Cartoon Profiles: GIJoe Extreme

On a previous occasion, I mentioned GIJoe Extreme. (I mentioned it even more previously as part of my documenting Hasbro's ever-shifting efforts to make GIJoe popular again.) Time to do a full writeup.

(A lot of people would disagree with me, I'm sure, but I love the way they shout "Extreeeeeeeme!" It's just so hilarious.)

Something that was overlooked the last time I talked about this cartoon, by the way? Further increasing the parallels to '90s comics, it actually had the closest thing a cartoon could have to a photo cover: Live action segments at the beginning of the episode.



Something that you may notice as a long-time reader (ha!) is that one of the Extreme Joes is Sgt. Savage. Visually, the style of this cartoon is pretty similar to Savage's own, with just about everybody being rather huge and muscular. And I do mean everybody.

This includes the weaselly and sinister Government Man who manages them...

...and his pick for the team.

They've got nuthin' on Freight, though.

His diet clearly has 100% of the recommended daily dose of Extreme. (In this shot, he has just landed inside the enemy base after parachuting out of a plane, with no parachute. And he braked himself with his guns. Yes.)

Also, shadows.
I haven't even mentioned that the villain is basically a Nazi Darth Vader with a beret.

I saw a relatively small number of episodes of this show back in the day, and wasn't very impressed merely because it was in the same block (the POWER BLOCK!) as Beast Wars, and Beast Wars is kind of a lot better.

I mean, if nothing else, it did precisely what it was intended to do-revive Transformers as a brand. What can GIJoe Extreme claim it did?

Well, it certainly gathered one rabid fan, anyway.

-Signing off.