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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

G.I. Joe is Dead

Easter weekend I was laid up in bed suffering from a what was most likely a sinus infection.  I say most likely because I never went to the doctor.  Anyhow, while my wife took my kids to church Sunday morning for Easter I stayed back at home in the bed.  I flipped on the TV and looked for something to watch, but I couldn't find anything...so I turned to my friend Netflix.  In my house Netflix is almost used religiously for cartoons for the kids.  Because of this Netflix recommends more cartoons based on our viewing habits, making it hard to find movies I would want to watch.  I almost cued up Avengers since I haven't watched it since it was in the theaters, but then I saw that G.I.Joe: Retaliation.

What a mess that movie turned out to be.  Not the movie itself, but the events around the movie.  I was all pumped to see it in the theater, then Hasbro and Paramount went and delayed the movie to add in 3D effects...or something like that.  While I really enjoyed the movie, I'm sad to say it didn't help the G.I. Joe franchise much.

2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the G.I. Joe brand.  What started off as a series of 12 inch figures (can you call them dolls?), the Joes were re-invented so to speak in 1982 as the premier 3 3/4" action figure line.  Hasbro wanted to cash in on the success of the Stars Wars line, thus the smaller Joes were born.  They were given their own nemesis organization, Cobra, to defend against.  The Real American Hero G.I. Joe franchise went on to great success with several seasons of an animated cartoon, toy series by Hasbro and a long comic book run by Marvel Comics.  All was well.

Similar to Transformers, G.I. Joe found retail shelf space for many many years.  However today, I feel that the end of the line is here for the Joe franchise.  After watching the Retaliation movie, I started wondering and looking back and what went wrong.  This is what I came up with.

G.I. Joe's glory years had to be the 80's.  The cartoon was great, the toys were even better and the Marvel Comic was excellent.  Even the animated movie wasn't that bad...although to this day I hate how they re-wrote the end of the movie and let Duke survive.  Backlash over Optimus Prime dying in the 1986 Transformers animated movie is to blame.  Sure, let's let Duke take a snake spear from Serpentor right in the heart and we'll let him come out of his coma at the end of the movie.  Lame.  But whatever.  I think the first chink in the armor of the franchise was the 90's.  Specifically talking about the toy line, Hasbro took the line in directions that many fans could have cared less for.  More and more of a science fiction element was added, along with day glow neon colors.  We had the Joes facing environmental threats (Eco Warriors), we had Street Fighter video game characters in the Joe verse, Ninjas were freakin' everywhere (Ninja Force) and the Joes all of the sudden became astronauts (Space Brigade).

Interest started to wane in the toy line.  By this time the original Sunbow cartoon was over.  DIC had a short lived animated series, but what I remember of it paled in comparison to the original series.  Marvel's run of the comic was also coming to an end.

Just like Transformers, G.I. Joe came back with a new theme in the following years.  New toys (or at least repainted toys) could be found at retail.  Despite my feelings of some the subsequent series, the brand continued to survive through new toys and other forms of media.  Then came the first live action movie, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  This movie was freakin' horrible.  I really can't find anything redeemable from the movie.  Well maybe Rachel Nichols who portrayed Scarlett.  Cobra Commander was a joke, Destro I just couldn't buy into and the guy that portrayed Zartan will always be that guy from the Mummy movies.  Hasbro created a huge movie tie-in series of toys that mostly warmed the retail shelves.  There were a few good toys, some of which I plan on sharing here on the blog at some point, but overall I don't believe the toy line fared as well as Hasbro had hoped.


By the time the 2nd live action Joe movie came along, Retaliation, the nail was already in the coffin so to speak.  It didn't help that the movie was eventually pushed back close to a year so they could add in 3D elements to the film.  This move really hurt in more ways than one.  When the movie was originally solicited with a spring release, the movie tie-in toys were hitting retail shelves a month or two earlier.  There was a buzz in the air.  The new movie had the star power of the Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Bruce Willis.  Then the delay announcement was made and you could hear crickets.  I know I lost whatever interest I had in the toys and the movie because of the delay.

I do have to say that when I finally watched the movie, I was impressed.  I liked the casting of the actors and actresses of the main characters.  I was glad Cobra Commander returned to his iconic cartoon/comic/toy look.  It was a good action oriented movie and it was everything the first movie should have been.  However it was just a little too late.

The annual G.I. Joe Convention hosted by Fun Publications just took place a few weeks ago.  Lacking in attendance was Hasbro.  The 50th anniversary of the brand, in a celebration of the brand, and Hasbro was no where to be found at the convention.  If that doesn't ring loud I don't know what does.  There are a few new toys slated for release in 2014 as Toys R Us exclusives, but outside of those and the convention exclusive items released this year it looks like this is the last hurrah for the iconic Joe brand.

While it does sadden me a bit to think that brand is dead, I can look back on what was a great run...at least for me.  Before I had Transformers, I had G.I. Joe.  I have lots of good memories of playing with the toys and watching the cartoon.  I never got into Marvel's run of the comic, but I did enjoy the Devil's Due reboot of the comic.  Only time will tell if Hasbro has plans for the Joes, but if not I bid you farewell.  It's been fun.

12 comments:

  1. Yeah outside a few good figures the Retaliation figures were just lack luster and just when they were starting to improve them with releases like Kwinn and Ultimate Cobra Commander and Storm Shadow the line bellied up. I blame the terrible packaging and for Hasbro trying to market the line toward kids by have those zip cord gimmicks because as we all know it's adults that buy the Joe stuff and not the little ones. The 25th and 30th Anniversary(Renegades) figures were very good and the Pursuit Of Cobra figures were very good as well. I wish Hasbro would of continued going the route of those instead of the movie based stuff and i think we would of gotten more for the 50th Anniverary of G.I,Joe.

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    1. Oh there were a lot of highlights, but ultimately those areas were small and far and few in between and just couldn't remedy all the previous mistakes made.

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  2. No comment on G.I. Joe Extreme? I'm surprised. That's probably the only thing G.I. Joe-related that I know of.

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    1. That's one branch of the Joes I skipped all together. I only cared for the 3 3/4" Joes at the time so anything else I viewed as an abomination. It wasn't until Sigma Six that I started to accept and enjoy any other Joe scale of toys.

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  3. The filmmakers had to do reshoots/extra footage. Apparently test screen audiences were confused about the Rock's relationship with Duke? So they had to go back and shoot footage establishing some kind of comradere between the two. The 3d conversion was just an excuse.

    Supposedly.

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    1. I believe the delay came down to money, pure and simple.

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  4. They added more shots of Channing Tatum because he became really famous after Magic Mike. Paramount had to capitalize on that. It really sucks that the line is essentially dead. I lost interest in the line once the Retaliation figures came out because I'm not a fan of the movie based figures, but I was hoping for more. The 30th Anniversary Sci-Fi is still one of my favorite figures of all time.

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    1. I was glad they killed off Duke...can't stand Channing Tatum!

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  5. I think what's really killing them is their forgotten child aspect Hasbro gave them. In retail I saw maybe a case of figures and that was it during both movies. Now make it a TRU exclusive and it will eventually die due to their gross overpricing. Add in the overpriced "Exclusives" that fans pub offers and I am surprised there is still a club.

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  6. I grew up watching and playing with G.I. Joes. A few weeks ago, I saw a broken jet (the one with retractable wings) that I owned as a kid and it brought back great memories.

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    1. I LOVED the original Joe line as a kid...but those darn vehicles took up so much space!

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  7. It's easy to say that the death of G.I. Joe is because of a failure to market the figures or because of cheap designs or because Hasbro abandoned the collector market (which has always been a tiny portion of their sales figures compared to kids). But in reality I just think G.I. Joe just doesn't have a niche anymore. The original gimmick was that they were highly poseable military figures. Articulation is no big deal anymore - just about every line has highly articulated figures - and superheroes have effectively replaced the market for military stuff. Why would you want to be a boring guy with a gun and a camo uniform when you could be Iron Man or Hulk?

    Joe's 1980s redesign worked because it introduced an element of conflict into the line that it didn't have before, and compressed the figures down into a cheap, manageable size informed by the success of Star Wars. And there was the new marketing techniques (the cartoon) that had only just become legal in the early 1980s. Every toyline is produced with these qualities in mind nowadays, and they succeed or fail based on whether kids want to buy lots of them - or not.

    If G.I. Joe were to find a money-making market again, it would probably have to totally reinvent itself with more superpowers and crazy magic-science, and we've seen how that's gone in the past. Collectors hate it and it still can't compete with the other, more popular stuff.

    On the flipside, the 2007-2011 run produced some of the most amazing figures in G.I. Joe's 50-year history, and I actually can't figure out how those lines even kept going after so many years without any sort of mainstream media support. So there's that, too. :)

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