Lanard's Canadian  Mountie was one of 4 toy sets available in the Mounted Patrol Series.  This series fell under the Special Forces sub-group that usually had some type of figure and animal combination.  For instance, another Special Forces set had a dog handler and a set of 2 dogs on a double yoked leash.  All 4 Mounted Patrol sets consisted of a figure and a horse.  These toys are copyright dated 1997. 

As the co-author of 3 GI Joe books, this Lanard set actually breaks into my top 20 figures of all time.  Because Hasbro never came close to making such a figure in the GI Joe line.  You would think after 1000+ Joe figures, one would look like a classic Canadian Mountie.  With all the international relations GI Joe had, they should have tired to pay homage to the service members at our northern border.   But it took Lanard to pull it off, and they did a great job.  

 Acquisition back-story: I never saw this item at retail, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything since I wasn't paying that close attention to Lanard in 1997 since the GI Joe toys were coming back to retail at Toys R Us.  The only time I ever saw this figure for sale was 10 years after it was made.  Back in January of 2007, Smalljoes.com (Corey Stinson) sold several rare and obscure Lanard toys on his website and on eBay.  It seemed every week for 2 months, he had some cool stuff going up for sale.  This particular item was available on his website.  At first, I did not think I was going to get it, because the Mountie was sold out.  I was upset, but still found tons of cool stuff totaling in the $200 range.  Later that day, after refreshing the page over a few hours time, somehow 2 more of these popped up.  So I jumped to my credit card after picking my jaw off the floor and bought them.  I believe in the end, there were only like 5 Mounties available.  Smalljoes.com sold out fast of the entire series of Mounted Patrol items.  Of the other 3 sets, the next fastest selling one was the Native American with a Pinto horse.  The "Indian" figure was very close in design to the other version that was released, but still several differences that made them very easy to tell them apart from each other.  The above mentioned sets were sold out within hours, and the other two sold out over the next couple of days, if my memory serves me right.  

    If anyone has more information about these being seen at retail, please email me. After collecting knock of 3-3/4 figures for 5+ years, I haven't even seen a loose one available before, or since. There were several Lanard sets that were released in very low quantities and some being exclusives that were never marketed as such.  This may have happened because only one retailer decided to order that particular series of CORPS! figures.