Big Lob

Squeakin' it up on the hardcourt! A top athlete who opted to enlist in the Reserves rather than pro sports, Big Lob's precise distance grenade throws and exceptional skill with the "alley-oop" multi-shot grenade launcher and "fadeaway" quickly caught the attention of the GI Joe team, who recruited him under their Rawhides program. When Big Lob makes his move, he always shoots to score the big win. Big Lob was a character introduced in the movie, and then then proceeded to never appear anywhere else - no comic until America's Elite did a big cover featuring everybody, no story appearances other than his name on a list saying he was part of a group deployed to Uganda, no toys until 2010 as a convention exclusive and again in 2017 as a Collectors' Club membership figure... it was the movie and then nothing. But now Classified has given him his first mass-market toy! The 2010 figure gave Big Lob the civilian name Bradley J. Sanders, after the character's voice actor. The figure is sculpted with a look of calm determination, but gets a more modern hairstyle today than he did in 1987. Back then, he had hair that was kind of... triangular? Puffy on top and on the sides, but thin in between. I don't pretend to know what was stylish in the Black community 40 years ago, but giving him short hair on top and faded on the sides seems seems a lot better. Big Lob was not the first sports-themed Joe (that'd be The Fridge, released in 1987 but advertised a year before), but was the first to appear in other media, so he sets the style for what was to come: instead of a normal uniform (or at least what passes for "normal" on the GI Joe team), he still wears a remnant of his sports gear, but with some slightly more military stuff to go with it. In his case, that means a basketball jersey and sneaker, but Army-issue pants. It would have been funnier if he'd stuck with basketball shorts, especially if they were those old 1970s-style ones that were barely longer than a pair of underwear. He gets a holster on his left leg and a big knife sheath on his right, with that one connecting directly to the belt he's wearing. A bandolier with some grenades on it crosses his chest, but his shoulders are so narrow and sloped that it wants to fall down to his elbow all the time. One thing that does seem odd is his jersey. When Bazooka showed up in 1985, he was wearing a New England Patriots jersey with the quarterback's number on it; it didn't make sense for a guy from Minnesota, but it did at least make sense for a toy designed in Rhode Island. But now here's Big Lob, again wearing a red jersey with white and blue trim - probably going for a "patriotic" look without being overt about it, but why is he also wearing #14? We don't know if he was designed by Hasbro or Sunbow, but did whoever did it think Bazooka's "14" had some significance to GI Joe as a brand? Did they think that was the only number allowed to be used? There are at least eight other numbers, and Big Lob gets the same one Bazooka already had? Pretty boring! Today's Hasbro is clearly pretty proud of the logos painted on his shoes, because they specifically chose to call those out on the back of the packaging. No matter how he dressed, Big Lob was going to require all new molds, because he's the tallest Joe yet - over 7" tall! We know their sizes are slightly inflated from a true 1:12 scale, but he was still a basketball player and thus still one of the tallest guys in the room. Considering the toy's size, it's surprising he gets balljointed ankles instead of the usual swivel/hinge. All the rest of the articulation is the usual stuff - swivwl shins (ankle, really, at the bottom of the pantleg), double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, hips that are a balljoint mounted on a hinge, balljointed waist, hinged chest, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, balljointed neck, and a barbell head - so it's just unexpected to see. His stats are Marksman 3, Launcher 2, Explosives 1, and Athletics 4, which makes sense given his bio. The truncated version up above hits the highlights, with the main jist being that Big Lob joined the Joe team because he could throw grenades with a high degree of accuracy. In addition to the pistol and large knife that stow on his legs, he's got the single-shot grenade launcher he calls "Alley-Oop," and the rifle he calls "Fadeaway" - the old filecard said everybody liked him, except for the fact he spoke in the third person all the time and was constantly using sports metaphors, so the names track. The grenade launcher can store on the back of his bandolier, and he's also got a single loose grenade that can hang from a tiny loop ion his belt. And then there's the basketball. Basketballs come in different sizes. A regulation NBA basketball (size 7) has a circumfrence of 29.5", and thus a diameter of approximately 9.4"; in 1:12 scale, that would be just over ¾"; this basketball is noticably less than ¾" in diameter, and would be 8⅓" when scaled up, meaning this "athletic superstar" is walking around holding a Size 4 basketball, the ball designed for elementary school children who are just being introduced to the game. It's too small to be something he just found sitting around the base, too big to be a novelty item he picked up as a souvenir... why you got the baby ball, Big Lob? This one is permanently attached to an alternate hand, looking like he's palming it. That certainly allows for more dynamic poses than a fully separate ball would. The piece is sculpted and painted well, it's just a shame about the size. All the other Rawhides - Chuckles, Tunnel Rat, Jinx, Law & Order, and Falcon if he'd bother showing up for training - got their toys released in 1987, but Big Lob got left out, and we're simply left to wonder why. Like, Pythona got excluded for obvious reasons, but why did Big Lob get cut? Well, there may be a clue in the next year's lineup: 1988 did see the release of a former pro athlete who pairs his old jersey with military pants, and whose specialty is hucking grenades with unfailing accuracy. And that's the exact description of Big Lob, yeah? Yes, except the sport in question is baseball instead of basketball, and the character's name is Hardball. Given the amount of time it takes to animate a movie, and the amount of time it takes to make a toy, it's not only possible but in fact likely that this character was retooled to make that one - especially once you learn that one of Hardball's working names was "Lob-Shot." What prompted the change? Couldn't say. Maybe somebody on the design team realized that a grenade is a lot closer in size to a baseball than a basketball, and that consequently Big Lob's gimmick didn't make any sense. It may have taken nearly 40 years, but the GI Joe team's basketball man finally gets a figure that isn't locked behind the inaccessibility of a collectors' club. -- 05/08/26 Should they have included an alternate "80s style" head? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.