Joe Con 2017: Is a Hardball release in the near future?

Could a Collector’s Club release of fan favorite 1988 Joe Hardball be coming in the near future?

Joe Con 2017 is in full swing now and last night’s souvenir pickup for attendees provided a slew of images of this year’s exclusive figures.  Among those items is Corrosao, inspired by the Brazilian repaint of Battle Force 2000 team member Dee-Jay, from the Ultimate Enemies 2-pack.  Normally, in cases like this, all eyes are focused on the figure but in this case, it’s the accessory that caught my eye.

G.I. Joe Con 2017 Ultimate Enemies Corrosao

Ultimate Enemies Corrosao
Photo by “The Legendary” Tom Brooks of Reasonably Intelligent Rambling

Does that large blue grenade launcher look familiar?  Take a good look– it should:

G.I. Joe Repeater and Hardball

That’s right, Joe fans!  Corrosao is packing a freshly-tooled blue version of Hardball’s signature grenade launcher!  Given the Collector’s Club’s penchant for never using a newly-tooled part just once, this is a pretty strong indicator that Hardball could FINALLY be seeing a return to action figure format!  This could mean that our 1988 roster is getting that much closer to completion in the generation 3 construction.

Now, this begs the question: where would he fall into the Club’s release schedule?  FSS 7.0?  Annual membership renewal figure?  Joe Con 2018 convention set?  Hopefully we’ll find out the answer to this at tomorrow’s Collector’s Club Round Table panel.

Regardless, this is one of the most exciting bits of potential news to come out of Joe Con 2017 thus far, at least to this Joe fan!

Joe Con 2017 coverage