The periscope is in the box, and Classified Series 237 was unavailable within hours of going up

Yesterday evening a photograph went round the Joe sites of a figure nobody had officially seen, and within an hour the Joe boards were not talking about anything but the missing periscope. Sneak Peek, the advanced recon specialist the Classified Series had left alone since the line began, was turning up in Night Force colours as number 237. The early look showed a rifle, a quad-rotor drone, a backpack and a set of night vision goggles with red lenses laid out beside him, and the periscope is the accessory that tells you which Joe you are looking at. Without it the vintage figure is a man in a vest. Toy Habits published the images along with the complaint about the missing periscope, credited to two collectors who had seen the figure early [1].

Hasbro’s own product copy went up this morning, and the periscope is on it.

This Night Force Sneak Peek figure contains 9 character-inspired accessory pieces including binoculars, helmet, night vision goggles, drone, remote control, backpack, periscope, and weapon accessories.

The long black tube at the bottom right of the accessory tray has an angled head at the top and an eyepiece at the bottom, and in Hasbro’s own staged shots the figure is down on a knee with his eye pressed against it. The early look had caught the tray at an angle that hid the thing behind the figure’s leg. It is an easy miss when the accessory and the trousers are both nearly black.

Hasbro's accessory layout for Classified Series 237 Night Force Sneak Peek, the figure centre with red night vision goggles, a handheld unit with an orange screen, a helmet, a binocular harness on a lanyard, a quad-rotor drone, a backpack, a rifle and a periscope arranged around him

Why the periscope

The periscope is the reason anyone cares about Sneak Peek. He has no fighting gimmick, no mask and no vehicle, his specialty is listed as reconnaissance rather than anything you could put in a playset, and the vintage toy put reconnaissance in a kid’s hand as one prop, held up over the back of a sofa cushion. Take the prop away and you are left with a soldier in a vest who could be any other Joe in the line; leave it in, and the character explains himself before anybody reads the filecard. The question, then, was whether this was Sneak Peek or a repaint wearing his name.

The vest nameplate reads KING, and Hasbro’s filecard supplies the rest of it: Owen King of Bangor, Maine, primary specialty reconnaissance, secondary specialty infantry. The arms are pale grey against a near-black plate carrier and olive trousers. Say Night Force to most collectors and they picture orange and black, but the subline as it actually sat on shelf in 1988 ran closer to this muted reading, and seeing it come back on a modern body, in better plastic, is a real pleasure! Skybound spent the summer explaining in the comics why Night Force exists at all, and Hasbro has been quietly building the toy side of it in parallel.

The Classified Series 237 Night Force Sneak Peek window box, reading G.I. JOE SNEAK PEEK at the top with the Night Force insignia on a blue star badge at the lower left and the G.I. Joe Classified Series logo beneath the window

The pre-order window

Walmart opened pre-orders at ten o’clock Eastern. The listing is a Walmart exclusive at $27.97, it carries the Preorder Price Guarantee and free holiday returns until 31 January, and Toy Habits reports an expected ship date of April next year [2]. By early afternoon Eastern that same listing read Not Available, with no pre-order control anywhere on the page, and Hasbro Pulse, which also has the figure at $29.99, was reporting its own stock as out. Whether Walmart sold through or pulled the button for the day is not something the page will tell you.

The Super7 ReAction+ wave at the same event went up alongside it, and when those listings were first reported last week we could not open them to check; we can now, after a fortnight of not being able to read Walmart listings at all.

If you missed the window, the subset is the better thing to go looking at than this single figure. Hasbro has been feeding Night Force steadily, and some of the older releases are still in stock. BigBadToyStore has Classified Series number 164, the Night Force Beach Head and Quick Kick two-pack, in stock at $69.99 with the cart live, and that set is the nearest the modern line has come to the paired format the vintage Night Force figures shipped in. Sneak Peek himself came carded with Night Force Lt. Falcon in 1988, a format Hasbro has not reached for here.

Hasbro has not said whether 237 comes back outside Collector Con, and we have asked nobody who would know. Nothing in its copy mentions a wider release, and the Walmart page carries the Only at Walmart badge, so the safe assumption is that this was the window.

Sources

Product photography: Hasbro.

[1] Toy Habits credits @thefullforcepodcast and @sharpssneakylinks for the early look. The periscope complaint sits in the body of that post, a day before Hasbro’s own list contradicted it.

[2] The ship date is Toy Habits’ figure, given as 1 April 2027. Walmart’s listing did not display one when we read it, and Hasbro Pulse gives no date either.