they may still be made one day. But since it's been three years since they were solicited and cancelled, that seems unlikely.