After a healthy break to focus on some other priorities, the long winter gave me ample time to get motivated to pick back up with the Mega Bloks G.I. Joe motor pool project.  I had barely begun on the base of the WHALE when I took some time off from customizing, and I wanted to get back to it first… before all the ideas I’d had for the project completely faded from my mind.

Cutter needed his ride, and the Joes were in bad need of a vehicle that wasn’t stopped dead by H2O.  And let’s face it, for those of us that grew up in the 80’s, the WHALE was one of the best vehicles Hasbro ever made.  Not the largest, not the most complicated, not the most outlandish… but the WHALE was versitile.  It could traverse water and land, carry troops, and it held a surprisingly formidable array of weaponry.

As a toy, the WHALE was as much of a playset as it was a vehicle.  It was part boat, part battle station, part mobile HQ, and it served all of those roles regularly.  The WHALE got a ton of playtime at my house, and based on how hard it is to find a vintage one in good shape, the same was true at other kids’ houses too.  It might not have been the holy grail of vehicles like the FLAGG or Space Shuttle, but it was without question the best bang-for-the-buck toy in the Joe franchise.  I tried to capture that feel in brick form, and I think tiny Cutter will be pleased with the result.

‘Til all are one, collecting is half the battle.  (The other half is making things that should exist but don’t.)