Dee Jay
Back in the early days of 1991, a local department store down the street closed its doors. Considering I live in a cornfield, this was met with some sadness as it was one of the last independent 'everything' stores that finally met its fate. It was sweet, because not only could you buy matchbox cars but also Joes. That was the place that I got most of my toys for cheap only a few years previous.
When stores like that close, you can either find good deals or bucketloads of crap that you couldn't give away or find themselves either at flea markets or stores close to the Canadian Border (no shit). Puzzles of failed movies like Police Academy 6. Doll parts that had been shoved underneath dust skirts and had only been unearthed after ten years, then had a price sticker slapped onto it. And dozens of Hardy Boy Casefile books that looked like a dog had used them as a chew toy then toilet paper. And the only thing they had left of the toy aisle was nothing but GI Joe knockoffs...and about twenty Dee Jay figures.
Dee Jay. The bastard of the ill-fated Battle Force 2000 line. The one that couldn't cut the mustard to score an overly-white bubbly vehicle that equated 'futurstic' with 'ripping off Ed Roth.' Nor could he put placed into two-packs with the others when Hasbro tried to resell him. And they couldn't fucking give him away.
So why add insult to injury? Because for a futurstic warrior, Dee Jay was pathetic. First, his name harkens back to a day where 8-tracks were high-tech. Second, his outfit isn't high-tech as much as he looks like a bright refugee from a Mad Max film. Last....well, if nobody was going to buy a Battle Force 2000 vehicle, they sure as hell wouldn't buy the crappy lone figure with baffling accessories. If you couldn't sell a Joe on figure design, weapon design was the best way to go. And Dee Jay didn't have even that. Which is sad, because if they had simply taken Sci-Fi or some other vaguely scientific Joe and repainted him, poor Dee Jay would either have sold or had company as the spokesman for a failed Joe niche.
Pity poor Dee Jay. Now, let's not imagine where those twenty figures went. I somehow think they met their end at a Salvation Army somewhere in Quebec, layered in price stickers like concert posters on a college campus, the newest one saying 'just take them, for fuck's sake, even Ebay won't touch these.'
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