I'd call time travel shenanigans, but it's probably a coincidence, even with the fact that there's some surprising costume design similarities going on here.
-Signing off.
Showing posts with label GIJoe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GIJoe. Show all posts
Monday, July 25, 2016
The Lost Godzilla/GIJoe Crossover (Sorta)
Then there was the time that the old Godzilla Power Hour cartoon featured a cameo from the G.I. Joe villain organization Cobra before Cobra existed.
I'd call time travel shenanigans, but it's probably a coincidence, even with the fact that there's some surprising costume design similarities going on here.
-Signing off.
I'd call time travel shenanigans, but it's probably a coincidence, even with the fact that there's some surprising costume design similarities going on here.
-Signing off.
Friday, July 17, 2015
One of the Weirder Tie-Ins
(Another birthday come and gone. Eh, whatever*.)
Sergeant Slaughter's old toy commercial sure plays him up, like a lot of individualized toy commercials play up the characters they're representing.
Funny as that is, I think my favorite part of it is that his cartoon appearance was more over the top.
Like, the BATs (Cobra robot soldiers) there are being presented as pretty much impervious to serious machinegun fire. That gun Roadblock's got would knock most people trying to use it down, and the BATs are just shrugging it off.
And Sergeant Slaughter is wrecking them dozens at a time with his bare hands.
*I don't recall if I've mentioned that I don't particularly care for birthdays, but I'm pretty sure I've mentioned I really don't care for holidays. My birthday is like a holiday dedicated to me, but everybody else is in charge of how it gets celebrated. (Though Mom's been good enough to ask me what I want on the menu, even if it's pizza and my favorite kind of cake nearly every year.)
One of these years, I'm gonna manage to convince everybody to stop frickin' singing so we can skip to the darned cake.
-Signing off.
Sergeant Slaughter's old toy commercial sure plays him up, like a lot of individualized toy commercials play up the characters they're representing.
Funny as that is, I think my favorite part of it is that his cartoon appearance was more over the top.
Like, the BATs (Cobra robot soldiers) there are being presented as pretty much impervious to serious machinegun fire. That gun Roadblock's got would knock most people trying to use it down, and the BATs are just shrugging it off.
And Sergeant Slaughter is wrecking them dozens at a time with his bare hands.
*I don't recall if I've mentioned that I don't particularly care for birthdays, but I'm pretty sure I've mentioned I really don't care for holidays. My birthday is like a holiday dedicated to me, but everybody else is in charge of how it gets celebrated. (Though Mom's been good enough to ask me what I want on the menu, even if it's pizza and my favorite kind of cake nearly every year.)
One of these years, I'm gonna manage to convince everybody to stop frickin' singing so we can skip to the darned cake.
-Signing off.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Then There Was That Time Cobra Commander Kidnapped Some Autobots
(Sorry about the low content, but today was kind of a distracting day. My parents were attending visitation for a funeral about half a dozen counties away, and I had to watch my kid brother for hours on end.)
G.I.Joe/Transformers crossovers are fairly common. More so in the comics than the cartoons, but it did happen.
Note, starting at about 2:18, "Snake's" remark on the state of the current day (in his alternate future full of Transformers, which would have been in about 2006 of the fictional universe): "I guess they don't make terrorists like they used to." Followed by the obligatory bellow of "COOOOOOBRAAAA *hack cough hack*"
I like his earlier line ("everything is for sale") well enough that I put it in my Quotable Transformers post from a while back, too.
-Signing off.
G.I.Joe/Transformers crossovers are fairly common. More so in the comics than the cartoons, but it did happen.
Note, starting at about 2:18, "Snake's" remark on the state of the current day (in his alternate future full of Transformers, which would have been in about 2006 of the fictional universe): "I guess they don't make terrorists like they used to." Followed by the obligatory bellow of "COOOOOOBRAAAA *hack cough hack*"
I like his earlier line ("everything is for sale") well enough that I put it in my Quotable Transformers post from a while back, too.
-Signing off.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Five Greatest Cartoon Villain Headquarters
As any such list is, this is of course personal taste and/or arbitrary.
5. The Eyrie Building. Not many cartoon villains have plausible headquarters that are also cool, but this one's not too much of a stretch. A medieval castle that an eccentric industrialist put on top of a skyscraper is about as cool as semi-plausible buildings can get.
4. The Decepticon undersea headquarters. Helping establish a long tradition of Transformers using crashed spaceships as bases, this one was mostly interesting because they had an impossibly tall elevator that could reach the surface coming out of it...
3. The Technodrome. I'm not a huge fan of the original Ninja Turtles cartoon, but even with the big stupid eyeball, the Technodrome was pretty cool.
I mean, come on, it could move around underground. That was awesome.
2. The giant flying Cobra city.
Don't have any idea what I'm talking about?
I'm pretty sure it never showed up in the cartoon itself...
It's darned cool, though.
1. Snake Mountain. I'll admit, I'm kind of a helpless fan of the old He-Man cartoon. Its backgrounds especially are just artistic joy. Snake Mountain, Skeletor's crib, is particularly nice.
Almost every building connected to powerful magic in that show had an air of incredible age and at least a bit of creepiness.
And yes, I realize I just ranked a silly fat tank with an eyeball on it higher than a cool skyscraper and a giant spaceship wreck sitting underwater, yet lower than a flying city with a snake face and a mountain with a snake wrapped around it. I told you, arbitrary.
-Signing off.
5. The Eyrie Building. Not many cartoon villains have plausible headquarters that are also cool, but this one's not too much of a stretch. A medieval castle that an eccentric industrialist put on top of a skyscraper is about as cool as semi-plausible buildings can get.
4. The Decepticon undersea headquarters. Helping establish a long tradition of Transformers using crashed spaceships as bases, this one was mostly interesting because they had an impossibly tall elevator that could reach the surface coming out of it...
3. The Technodrome. I'm not a huge fan of the original Ninja Turtles cartoon, but even with the big stupid eyeball, the Technodrome was pretty cool.
I mean, come on, it could move around underground. That was awesome.
2. The giant flying Cobra city.
Don't have any idea what I'm talking about?
I'm pretty sure it never showed up in the cartoon itself...
It's darned cool, though.1. Snake Mountain. I'll admit, I'm kind of a helpless fan of the old He-Man cartoon. Its backgrounds especially are just artistic joy. Snake Mountain, Skeletor's crib, is particularly nice.
Almost every building connected to powerful magic in that show had an air of incredible age and at least a bit of creepiness.And yes, I realize I just ranked a silly fat tank with an eyeball on it higher than a cool skyscraper and a giant spaceship wreck sitting underwater, yet lower than a flying city with a snake face and a mountain with a snake wrapped around it. I told you, arbitrary.
-Signing off.
Monday, October 19, 2009
How to Revive the Inhumanoids
...Not in the literal sense, I mean...
Oh, whatever.
I'm obviously a huge nerd, and the fact that I've actually considered how one would revive a poorly remembered toy franchise (which I've talked about here) from the '80s is just a sign of the peculiarities of my particular brand of nerdiness.
And, in all seriousness, I think it's a viable one.
The central aspects of my plan are twofold. (Hasbro employees, if you're reading this, I'd be happy if the series was revived, and that's all I'd ask for as a reward.) The first is understanding just why Inhumanoids tanked.
Much as I love the oddball little franchise, it had one glaring flaw-all the toys were too darned big. The smallest toy in the line was at least the size of a modern Transformers Voyager-class, and most of them were Ultra-class sized or larger. The stars of the line, Metlar, D'Compose, and Tendril, were about the size of Transformer Supreme-class toys-if not bigger. (I used to have a Metlar, but my mother threw him out after his head broke off. WHY? I loved that headless Metlar!) This means, in the modern market, that the cheapest toys in the line would at a minimum cost of $20 a pop. $20 a pop for the smallest toys in the line. And the toys were absolutely tremendous, minimally poseable, and had minimal gimmicks. Obviously, a new toyline would have to go with smaller, cheaper toys, at least for most characters. (For an explanation of the Transformers size class terminology and a chart of related price points, look at this web page.)
The second step is a major cost-saving measure: Recycle other toys.
No, I don't mean the originals. Fun as the classic toys might be in one respect (they be BIG and HEAVY-one person on the ol' internets described their primary virtue as being the fact that you knew you could kill somebody with one), they're figurative dinosaurs-uncompetitive in today's market. No, I'm thinking of mining the past of another toyline, one that would love to foist off what it sees as its past mistakes on some poor, unsuspecting fellow toyline. I am, of course, referring to G. I. Joe.
Yes, seriously, GIJoe. Here's some examples of what GIJoe could part with: Bio-Viper. Monstro-Viper. Lobotomaxx. Predacon. Carcass. The Manimals (Iguanus, Slythor, and Warwolf). (If you're a Joe fan from the time period, don't deny hatin' 'em, you heartless jerk. The line died around then, and you blame them for it.) Digging deeper, there are things like the rather boringly named Armor Bot, and of course even vehicles like the Septic Tank and characters like Cesspool would probably be better-suited to the Inhumanoids franchise than GIJoe. (Or the Cobra-La team. Heh heh heh.) While one's at it, it wouldn't make much difference to move over such sub-franchises as Sgt. Savage or GIJoe Extreme, or at least individual characters from them. (Click my "GIJoe" label for more information on those, or do your own search. I'm in a groove, and don't feel like taking the time to link them.) GIJoe is crammed with figures and vehicles which are "too goofy" (too unrealistic, too sci-fi, too whatever your pick) for GIJoe (fans' tastes), and of course generic figures can provide extra human characters, while Inhumanoids would not be harmed by this supposed goofiness in the least.
To pick up the slack that would exist in the line in the form of the decided lack of large monster toys would be the relatively small remainder of the line, made up of various medium-sized new-mold monster toys, topped off by one good-sized one (say, "Leader-class"-that is, about $40) to contrast whatever the largest vehicle in the line was.
If the line is met with failure in the mass market, well, boo hoo, but at least development costs were pretty low. If the line is moderately successful, then it can hold on by producing more recycled toys with relatively few new-mold monsters; if it is very successful, of course, then the design work would be worth the effort, and newer and different vehicles and figures could complement the designs of the monster toys.
Marketing, of course, would be a reasonably important feature-I would suggest cheap re-releases of the Inhumanoids on DVD, maybe some pack-in minicomics, and tie-in animation of some kind. (Even just webisodes.) To keep it in step with the market, the monsters' appearances and powers would probably best be rather more anime-like than they are in the old cartoons and toyline. Not that they weren't anime-like already in many ways-I mean, in its own quirky way, D'Compose's "turn stuff into giant killer zombies" power is pure anime. And I would suggest banking on what I've described Inhumanoids' appeal as being for me-"kiddie Lovecraft," a series about terrible monsters that people don't know enough about.
And there we go, a semi-detailed outline of just how one would rebuild some stupid failed toy/cartoon franchise from the '80s for today. Join me tomorrow, when I talk some more about Inhumanoids.
I am so totally stone cold serious-this is now Inhumanoids Stuff Week.
-Signing off.
Oh, whatever.
I'm obviously a huge nerd, and the fact that I've actually considered how one would revive a poorly remembered toy franchise (which I've talked about here) from the '80s is just a sign of the peculiarities of my particular brand of nerdiness.
And, in all seriousness, I think it's a viable one.
The central aspects of my plan are twofold. (Hasbro employees, if you're reading this, I'd be happy if the series was revived, and that's all I'd ask for as a reward.) The first is understanding just why Inhumanoids tanked.
Much as I love the oddball little franchise, it had one glaring flaw-all the toys were too darned big. The smallest toy in the line was at least the size of a modern Transformers Voyager-class, and most of them were Ultra-class sized or larger. The stars of the line, Metlar, D'Compose, and Tendril, were about the size of Transformer Supreme-class toys-if not bigger. (I used to have a Metlar, but my mother threw him out after his head broke off. WHY? I loved that headless Metlar!) This means, in the modern market, that the cheapest toys in the line would at a minimum cost of $20 a pop. $20 a pop for the smallest toys in the line. And the toys were absolutely tremendous, minimally poseable, and had minimal gimmicks. Obviously, a new toyline would have to go with smaller, cheaper toys, at least for most characters. (For an explanation of the Transformers size class terminology and a chart of related price points, look at this web page.)
The second step is a major cost-saving measure: Recycle other toys.
No, I don't mean the originals. Fun as the classic toys might be in one respect (they be BIG and HEAVY-one person on the ol' internets described their primary virtue as being the fact that you knew you could kill somebody with one), they're figurative dinosaurs-uncompetitive in today's market. No, I'm thinking of mining the past of another toyline, one that would love to foist off what it sees as its past mistakes on some poor, unsuspecting fellow toyline. I am, of course, referring to G. I. Joe.
Yes, seriously, GIJoe. Here's some examples of what GIJoe could part with: Bio-Viper. Monstro-Viper. Lobotomaxx. Predacon. Carcass. The Manimals (Iguanus, Slythor, and Warwolf). (If you're a Joe fan from the time period, don't deny hatin' 'em, you heartless jerk. The line died around then, and you blame them for it.) Digging deeper, there are things like the rather boringly named Armor Bot, and of course even vehicles like the Septic Tank and characters like Cesspool would probably be better-suited to the Inhumanoids franchise than GIJoe. (Or the Cobra-La team. Heh heh heh.) While one's at it, it wouldn't make much difference to move over such sub-franchises as Sgt. Savage or GIJoe Extreme, or at least individual characters from them. (Click my "GIJoe" label for more information on those, or do your own search. I'm in a groove, and don't feel like taking the time to link them.) GIJoe is crammed with figures and vehicles which are "too goofy" (too unrealistic, too sci-fi, too whatever your pick) for GIJoe (fans' tastes), and of course generic figures can provide extra human characters, while Inhumanoids would not be harmed by this supposed goofiness in the least.
To pick up the slack that would exist in the line in the form of the decided lack of large monster toys would be the relatively small remainder of the line, made up of various medium-sized new-mold monster toys, topped off by one good-sized one (say, "Leader-class"-that is, about $40) to contrast whatever the largest vehicle in the line was.
If the line is met with failure in the mass market, well, boo hoo, but at least development costs were pretty low. If the line is moderately successful, then it can hold on by producing more recycled toys with relatively few new-mold monsters; if it is very successful, of course, then the design work would be worth the effort, and newer and different vehicles and figures could complement the designs of the monster toys.
Marketing, of course, would be a reasonably important feature-I would suggest cheap re-releases of the Inhumanoids on DVD, maybe some pack-in minicomics, and tie-in animation of some kind. (Even just webisodes.) To keep it in step with the market, the monsters' appearances and powers would probably best be rather more anime-like than they are in the old cartoons and toyline. Not that they weren't anime-like already in many ways-I mean, in its own quirky way, D'Compose's "turn stuff into giant killer zombies" power is pure anime. And I would suggest banking on what I've described Inhumanoids' appeal as being for me-"kiddie Lovecraft," a series about terrible monsters that people don't know enough about.
And there we go, a semi-detailed outline of just how one would rebuild some stupid failed toy/cartoon franchise from the '80s for today. Join me tomorrow, when I talk some more about Inhumanoids.
I am so totally stone cold serious-this is now Inhumanoids Stuff Week.
-Signing off.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
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.
(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.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
A Moment Of Reflection
Since I started this blog, I have dipped in and out of comic book discussion.
Rarely have I touched too deeply before I get distracted by, say, giant robots. And that's likely the way it'll stay.
Today I spent a bit of time going through the comics of the Flashback Universe and El Gorgo!. (The exclamation point is part of the title, hence the non-standard usage.) In my totally unprofessional amateur opinion, these (along with Dr. McNinja, of course) are probably the future of the "superhero" genre-webcomics that package themselves in some degree of the superhero tradition. (They're a lot of fun, and they're free if you're strapped for cash. Sounds like a good bet to me.)
Not weighed down by the complex legal issues or endlessly ponderous history of the "mainstream" comics, these comics are light and good fun, every bit as smart as their print cousins without the ugly baggage and stagnation, mostly because the writers care and it shows.
But enough about that.
Lots of people talk rather derisively about "comics of the '90s." Nearly my entire experience with these comics as such, their height, so to speak, comes from two or three comics that I got for Christmas one year. (An issue of Supreme, which was hilarious. This alongside the Silver Surfer graphic novel, some totally incomprehensible thing I barely remember which was also from the '90s, and... something I've totally forgotten at this point.)
These comics have a penchant for, among other things, particularly exaggerated anatomy, excessively large firearms, shoulder pads, pouches, drool, and other things that a lot of comic book readers hate. (They also like to use terminology like "extreme," although they usually spell it "X-treme" to tell you just how extreme it really is, which is something else a lot of comic book readers hate. If you use "X-treme" somewhere and you're not being tongue in cheek, I think you're doing it wrong.) Ironically, the cartoons of the same time period tended not to share in the same visual language very much (granted, the X-Men cartoon had Bishop, Cable, and the '90s lineup and costumes, but it was kind of required to because it was meant to attract readers to the curent comics-its storylines were all based on much older stuff).
Here, then, is the '90s comic-iest of all '90s cartoons, which even has that one guy who seems to show up in every '90s comic who has his hair sticking out of a no-skin costume and a quarterstaff/bo weapon.
Discuss.
-Signing off.
Rarely have I touched too deeply before I get distracted by, say, giant robots. And that's likely the way it'll stay.
Today I spent a bit of time going through the comics of the Flashback Universe and El Gorgo!. (The exclamation point is part of the title, hence the non-standard usage.) In my totally unprofessional amateur opinion, these (along with Dr. McNinja, of course) are probably the future of the "superhero" genre-webcomics that package themselves in some degree of the superhero tradition. (They're a lot of fun, and they're free if you're strapped for cash. Sounds like a good bet to me.)
Not weighed down by the complex legal issues or endlessly ponderous history of the "mainstream" comics, these comics are light and good fun, every bit as smart as their print cousins without the ugly baggage and stagnation, mostly because the writers care and it shows.
But enough about that.
Lots of people talk rather derisively about "comics of the '90s." Nearly my entire experience with these comics as such, their height, so to speak, comes from two or three comics that I got for Christmas one year. (An issue of Supreme, which was hilarious. This alongside the Silver Surfer graphic novel, some totally incomprehensible thing I barely remember which was also from the '90s, and... something I've totally forgotten at this point.)
These comics have a penchant for, among other things, particularly exaggerated anatomy, excessively large firearms, shoulder pads, pouches, drool, and other things that a lot of comic book readers hate. (They also like to use terminology like "extreme," although they usually spell it "X-treme" to tell you just how extreme it really is, which is something else a lot of comic book readers hate. If you use "X-treme" somewhere and you're not being tongue in cheek, I think you're doing it wrong.) Ironically, the cartoons of the same time period tended not to share in the same visual language very much (granted, the X-Men cartoon had Bishop, Cable, and the '90s lineup and costumes, but it was kind of required to because it was meant to attract readers to the curent comics-its storylines were all based on much older stuff).
Here, then, is the '90s comic-iest of all '90s cartoons, which even has that one guy who seems to show up in every '90s comic who has his hair sticking out of a no-skin costume and a quarterstaff/bo weapon.
Discuss.
-Signing off.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Cartoon Profiles: Sgt. Savage And The Screaming Eagles
I've talked (rather ponderously) in the past about GIJoe and its history. In passing, I've mentioned one of the various abortive attempts to rebuild the line from the '90s, Sgt. Savage and The Screaming Eagles.
I recently watched the Sgt. Savage cartoon, which can be found, as with so many things, in its entirety on YouTube. Let's take a look at a few (laboriously added, thanks to Blogger's horrible image stuff and HTML tools) screenshots, which will be accompanied by carefully considered commentary, AKA making fun of it.
Um, yes. This is, technically, a screen from the cartoon; you see, there's only one episode, and this is the commercial at the beginning of it. And it is of course ultimately an advertisement itself.
Let's start from the actual beginning, then.
Sergeant Robert Stephen Savage, "Savage" for short, is a famous and well-decorated soldier in the European theater of WWII.
That's right, he personally received a medal from freakin' FDR.
Anyway, he mysteriously disappears, and then it cuts to the present. We see some guys from GIJoe (including General Hawk and an extremely off-model Lady Jaye).
And with pretty much no explanation whatsoever, they see a mysterious figure breaking into someplace where they're all chilling.
Ooooh, a robot! How mysterious!
Lady Jaye takes off its head with basically no effort at all, but this barely slows it down, because, well, robot. It's strangling Hawk when...
...somebody it was trying to kill rips it in half by punching clean through it with both hands and then simply moving his hands apart.
Who is this towering...
...and apparently barely clothed figure?
It's Sergeant Robert Stephen Savage, reporting for duty, sir, that's who!
It turns out that, for nebulous (and poorly considered) reasons, Savage was captured towards the end of the war, and was subjected to much evil Nazi science. So much so...
...that his eyes glow with the evil energy, and he has occasional bursts of insane strength.
Which are often followed by embarrassment.
Within literally thirty seconds of being resuscitated and informed that it's fifty freakin' years later (the year was 1995, for reference), he sees a face which horribly upsets him. The face of some stinkin' traitor.
The face of...
Krieger.
According to Savage, the face of this man, Dr. Garrett Stromm, is also the face of a man who betrayed Savage's unit to the Nazis, leading to their ambush, most of their deaths, and Savage's capture.
Of course, because those stinking Nazis couldn't have defeated them even in a treacherous ambush, especially thanks to Savage's moar dakka quotient (he carries a freaking gatling cannon, for crying out loud!), they are subject to an ambush by Nazi superweapons!
Holy-! Is that Iron Man's Mark I armor? Seriously?
Anyway, in a series of flashbacks and dreams, we see these iron suits and the evil Krieger defeat Savage's unit and overwhelm them. And because this is fiction, of course Krieger took down Savage personally...
...with his bare-er, hands?
Um, Krieger was a cyborg? Really?
Oh, snap. You don't see it here, but he was wearing a glove over a hand that was a reasonable replica of a human hand, which retracted so this could extend.
Um, are we sure we're dealing with technology here?
I'm gonna file that as a "probably not really."
But anyway, that doesn't mean that Dr. Stromm is Krieger, anyway. He could be a distant relative, or a lookalike, right? He's probably not evil...
Just because he's got fascist tastes in clothing-wait a minute, who is that he has on the phone?
Ah. Never mind.
So, with Stromm being established as some evil and long-lived dude, let's talk some more about Savage himself.
Something I should mention about this cartoon-everyone is freaking huge. Aside from Savage's gigantic meaty paw here, Savage is average-sized. Hawk, to be true, is a little bit smaller, but when Savage is presented to a batch of smart but unruly screwups (their unruliness is represented by very mild disrespect, and the fact that they just won't stop playing basketball-ooooooh), most of them are his size, and there's one guy who's at least twice as big as he is.
Of course, he totally trashes all of them, playing as a team, against them in a weird variant of basketball...
...which happens to involve punching and tackling.
And then...
...he gets rough on the ball. Yeah, I'm gonna say they probably don't know the rules.
It's really quite funny, by the way, knowing how WWII soldiers talked, to hear Savage talk. (If you don't know, the terms "SNAFU" and "FUBAR" originated in the battlefields of WWII, and the "F"s don't stand for fudge.)
Anyway, so Savage knows, he knows, darnit, that Stromm is Krieger, and he demands to be involved in the security on the space launch thingy that he doesn't understand and which Stromm is in charge of. But Hawk says no, GIJoe is in charge of security there and they'll take care of it, and that's that.
Or maybe not.
He has his really big soldier, the tech expert, pick through the severed head of the robot that attacked him. Wait, wait, wait-nobody did that yet?! What the heck?
Okay, that aside, they find out that the satellite's plans are for some reason in the robot's head (WHAT) and that it's meant to do something evil instead of what it's supposed to do, and it was, guess what, made by Stromm. (Why would Stromm be crazy enough to leave that much information in some stupid attack robot's head? The world may never know...)
Anyway, so of course, Savage and the Screaming Eagles (which is the operating name of his new unit, just like the old one) take off to stop the launch, rather than making a call or something.
And they do it in the craziest way possible.
That is one fast P-51 Mustang.
Anyway, they successfully stop the launch, despite an army of those Iron Man Mark I suits and Krieger, who actually, aside from his tentacles and pinchers, can now transform into an Iron Man Mark V or so, and is able to fly and stuff.
And then, if this was real life, they would all have been court-martialed, and at best would have spent the rest of their natural lives paying for it.
As it is, of course, they get rewarded.
This cartoon may take the title of "worst GIJoe cartoon ever." Then again, the idea of cyborg supersoldier (and possibly occult) Nazis fighting guys on souped up WWII fighting vehicles actually sounds like a great idea, and it almost carries it anyway. (The award for high concept in a GIJoe cartoon still has to go to the DiC episode where Spanish conquistador ghosts possessed Overkill and the BATs and allied with Cobra Commander to capture the city of El Dorado, but maybe that's just me.)
-Signing off.
I recently watched the Sgt. Savage cartoon, which can be found, as with so many things, in its entirety on YouTube. Let's take a look at a few (laboriously added, thanks to Blogger's horrible image stuff and HTML tools) screenshots, which will be accompanied by carefully considered commentary, AKA making fun of it.
Um, yes. This is, technically, a screen from the cartoon; you see, there's only one episode, and this is the commercial at the beginning of it. And it is of course ultimately an advertisement itself.Let's start from the actual beginning, then.
Sergeant Robert Stephen Savage, "Savage" for short, is a famous and well-decorated soldier in the European theater of WWII.That's right, he personally received a medal from freakin' FDR.Anyway, he mysteriously disappears, and then it cuts to the present. We see some guys from GIJoe (including General Hawk and an extremely off-model Lady Jaye).
And with pretty much no explanation whatsoever, they see a mysterious figure breaking into someplace where they're all chilling.
Ooooh, a robot! How mysterious!Lady Jaye takes off its head with basically no effort at all, but this barely slows it down, because, well, robot. It's strangling Hawk when...
...somebody it was trying to kill rips it in half by punching clean through it with both hands and then simply moving his hands apart.Who is this towering...
...and apparently barely clothed figure?
It's Sergeant Robert Stephen Savage, reporting for duty, sir, that's who!It turns out that, for nebulous (and poorly considered) reasons, Savage was captured towards the end of the war, and was subjected to much evil Nazi science. So much so...
...that his eyes glow with the evil energy, and he has occasional bursts of insane strength.
Which are often followed by embarrassment.Within literally thirty seconds of being resuscitated and informed that it's fifty freakin' years later (the year was 1995, for reference), he sees a face which horribly upsets him. The face of some stinkin' traitor.
The face of...
Krieger.According to Savage, the face of this man, Dr. Garrett Stromm, is also the face of a man who betrayed Savage's unit to the Nazis, leading to their ambush, most of their deaths, and Savage's capture.
Of course, because those stinking Nazis couldn't have defeated them even in a treacherous ambush, especially thanks to Savage's moar dakka quotient (he carries a freaking gatling cannon, for crying out loud!), they are subject to an ambush by Nazi superweapons!
Holy-! Is that Iron Man's Mark I armor? Seriously?Anyway, in a series of flashbacks and dreams, we see these iron suits and the evil Krieger defeat Savage's unit and overwhelm them. And because this is fiction, of course Krieger took down Savage personally...
...with his bare-er, hands?Um, Krieger was a cyborg? Really?
Oh, snap. You don't see it here, but he was wearing a glove over a hand that was a reasonable replica of a human hand, which retracted so this could extend.Um, are we sure we're dealing with technology here?
I'm gonna file that as a "probably not really."But anyway, that doesn't mean that Dr. Stromm is Krieger, anyway. He could be a distant relative, or a lookalike, right? He's probably not evil...
Just because he's got fascist tastes in clothing-wait a minute, who is that he has on the phone?
Ah. Never mind.So, with Stromm being established as some evil and long-lived dude, let's talk some more about Savage himself.
Something I should mention about this cartoon-everyone is freaking huge. Aside from Savage's gigantic meaty paw here, Savage is average-sized. Hawk, to be true, is a little bit smaller, but when Savage is presented to a batch of smart but unruly screwups (their unruliness is represented by very mild disrespect, and the fact that they just won't stop playing basketball-ooooooh), most of them are his size, and there's one guy who's at least twice as big as he is.Of course, he totally trashes all of them, playing as a team, against them in a weird variant of basketball...
...which happens to involve punching and tackling.And then...
...he gets rough on the ball. Yeah, I'm gonna say they probably don't know the rules.It's really quite funny, by the way, knowing how WWII soldiers talked, to hear Savage talk. (If you don't know, the terms "SNAFU" and "FUBAR" originated in the battlefields of WWII, and the "F"s don't stand for fudge.)
Anyway, so Savage knows, he knows, darnit, that Stromm is Krieger, and he demands to be involved in the security on the space launch thingy that he doesn't understand and which Stromm is in charge of. But Hawk says no, GIJoe is in charge of security there and they'll take care of it, and that's that.
Or maybe not.He has his really big soldier, the tech expert, pick through the severed head of the robot that attacked him. Wait, wait, wait-nobody did that yet?! What the heck?
Okay, that aside, they find out that the satellite's plans are for some reason in the robot's head (WHAT) and that it's meant to do something evil instead of what it's supposed to do, and it was, guess what, made by Stromm. (Why would Stromm be crazy enough to leave that much information in some stupid attack robot's head? The world may never know...)
Anyway, so of course, Savage and the Screaming Eagles (which is the operating name of his new unit, just like the old one) take off to stop the launch, rather than making a call or something.
And they do it in the craziest way possible.
That is one fast P-51 Mustang.Anyway, they successfully stop the launch, despite an army of those Iron Man Mark I suits and Krieger, who actually, aside from his tentacles and pinchers, can now transform into an Iron Man Mark V or so, and is able to fly and stuff.
And then, if this was real life, they would all have been court-martialed, and at best would have spent the rest of their natural lives paying for it.As it is, of course, they get rewarded.
This cartoon may take the title of "worst GIJoe cartoon ever." Then again, the idea of cyborg supersoldier (and possibly occult) Nazis fighting guys on souped up WWII fighting vehicles actually sounds like a great idea, and it almost carries it anyway. (The award for high concept in a GIJoe cartoon still has to go to the DiC episode where Spanish conquistador ghosts possessed Overkill and the BATs and allied with Cobra Commander to capture the city of El Dorado, but maybe that's just me.)
-Signing off.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Two Things Related to Comic Books
(If you somehow end up here, I apologize that the images are apparently gone. I've always had problems with Blogger and image posting.)
I skipped my little Sunday feature because I've been feelin' lazy.
Anyway, first, with respect to my last post, blogger Mike Sterling was polite enough to point out in the comment just where he had mentioned Lex Luthor's messed up history. The post has been edited to reflect that.
Second, as previously promised, BEHOLD!
I skipped my little Sunday feature because I've been feelin' lazy.
Anyway, first, with respect to my last post, blogger Mike Sterling was polite enough to point out in the comment just where he had mentioned Lex Luthor's messed up history. The post has been edited to reflect that.
Second, as previously promised, BEHOLD!
Crazy!
Old!
Ads!
(I apologize if you can't see full-view images-I don't know what's going on with that.)
Note the first of these. It brings attention to Eagle Eye (excuse me, Eagle-Eye) Joe's toy gimmick... while implying that regular humans can't move their eyes. Also note that mere moments after remarking in his head that "the Intruder is the strongest creature I've ever seen" (seen, get it? He's Eagle-Eye Joe! Ha ha ha ow), he beats the living carp out of him. Also, how could it be that "nothing can stand in [the Intruder's] way" if some guy in ugly camo can lay him low?
The real gem, though, is number two here. First, note that Mike Power, Atomic Man(R), is wearing another of those really ugly camo shirts with very short black shorts. Then, another guy in even shorter shorts shows up, and slams through a mountain WITH HIS BARE HANDS!! And seriously speaking, who would ever compare a flood to a "giant bathtub?"
That is pretty far from being the best part, though. The best part is how this guy introduces himself:
That's why I'm known as Bulletman, the Human Bullet!
This guy must be a blast at parties. I mean, just imagine:
Guy: Who are you? I don't think we've met.
Bulletman, the Human Bullet: I'm Bulletman, the Human Bullet!
Guy: Oh, really. I'm Steve. It's nice to meet you, Bulletman.
Bulletman, the Human Bullet: It's Bulletman, the Human Bullet.
Guy: ? Sure, Bulletman. I caught that-
Bulletman, the Human Bullet: ARE YOU TO BE SURE YOU WANT FOR TO PROVOKE A MAN WHO CAN BE PUNCHING OUT A MOUNTAIN?!!
Guy: AAAAH! (runs away to avoid decapitation)
Ah, good times.
Notice that this particular comic also has an awful lot of prosthetic limbs.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Fandom Menace: GIJoe
Yes, the title is a riff on Star Wars. Whatever.
The funny thing about Internet-based fandoms of "old*" series is that they're often full of people who insist that things should go back to "the way they originally were." Nowhere is this a more ironic statement than with GIJoe.
GIJoe is probably the most mutable and transmutable toyline ever devised. Here's its basic premise: Army guys.
Seriously, that's GIJoe's premise throughout. But it hasn't exactly remained the same.
Most people think of the '80s GIJoe line when they hear it-most Internet fandom types, anyway. GIJoe really started, however, in 1964. To my knowledge, it was the first toyline put out by manufacturer Hasbro. Hasbro has most recently drawn attention to itself with the success of the summer blockbuster Transformers**, based on the long-running toyline of the same name, but more on that later. A few years later, GIJoe figures were marketed in Britain under the name Action Man. (Keep that in mind-it will be important later. Also note that this was spun off into a cartoon in the '90s, which was further imitated a few years later in a CGI cartoon which had the same main characters with different backstories. Yes I know those links lead to the same page with an inch between them, I don't give a care.) These toys stood at 12" tall.
Following that, there was the GIJoe Adventure Team. (Yes, I know that isn't the widely accepted spelling of that. I'm just being stubborn. G.I.Joe takes longer to type, and G. I. Joe takes longer still.) This was possibly the funniest incarnation of GIJoe, with characters who had appellations such as "Kung-Fu Grip."
Okay, I totally lied. Super Joe was funnier than that. That, incidentally, is probably a more direct origin for the character Joe Colton than the Adventure team. Sometime I'll scan in an ad or two from the old Spider-Man comics I've got that are for that toy. These toys, by the way, stood at only 8-81/2" tall because of rising petroleum costs.
Then came the 1982 GIJoe. The end.
I lied again.
See, many people seem to insist that A Real American Hero is the be-all and end-all of GIJoe. That particular cartoon, and especially its corresponding comic, have the largest and most enduring of all GIJoe fanbases. At the Joepedia wiki, ostensibly about all GIJoe versions, many of the other sections are nothing more than afterthoughts. Having a number of the comics from Marvel's GIJoe, I'm well aware of the quality of the stories, and I wish I had issue 21, which many Joe fans proclaim inspired them to want to tell stories in comics. This is the series whose fans are the primary targets of Hasbro's nostalgia campaign. These figures were 33/4" tall.
To some degree, this series continued into the mid-'90s, with continuously weaker cartoon tie-ins (although I really liked that stupid Dragonfire storyline when I saw it all those years ago), a gradually fading Marvel Comic, and an increasingly weird toyline. Myself, I like the brilliance that was the Septic Tank and the insanity that were the Lunartix aliens and Mega Monsters, but alas, that approach ticked off the traditional fans, and in 1994, the line died forever.
I just can't stop lying once I start, can I?
In 1995, Sgt. Savage and the Screaming Eagles attempted to fill the void of the loss of the Real American Hero. It cleverly combined the origin story of Captain America and the character of Sgt. Rock (with a hint of Nick Fury's WWII adventures thrown in), but despite this fine pedigree the toyline itself was apparently a big piece of epic fail, as it died after just two waves, leading to the only fictional release being a single measly episode packaged with a toy. This is even more ironic since Savage co-starred with other GIJoe characters in the cartoon.
In 1996, Hasbro, determined to keep trying regardless of their flagrant failures, Hasbro released GIJoe Extreme. I remember this one very distinctly-when the "Power Block" featuring Beast Wars was still on early weekday mornings, GIJoe Extreme was the Friday slot. It was a moderately entertaining show, seeing as how it was made in the '90s, but it had a weaker cast than even Super Joe (maybe not; I'm prone to exaggeration), and like Super Joe and Sgt. Savage before it, Extreme burned and died, though less rapidly than Savage. I totally think that they should bring back Iron Klaw, but maybe that's just me.
In 1997, Hasbro thought "Hm. The last real success we had with GIJoe was in the '80s. Let's cheaply re-release a bunch of ten-year-old toys, call them collectible, and see if anyone bites."
Thus began the first wave of Joestalgia. Hasbro then started making toys for kids again in the '00s, first with Spy Troops and then Valor Vs. Venom. Like the '80s version, these were in the 33/4" size. Of course, while they had strong responses from '80s collectors, they had a lot of grousing over poor quality and such.
Apparently, sales were down, because the next step Hasbro took was to completely reinvent GIJoe again (almost but not really) in the form of Sigma Six. These 8" figures received criticism because they were too big to fit in the '80s Joe vehicles. Possibly a source of greater criticism came for the fiction, which was anime-like and thus automatically bad (in the minds of old-er, longtime fans). I find this ironic mostly because, while they didn't make a big deal about continuity with previous lines, they did acknowledge and mention it. For instance, General Hawk (warning-no actual biographical information)was in the process of recovering from becoming Venomous Maximus in the first few episodes, although they kinda forgot he was there or something after that, even though his teenage son had a few more cameos.
Anyway, as previously mentioned, they've gone back to 33/4" for nostalgia purposes, and that's the current phase of GIJoe. But that's not the whole story.
No, I'm not lying. There's a lot more.
When GIJoe ('82) was exported to other countries, it had a lot of figures that were totally made up junk. When I say "totally made up junk," I mean they were supposed to be cyborgs and stuff, which totally didn't show up in GIJoe ('82). Not counting, of course, S.N.A.K.E.s or BATs or Robo-Joe. There was also Action Force, the British version, which was merged with a homegrown toyline of much less articulated figures and a stronger sci-fi theme. (I once had a url that lead to information on this, but I'm not certain what happened to it. I'll probably present it at some point in the future. And no, I have no idea why they didn't just go with Action Man again.)
But that wasn't really the most significant of the interesting permutations of GIJoe. No, that started rather earlier, with Combat Joe, a re-release of the 12" figures for the Japanese market way back. Combat Joe's molds were re-used by Japanese company Takara, for a toyline called Henshin Cyborg, which featured clear figures with visible cybernetic parts inside. Henshin Cyborg still gets a few commemorative releases now and then, but back in the day it was mostly supplanted by a toyline called Microman (a toyline of approximately 33/4" figures, apparently entirely by coincidence as it was a few years earlier than '82 GIJoe). Microman saw some success in the '70s, enough so that it saw release in the USA as Micronauts (which got a comic, coincidentally also from Marvel). They also revamped Microman as an unexceptional series called Timanic or something (an 8" line... hm...).
There were a couple more closely related spin-offs, such as Diaclone (not sure how it's linked precisely, but they say it is-and beware, Japanese site) and Blockman.
Then, there was Transformers.
You might be screeching to a halt about now. "What are you talking about? Hasbro made Transformers!" (If you said something else, such as "Takara made Transformers," shame on you.) You see, Transformers has its roots in two toylines-Diaclone and Microman. Most of its first wave of toys came from Diaclone, which had been previously repackaged cheaply under five or six names by Hasbro in an attempt to sell more toys. Hasbro wanted to do it one more time, but it came up with a brilliant new tactic: Let's give them complicated bio notes and a comic book and maybe a cartoon. Transformers took Diaclone's "realistic vehicle" toys and Microman's transforming "realistic household item" toys, along with a few "microvehicles" from Microman, and declared that they were all actually alien robots that had been locked in an endless war for eons. (See, GIJoe is always about soldiers.)
I don't know just how carefully they planned it beyond the comic series (which was probably intended to be a miniseries) and the cartoon (which was obviously originally intended as a miniseries) and the "tech specs" that they stuck to the toys' packaging (apparently written by the same folks who started off the comic), but Transformers has endured. It's endured, in fact, with far less change and far more faculty than its distant cousin/blood brother/grandfather/whatever GIJoe. (Ironically, Transformers and GIJoe have a long, proud tradition of crossing over with each other. I'll probably blog about that sometime.) The biggest change ever to Transformers was when they briefly started transforming into organic-looking animals in Beast Wars, and while it revitalized Transformers, it was only a brief sideline in Transformers history.
GIJoe, on the other hand, still seems to be floundering, with limited successes here and there. Why does it continue to struggle? Probably because, unlike Transformers, it can't escape from the image of being "war toys." Transformers have guns and fight wars, but because they're mostly unrealistic robots and brightly colored, they can thumb their metal noses at the image; it doesn't stick, while even ridiculous-looking GIJoe vehicles are still clearly built for war. "War toys" are heavily frowned upon as "causing violence." They met with success at least partly back in the '80s thanks to the process of healing that the country was then undergoing with the Vietnam veterans (in the comics most of the team was in fact presented as being Vietnam vets); since then, its reinventions have been efforts to get away from the "war toy" image. And unfortunately, these reinventions fail, because even Sigma Six tends to have "GIJoe" proudly proclaimed on it. It might get some respect from the upcoming live action movie, but this movie has had even more criticism (as far as I can tell) from its fandom than Transformers, which viciously blasted by many fans for being "too much like [insert any random nonsensical thing you like here]" and "not enough like Transformers" by its fans.
*Here, I'm defining "old" as any subject matter which is old enough that I don't remember it from the first time it came around. I'm in my mid-20s and have a cruddy memory, so that means I don't remember much of anything before 1990. If that makes you feel old, I apologize. I don't have much sympathy, though-I've been getting AARP membership offers since before I graduated from high school (a long story I'll talk about some other time, and yes I'm pretty sure I know how it happened).
**Don't listen to Wikipedia-it claims that the 2007 live action Transformers was a remake of the '80s Transformers: The Movie. Idiots. (There's one of my own fandom biases, I suppose. But how anyone could take the '07 film to be a remake of TF:TM is totally beyond me.)
The funny thing about Internet-based fandoms of "old*" series is that they're often full of people who insist that things should go back to "the way they originally were." Nowhere is this a more ironic statement than with GIJoe.
GIJoe is probably the most mutable and transmutable toyline ever devised. Here's its basic premise: Army guys.
Seriously, that's GIJoe's premise throughout. But it hasn't exactly remained the same.
Most people think of the '80s GIJoe line when they hear it-most Internet fandom types, anyway. GIJoe really started, however, in 1964. To my knowledge, it was the first toyline put out by manufacturer Hasbro. Hasbro has most recently drawn attention to itself with the success of the summer blockbuster Transformers**, based on the long-running toyline of the same name, but more on that later. A few years later, GIJoe figures were marketed in Britain under the name Action Man. (Keep that in mind-it will be important later. Also note that this was spun off into a cartoon in the '90s, which was further imitated a few years later in a CGI cartoon which had the same main characters with different backstories. Yes I know those links lead to the same page with an inch between them, I don't give a care.) These toys stood at 12" tall.
Following that, there was the GIJoe Adventure Team. (Yes, I know that isn't the widely accepted spelling of that. I'm just being stubborn. G.I.Joe takes longer to type, and G. I. Joe takes longer still.) This was possibly the funniest incarnation of GIJoe, with characters who had appellations such as "Kung-Fu Grip."
Okay, I totally lied. Super Joe was funnier than that. That, incidentally, is probably a more direct origin for the character Joe Colton than the Adventure team. Sometime I'll scan in an ad or two from the old Spider-Man comics I've got that are for that toy. These toys, by the way, stood at only 8-81/2" tall because of rising petroleum costs.
Then came the 1982 GIJoe. The end.
I lied again.
See, many people seem to insist that A Real American Hero is the be-all and end-all of GIJoe. That particular cartoon, and especially its corresponding comic, have the largest and most enduring of all GIJoe fanbases. At the Joepedia wiki, ostensibly about all GIJoe versions, many of the other sections are nothing more than afterthoughts. Having a number of the comics from Marvel's GIJoe, I'm well aware of the quality of the stories, and I wish I had issue 21, which many Joe fans proclaim inspired them to want to tell stories in comics. This is the series whose fans are the primary targets of Hasbro's nostalgia campaign. These figures were 33/4" tall.
To some degree, this series continued into the mid-'90s, with continuously weaker cartoon tie-ins (although I really liked that stupid Dragonfire storyline when I saw it all those years ago), a gradually fading Marvel Comic, and an increasingly weird toyline. Myself, I like the brilliance that was the Septic Tank and the insanity that were the Lunartix aliens and Mega Monsters, but alas, that approach ticked off the traditional fans, and in 1994, the line died forever.
I just can't stop lying once I start, can I?
In 1995, Sgt. Savage and the Screaming Eagles attempted to fill the void of the loss of the Real American Hero. It cleverly combined the origin story of Captain America and the character of Sgt. Rock (with a hint of Nick Fury's WWII adventures thrown in), but despite this fine pedigree the toyline itself was apparently a big piece of epic fail, as it died after just two waves, leading to the only fictional release being a single measly episode packaged with a toy. This is even more ironic since Savage co-starred with other GIJoe characters in the cartoon.
In 1996, Hasbro, determined to keep trying regardless of their flagrant failures, Hasbro released GIJoe Extreme. I remember this one very distinctly-when the "Power Block" featuring Beast Wars was still on early weekday mornings, GIJoe Extreme was the Friday slot. It was a moderately entertaining show, seeing as how it was made in the '90s, but it had a weaker cast than even Super Joe (maybe not; I'm prone to exaggeration), and like Super Joe and Sgt. Savage before it, Extreme burned and died, though less rapidly than Savage. I totally think that they should bring back Iron Klaw, but maybe that's just me.
In 1997, Hasbro thought "Hm. The last real success we had with GIJoe was in the '80s. Let's cheaply re-release a bunch of ten-year-old toys, call them collectible, and see if anyone bites."
Thus began the first wave of Joestalgia. Hasbro then started making toys for kids again in the '00s, first with Spy Troops and then Valor Vs. Venom. Like the '80s version, these were in the 33/4" size. Of course, while they had strong responses from '80s collectors, they had a lot of grousing over poor quality and such.
Apparently, sales were down, because the next step Hasbro took was to completely reinvent GIJoe again (almost but not really) in the form of Sigma Six. These 8" figures received criticism because they were too big to fit in the '80s Joe vehicles. Possibly a source of greater criticism came for the fiction, which was anime-like and thus automatically bad (in the minds of old-er, longtime fans). I find this ironic mostly because, while they didn't make a big deal about continuity with previous lines, they did acknowledge and mention it. For instance, General Hawk (warning-no actual biographical information)was in the process of recovering from becoming Venomous Maximus in the first few episodes, although they kinda forgot he was there or something after that, even though his teenage son had a few more cameos.
Anyway, as previously mentioned, they've gone back to 33/4" for nostalgia purposes, and that's the current phase of GIJoe. But that's not the whole story.
No, I'm not lying. There's a lot more.
When GIJoe ('82) was exported to other countries, it had a lot of figures that were totally made up junk. When I say "totally made up junk," I mean they were supposed to be cyborgs and stuff, which totally didn't show up in GIJoe ('82). Not counting, of course, S.N.A.K.E.s or BATs or Robo-Joe. There was also Action Force, the British version, which was merged with a homegrown toyline of much less articulated figures and a stronger sci-fi theme. (I once had a url that lead to information on this, but I'm not certain what happened to it. I'll probably present it at some point in the future. And no, I have no idea why they didn't just go with Action Man again.)
But that wasn't really the most significant of the interesting permutations of GIJoe. No, that started rather earlier, with Combat Joe, a re-release of the 12" figures for the Japanese market way back. Combat Joe's molds were re-used by Japanese company Takara, for a toyline called Henshin Cyborg, which featured clear figures with visible cybernetic parts inside. Henshin Cyborg still gets a few commemorative releases now and then, but back in the day it was mostly supplanted by a toyline called Microman (a toyline of approximately 33/4" figures, apparently entirely by coincidence as it was a few years earlier than '82 GIJoe). Microman saw some success in the '70s, enough so that it saw release in the USA as Micronauts (which got a comic, coincidentally also from Marvel). They also revamped Microman as an unexceptional series called Timanic or something (an 8" line... hm...).
There were a couple more closely related spin-offs, such as Diaclone (not sure how it's linked precisely, but they say it is-and beware, Japanese site) and Blockman.
Then, there was Transformers.
You might be screeching to a halt about now. "What are you talking about? Hasbro made Transformers!" (If you said something else, such as "Takara made Transformers," shame on you.) You see, Transformers has its roots in two toylines-Diaclone and Microman. Most of its first wave of toys came from Diaclone, which had been previously repackaged cheaply under five or six names by Hasbro in an attempt to sell more toys. Hasbro wanted to do it one more time, but it came up with a brilliant new tactic: Let's give them complicated bio notes and a comic book and maybe a cartoon. Transformers took Diaclone's "realistic vehicle" toys and Microman's transforming "realistic household item" toys, along with a few "microvehicles" from Microman, and declared that they were all actually alien robots that had been locked in an endless war for eons. (See, GIJoe is always about soldiers.)
I don't know just how carefully they planned it beyond the comic series (which was probably intended to be a miniseries) and the cartoon (which was obviously originally intended as a miniseries) and the "tech specs" that they stuck to the toys' packaging (apparently written by the same folks who started off the comic), but Transformers has endured. It's endured, in fact, with far less change and far more faculty than its distant cousin/blood brother/grandfather/whatever GIJoe. (Ironically, Transformers and GIJoe have a long, proud tradition of crossing over with each other. I'll probably blog about that sometime.) The biggest change ever to Transformers was when they briefly started transforming into organic-looking animals in Beast Wars, and while it revitalized Transformers, it was only a brief sideline in Transformers history.
GIJoe, on the other hand, still seems to be floundering, with limited successes here and there. Why does it continue to struggle? Probably because, unlike Transformers, it can't escape from the image of being "war toys." Transformers have guns and fight wars, but because they're mostly unrealistic robots and brightly colored, they can thumb their metal noses at the image; it doesn't stick, while even ridiculous-looking GIJoe vehicles are still clearly built for war. "War toys" are heavily frowned upon as "causing violence." They met with success at least partly back in the '80s thanks to the process of healing that the country was then undergoing with the Vietnam veterans (in the comics most of the team was in fact presented as being Vietnam vets); since then, its reinventions have been efforts to get away from the "war toy" image. And unfortunately, these reinventions fail, because even Sigma Six tends to have "GIJoe" proudly proclaimed on it. It might get some respect from the upcoming live action movie, but this movie has had even more criticism (as far as I can tell) from its fandom than Transformers, which viciously blasted by many fans for being "too much like [insert any random nonsensical thing you like here]" and "not enough like Transformers" by its fans.
*Here, I'm defining "old" as any subject matter which is old enough that I don't remember it from the first time it came around. I'm in my mid-20s and have a cruddy memory, so that means I don't remember much of anything before 1990. If that makes you feel old, I apologize. I don't have much sympathy, though-I've been getting AARP membership offers since before I graduated from high school (a long story I'll talk about some other time, and yes I'm pretty sure I know how it happened).
**Don't listen to Wikipedia-it claims that the 2007 live action Transformers was a remake of the '80s Transformers: The Movie. Idiots. (There's one of my own fandom biases, I suppose. But how anyone could take the '07 film to be a remake of TF:TM is totally beyond me.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)