However, in honor of this historic day in military history, I want to share that I finally snagged my holy grail, after 20 years of searching. It is the Hasbro GI Joe pre-production sample of the Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) figure from Saving Private Ryan. About 20 years ago, shortly after the movie came out, I had acquired a Tom Hanks head on Ebay. There were several of them out there. Around that time (Google still in its infancy) I had discovered that an actual preproduction sample had been made but was canceled.
Occasionally, one would pop up on Ebay but I either missed them or they were too expensive. A few weeks back, I was doing a search when I saw one pop up. The bidding during the last 30 minutes was energetic as one could expect. I was happy to have one and not even close to my max bid which was nice.
I received the set a few days later and it was fantastic. According to several articles, about 300 preproduction samples were made and given to employees. Nine or ten were sent to Spielberg and his crew. So there are a few out there and they come out on the secondary market occasionally.
That's really, really cool. I wonder why this didn't come to retail or wasn't released as an exclusive of sorts? At the time it definitely seemed like 12 inch collectors were one of the few demographics ordering exclusives from catalogs and etailers.
ReplyDeleteDreamWorks didn't want the sale of toys to lessen the serious impact of the film they were going for.
DeleteCorrect. Although it is interesting that any toy soldier reflects a serious topic.
DeleteCongratulations on landing your much desired item. You certainly waited long enough! I wonder if Tom Hanks himself was given one of these at the time of their (pre)production?
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