How futuristic can one make the Joe I.P. before it's GI Joe in name only? In a different timeline could the HALO or COD franchise have been GI Joe extensions?

If you look at the last gasps of the original line, with Star Brigade and other sci-fi additions, you can go fairly futuristic with it and have it still be GI Joe. While as a kid, the grounded nature of it (characters who looked like actual soldiers, vehicles that either looked like real military vehicles or like they could have been real military vehicles) was part of what defined GI Joe, it wasn't the main thing. I think to see how far you could go with the futurism/fantasy, you have to look at the competitors and its failed successors.

You could get that same thing from Sgt. Rock or the myriad knock-offs. The Corps! and Remco's various offerings may not have had the vehicles, but they had the "could be a real soldier" look to them, yet they didn't click. However, The Corps! is still around in some capacity and was the only non-Joe line with any staying power. Was it because they were the closest in appearance to looking like real Joe figures? Maybe. But I think there's more to it.

With a more Joe-like construction and stronger media (sure, there was a Sgt. Rock comic, but no pack-ins, cartoons, commercials, etc.), Sgt. Rock may have been a contender, but it was too weak and Remco quickly gave it up for the more direct Joe type knock-offs. Lanard had a much better go at it, and it's because they made interesting looking characters with interesting names. You had characters like Junkyard, Flashfire, Avalanche, John Eagle, Whipsaw... all powerful sounding names. They also had some basic bios on their cards, similar to the GI Joe file cards or TF tech specs. What they didn't have was an enemy. Every The Corps! figure was made to be a hero - even the Dreadnok looking characters like Whispering Willie and Crowbar. A hero is only as good as his villain, so The Corps! was only good for filler in the Joe ranks. Of the non-Joe toy lines that were out there, the most Joe-like I can really think of was: Exo-Squad - a futuristic military toy line with lots of articulation on the figures, extensive bios on the packaging, comics, a cartoon, and compelling villains.

Contrast Exo-Squad with the toy line that should have been a more futuristic GI Joe: GI Joe Extreme. Extreme was an extreme disappointment. The toys had no articulation and were quite hideous, embodying everything that was wrong with the '90's. The characters were flat and one dimensional, even for cartoons/toys.
Compare Iron Klaw:

To Cobra Commander:

or Phaeton:


To me, Phaeton comes across as more the spiritual successor to Cobra Commander than Iron Klaw does. All we learn about Iron Klaw is that he's "power hungry" and "bad to the bone". We're told that Cobra Commander and Phaeton did things, that they are things. They seem like real threats. Iron Klaw comes across as the villain of the week on some failed '90's cartoon who was forgotten about before the next episode. While less futuristic and even having the "GI Joe" in its name, GI Joe Extreme feels less like GI Joe than Exo-Squad does. Had Hasbro released Exo-Squad instead of Playmates, it could have easily been sold as essentially "GI Joe 2099". Even giving Cobra Commander cameos in Extreme never made it feel like it was GI Joe.

Then we have GI Joe: Spy Troops, GI Joe: Valor vs Venom, and GI Joe: Sigma 6. Each had their varying levels of futurism and sci-fi elements added. They also leaned heavily on using existing characters and names, with few, if any, new characters added. Overall, Spy Troops and VvsV did okay. Sigma 6 had a poor showing, but it was more because of the figure aesthetic and scale, not the futurism of the premise. In fact, fans seemed to like the designs for S6, just not the execution, especially having two scales - one with small, limited articulation figures and great vehicles, and the other with larger, well articulated figures but highly stylized.

That's a lot of words to say that what made GI Joe actually be GI Joe was the fleshed out characters (heroes and villains), media support, and a well thought out toy line with aesthetics and articulation, and in a consistent scale. All that said, I think having a GI Joe set in 3023 could work and be accepted as GI Joe, as long as it had the same 'feel' as RAH - well-developed characters with individual personalities, realistic designs, a strong central villain with their own army, media that carries the premise well, and toys that are well articulated, aesthetically pleasing, and supplemented with realistic looking equipment and vehicles.

Now, if you're talking OG GI-Joe (the 12"ers) all bets are off and I don't think those guys would be happy if GI Joe advanced beyond 1970's tech.

I dunno, even they had Bullet Man and Mike Powers.

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True. Maybe I should have said "sci-fi tech as seen in the'70's".

You make some excellent points MarkM.

I found myself briefly wondering if the name itself, G.I. Joe, is simply too dated to translate to a successful new iteration of the property. Exo Squad, which you referenced, is a great example of a line that had some of the successful GI Joe ingredients ( i bought into the line so that's proof for me). So the question is would i have bought "GI Joe: Exo Squad" i.e. replace JT Marsh with Duke, Phaeton with CC, etc. etc.? Perhaps as a child yes. As you said Star Brigade had some of the same elements and i had some of those. However would i buy it *now* with the 40 year connection and history to ARAH? I'm not sure. I think "Exo Squad" would fair better in my eyes as a fresh start for the I.P. using that example. Making a connection to the 1980's characters would seem ... forced.

And yet GI Joe *is* ARAH to me.

I simultaneously want to see it succeed and grow....but i'm not sure if it could while still staying true to what it is - a product of the era. All things being equal ex. adequate articulation, quality bio write ups, support media etc., is GI Joe: HALO better than GI Joe? Is GI Joe: Exo Squad (mech suits and all) better than GI Joe? Is the inclusion of legendary GI Joe characters into a new direction for the brand a hindrance or a help?

I believe the example you cited , Sigma 6, may be an even better example than properties mentioned above. Put plainly - would a 4'' (or 2.5'' with ARAH articulation) GI Joe Sigma 6 line without the legendary ARAH characters have had more success than the same example line *without* said legendary characters?

I think so. It's not the only reason it didn't have staying power but it played a role. A stand alone Sigma 6 line in 1/18 or 1/3x could go in any direction it wanted without ties to the past.


As an aside ...i think you could ask the same question of MOTU. Origins as a toy line is great. Can MOTU grow as a brand and if so...HOW?

I think MarkM was just trying to point out that it was the well thought out characters and ideas that makes up a successful line. Yes, the grounded nature in the beginning helped, though that could have just been timing also. I wouldn't say that you need to have Duke and CC to make any future/futuristic Joe line. Now some nods to that old crew would be beneficial to connect the generations and people like that in story, you wouldn't say really need said character as they were from the past.

I was on the way out of collecting around the early 90s, but when I got back into it I always thought Star Brigade had some solid ideas. It was the lack of well designed and cheap feel, like lack or articulation etc that keeps me away from them. I could even over look the brightly colored weapons and things from the 90s, but I have a hard time with the down grade on things we got in the past. It just feels like you get less while paying more. Though with any line I think you need growth and something new, as the some old thing can only get you so far. That growth needs to be a move forward though and not back.

momaw nadon

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^ i agree with everything you and MarkM have said 100%. Your mention of the articulation downgrade with Star Brigade figures made me time travel. I recall very clearly that being off putting and a waste as the space armored BAT would have been a much better toy had it been of better quality.

Yeah, that's exactly my point. While the realism of the line, especially the 82-84 (possibly 85) waves, caught the zeitgeist of the Cold War era we were in at the time, it was the compelling back stories and multi-dimensional characters that made the line what it was; I'd argue that (plus a more liberal interpretation of toy into cartoon, ie, Ironhide or Ratchet) is why Transformers were seen as superior to Go-Bots. Go-Bots had no personality. They were cookie cutter, one-dimensional "good guys" and "bad guys". Their TF counterparts weren't Shakespeare by any means, but they were more 'real' than the Go-Bots. Same with GI Joe versus its competing lines.


Yeah, I agree with this, too. To steal from Macross just a little bit (another line with compelling characters and broad arcs, giving it staying power): Imagine Something like UN Joe (or even GI Joe but with the global aspect they tried to give it in the ill-fated movies) - The world's daring, highly trained special missions force. Its purpose: To defend humanity's freedom from Lunartix, the ruthless, alien empire determined to subjugate the world.

Set it in the future, a la COPS. Have a Duke like character, maybe even make him Conrad Hauser Jr or something. Have the figures be well-articulated, not full of gimmicks limiting their looks and articulation. If introduced at the right time and properly, it could very much be "GI Joe" without being the standard "GI Joe versus Cobra" angle we've had. Maybe include Cobra as the human traitors aligned with the Lunartix Empire (and give them a better name than Lunartix - that's so '90's, it hurts). By the time they added Star Brigade and all the other stuff, most of the fans had aged out and new fans weren't coming in, so they were throwing whatever they could at the wall to make it stick.

Originally, GI Joe worked because they basically caught lightning in a bottle - it came out at just the right time, with just the right pathos, that it caught our generation's minds. Unfortunately, that time has come and gone, and you're not going to bring in new fans easily or readily, and certainly not the kids. Toys are now an old man's game. And those old men are set in their ways, so they only want rehashes of the same thing over and over, so it wouldn't go over with them now. But back in the day, I think it could have worked if done properly.

Super Joe was still GI Joe and it was pretty out there.

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GI Joe has a pretty wide birth for how far it can go. They go wherever the threat is. If that means space, another time, another dimension/universe, then so be it. The problem is when that is all they are. If every Joe was a space marine or dino hunter, it gets lost. Hell, even having Tiger Force be as large as it is now takes away from the special subteam aspect of it.

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