Random Thoughts - A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

    This blog hit a milestone a few months back.  As of July 17, 2021, the SCC has now been around over a year now.  I wanted to take a moment and look back at nearly a year and a half of Snoova's Corner Café.  

    First of all, it has been great to be back into writing!  G.I. Joe was a major part of my childhood.  Several of the boys around me shared a mutual love for that toyline!  Growing up in my world, there was many bike rides to the Target, K-Mart or Hills to look for new toys, many phone conversations about the figures, cartoon or comic and of course many imaginary battles.  To write about all this and more has been so much fun!!!

    The photography part has been great as well.  Often some of my kids and I will venture out to the park and look for cool locations to take pictures of action figures.  I'm more of a writer than photographer, but it has been interesting to learn and attempt to grow in this category.  Hopefully I will continue to advance in this department, there are some really incredible Joe photographers out there!!!

    So, looking back over the past year of the SCC... I have to say some of my favorite write-ups were Rampart and probably Crystal Ball.  Rampart was a figure I never had...  not as a kid or a collector.  I had never held it in my hands and put his accessories on.  So to acquire the figure was like stepping back in time.  As for Crystal Ball... this is a figure that sometimes dips into the "unpopular" category, so I got to have a little fun at his expense.

    At this point on the blog, I believe we have looked at 50 figures and 3 sub-groups from the original 1982-1994 G.I. Joe Line.  I've done a few top 10's, covered some dioramas and some other things here and there.  I don't focus much on the media side of the figures.  I think for most of us, our "Joe Universe" was not completely defined by what the comics or cartoons did.  I like to look at the figure for itself and what one might consider after buying it and opening it up.

    I know the characters I choose to cover on this blog may seem random.  Even I think this is a bit amusing!  There's no real plan there... usually I just think of a figure while I'm at work and then the write-up just starts coming together in my mind.  By the time I leave work, I have a basic idea of what I want to say about that character!

    In the process of building this blog, however, I recently had to ponder the question - what is the mission of this blog?  Where am I going with it?  For example, hoodedcobracommander788 has a mission of reviewing every single G.I. Joe item released in the vintage line.  My friend, Chris, from GIJOE365 has a mission to draw every single Joe figure up to the year 1991.  So what IS my mission....?

    I guess it is to chronical my memories/stories of G.I. Joe and to connect with others that enjoy the hobby of collecting Joes!  What is the endgame of it all?  Ha!  I don't know!!!  I guess when I run out of stories to tell and people stop wanting to talk Joes.  This won't happen anytime soon... I come up with more stories and stuff to discuss every day!!!  I know that's not very clear...  I guess I'll know when I'm there.

   I'm considering several ways to expand the SCC.  Some are in the works right now!  This is exciting!  One thing I want to do is incorporate some of my closest friends from those early days of collecting Joes.  If they are reading this right now, they are going - "huh??"

Do you see him???

    On a final note, something that probably washes over people's mind when they visit this blog.... "what the heck is Snoova's Corner Café really?"  Well, back in the days of 1997 and AOL Instant Messenger and all that, I wanted a screen name that was Star Wars, but not obviously Star Wars.  I chose "Snoova" as it is from the book Shadows of The Empire.  This is the wookiee bounty hunter that Chewbacca disguises himself as.  You don't even SEE Snoova... his name is just mentioned.  Anyways, it became my go-to name for games and everything, to the point where some people at work would refer to me as Snoova.  

    As a musician and a toy collector, I needed a place to set up my drums and action figures - which became the basement.  I wanted to call it something, so I just came up with the silly name of "Snoova's Corner Café"... and it stuck!

    Many years later, when it came time to name the blog, my wife suggested Snoova's Corner Café because quite simply - that's what it is... it's where my collection resides!  The name also lends to the idea of sitting around and talking about Joes, which is basically the point of it all.

    So a big THANK YOU to those that have checked this blog out, or the Facebook page, or commented or anything!  It is truly appreciated!!!  Special thanks to Deathwish who has supported and helped this blog in many ways!  And an extra special thanks to my wife and kids who have supported this project, encouraged me and has had to listen to me yap about G.I. Joe continuously.

    There's more to come...