Hey guys it’s time to dive back into The Toy Chest!
This time I have a quick little post for an item I recently picked up at STL Comics & Games, a cool comic and vintage toy shop in my area.
The item? A 1985 G.I. Joe Snow Cat in, let’s just call it, “non-mint” condition.
This one is interesting because it’s a vehicle that I never had growing up, and, honestly, always thought looked a bit fugly. It was one of the first vehicles that started to move from the more realistic designs into more fantastical action movie type vehicles. My cousin had this one growing up and it just never really did it for me. Even the figure that came with it, Frostbite, looked a little weird to me. He has a giant goofy grin that always seemed out of place.
So having said that, obviously this wasn’t a toy I ever expected to add to my collection, but I stumbled onto a deal (and a project) that I couldn’t pass up.
One day STL Comics posted about some new inventory on Facebook and they were basically cleaning out a bunch of old stock that had been packed in their storage unit. It was all mostly broken stuff or items missing tons of pieces, probably cannibalised to complete toys that were in better condition. All of this junk was being put out on a special table in the store and this stuff was DIRT CHEAP. One of the things they were advertising was a group of stripped Snow Cat carcasses. When I saw the price on them I knew I wanted at least one of them.
We went out to the shop to take a look in person and man they were all rough. Some were missing canopies, some where missing missile racks, others had a missile rack but had broken side clips. None of them had missiles, skis, or any of the small bits.
They were rough and far FAR from complete, but they were only $5 each, which to mean seemed like a steal. I was sure I’d seen parts on eBay and I was confident I would be able fix one of these up no problem.
I had my choice of 4 or 5 different Snow Cats in various states of disrepair and I almost picked one with a missile rack until I noticed the broken clips. Why would I want one with a broken missile rack? (Spoilers….)
So instead I went the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree route and chose the worst looking one (I did make sure it at least had a canopy). However it did not have a missile rack, or as I would realize later, an engine hatch cover. It was also very VERY dirty, the dirtiest, grimiest, most yellowed one they had.
So, my first task as always was to scrub the hell out of this thing that looked like it had been in an attic for years.
Once it was shined up a bit, it looked a lot better but it was still seriously yellowed. Luckily I was in the process of whitening a couple of Skystrikers (see last post) so while I had all that peroxide set up I tossed the white shell into the tub with the rest of the vehicle parts. Oh, and I picked up an engine hatch off eBay as well. It was still a nice pretty white but I tossed it in for good measure anyway.
After a couple sessions in the peroxide the Snow Cat was back to a brilliant white. I’ve come to the conclusion that this de-yellowing process really is safest and works best on pieces that are supposed to be stark white. I ran into a few issues with the grey tone of the skystrikers, but on Storm Shadow and the Snow Cat it worked perfectly.
Now. Remember when I said I could have bought one if the Snow Cats that had a missile rack but didn’t because it had broken clips and would snap on securely to the turret base? Apparently that was the wrong choice. Because as it turns out, finding a replacement missile rack on eBay is not easy. In fact these are so commonly broken and lost that people have taken to 3D printing shitty replacement parts (which still go for about $15). I was able to find a few listed for $25-30 (not including crazy shipping) but guess what? They all had broken clips!
It had been a couple weeks but I ran back out to STL Comics to see if they still had any of those other Snow Cats left but alas they had sold them all.
Oh well.
I decided at that point that I would just finish the restoration and wait until I found a deal on a halfway decent replacement rack. I could live without it, I was happy enough to have brought this toy back from the brink being tossed in a dumpster, and it looked really nice now even without the missile rack.
So I went about getting replacements for all the other missing details like the black fender pieces, the steering wheel and the windshield wiper. I had actually done one thing right in picking this particular one, a lot of the ones they had I noticed had the tab on the windshield that the wiper clips into broken off. I didn’t know at the time how important that was, I just knew I didn’t want a windshield with that piece busted. Score one for me!
I was almost finished with this project, and scrolling through eBay I lucked into a listing for an unbroken missile rack WITH the four missiles for it included. It was $50, but once I factored in the price of the missiles by themselves and the fact that the rack was totally intact, it ended up being a pretty good deal.
I decided what the hell if I was going to throw money out for that I might as well throw another chunk of change and get the ski missiles too and the I could call this toy 100% restored (except for new decals which I may or may not do)
So here it is, all clean, white, and put together. I even removed a lot of the scratches from the canopy using some car plastic polish and now it’s super shiny again and most of the scratches are rubbed out.
What? It’s NOT complete?
Oh right, it doesn’t have a driver!
Well funny thing about that. I honestly hadn’t planned on seeking out a Frostbite figure for this, at least not right now anyway. I figured maybe I would get one someday but there was no rush for that. I had already increased the original purchase price of this Snow Cat over tenfold by cobbling together all of its missing pieces, but then fate stepped in.
Just last month, mid-June 2025, I went with my boys and my sister and her kids on a road trip to stay in a cabin outside Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg Tennessee.
One of the things I knew we would want to do there was to hit up one of their flea market dirt malls (my kids love that stuff). We ended up going to one on the last day of our stay there, the biggest one in the area supposedly, and in this flea market was a shop with the craziest assortment of vintage toys I’ve ever seen.
This guy had some of just about everything. And it wasn’t spread out all over the place. Some stuff in glass cases, some stuff piled up in bins. Broken shit on counters, board games stacked to the ceiling. Conditions were all over the place too. Some of it looked OK, some looked like it had been dug out from under a shed or literally dug up from someone’s backyard.
My youngest had a field day in this place. Along the outside wall on both sides of this shop were glass cases, and looking through the “premium” stuff, what do I see?
That’s right. Frostbite. Not JUST Frostbite though. Frostbite in pretty nice condition AND with his gun. This mofo was 100% complete and not at all discolored really, no paint rub and not dipped in hot dog excrement. This figure was more complete and in better shape than most I had found on ebay just looking around.
I had to buy him. I couldn’t believe of all places I was picking up this figure in a random flea market a nine hour drive from my house.
I carried him in the cargo pocket of my dad shorts all the way back home. When I disassembled him for a quick bath, I noticed that his screws were definitely more rusty than I thought, and the t-joint hook that connects his legs to his torso was actually kind of corroded. The normal shininess of the metal was eaten away and it was just rough die cast metal. Strange. I’ve never really seen that. His o-ring had seen better days too, it was stiff and brittle so that definitely had to go. Those are minor issues though, and I swapped those with replacement parts from smalljoes.com that I had from doing repairs on my old figures in the past.
So, finally, here it is fully restored, including Frostbite.
This was another fun little project. Again, yes, I could’ve probably bought a mint 100% complete Snow Cat with Frostbite for the same or way less than I paid for all these parts, but that’s not the point. This seems less ridiculous to me than dropping a ton of money and walking away with a pristine toy. Eventually I end up paying that same money but I also get the added satisfaction of reviving a cast off piece of junk that nobody wanted. Doing the actual rescue makes it more valuable than just buying it outright.
Anyway, that’s all for this time. I’ll get back to the normal Toy Chest content eventually. I’m almost out of restoration projects for now. I have one more for you, but it probably won’t be the in the next post.
But for now, thanks for reading see you next time!
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