...what would you do? Not just as a whole or as a toy line, but in the multiple venues the line is part of. Your ideas don't have to be realistic or practical.

For me, it would be:

Toys:

Cheaper. $10 per figure is nuts. Lower the price point, even if it involves making less new toolings. Make new heads and otherwise work with what's already there. If customizers and Master Collector can use this approach to make awesome stuff, Hasbro should be able to as well. More new characters, too.

Comic Books:

This is something crazy that I'd do just because I like the old Marvel stuff. Take the stories and scripts from the first 30 or issues and have them redone. Update the scripts as minimally as possible to make them current. New artwork with current day coloring! Would this sell? No. I'd just love to see it.

Movies:

I'm okay with the current movies. Mindless but enjoyable fluff. Keep 'em going- try to broaden the appeal to hook more kids, though.

Cartoons:

I liked Resolute. I liked Renegades. I liked Sunbow. Make more of all.

Gaming:

I'm not a gamer, but I don't get the feeling that Hasbro's ever really done a good job of putting out a (or having another company put out in its place) a decent GI Joe game. This is stupid. Look at all of the product lines that originated as games. How many movies began as games? Get in on this, Hasbro.

Television:

Have HBO or Showtime make a live-action show of the same caliber and appeal of Homeland and Game of Thrones. Sacrifice toy sales (which the movies don't seem to be really generating anyway) for an adult-level program aimed at adults. Make it fairly realistic, dusted with some sci fi and ninjas and robots. Make sure it's a different continuity than the movies, too.

First, I'd want to launch a TV series that was not a cartoon, but not anything overly "realistic" nor overly gritty. It should be framed in a way that could eventually lead to the cast being used in a movie. And while not aimed at adults, it should appeal to all ages. I'd like to bring back that 1982 appeal with a small top secret team with a hidden base taking on a larger enemy.

Second, I'd partner with a game developer while trying to be somewhat different about it. IMO, gaming companies just do a fast/bad job with most licensed games because their is no long-term motivation for them. Why put a lot of effort into a licensed game when you can create something of your own, giving you creative control and all the income from potential merchandise if it's a hit? The answer could be that the gaming company may be the area where it is smartest to just let them go wild, take the Joe name and come up with something as crazy and new as GIJoe Extreme. If Hasbro can give Paramount a cut of RoC figures (as the actor likeness situation seemed to indicate), they can do the same for designs done by a gaming company. Toys based on the game would be few, however...mostly just respond to any demand created for the designs (as they did Resolute 7-packs). The game just needs to fit the feel of GIJoe. It may actually be a little more gritty, but not something bloody.

Third, I'd want the toys to have a duality to them. In that, I mean two toylines. The main line should be very new and inspired by (not guided by) the past. It doesn't have to be 3 3/4" or fit within the confines of the collector market. It would be tied closely with the TV show and would option ideas from the video game. This would go on hiatus when a movie line is out. The other would be a line geared specifically toward collectors. It would be highly articulated with classic packaging and would consist primarily of familiar characters and would option ideas from the game.

Fourth, keep the movies rolling.

Fifth, do all this while trying to build the Hasbro brand. That means working with other brands. Nerf GIJoe makes a lot of sense...Transformers GIJoe? KreO GIJoe (YES! Keep that!), MLP GIJoe? Don't be so closed to brands cross-promoting each other. There is cross-promoting and then there is diluting. It is just as important to remember to cross promote as it is to remember to give a brand its own identity. Cross-promoting could build the Hasbro name and give all of their properties a stronger foundation.

First and foremost: take control of the movies. Quit making toys in response to whatever crap the studio reinterprets Joe to be, and tell them to make a movie about the toys. Give Hama final script approval.

Kill Duke once and for good.

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Give the fan club to someone else.

Fan's choice vote with at least 2 top voted figures to be made each year.

Keep with modern style, but also make blind bagged vintage ARAH style figures...

New cartoon that's more or less a sequel to Sunbow/Dic with a mix of classic Joes and new recruits.

Bring back the back screw.

A weekly cartoon with a matching toy line that's actually released as the show airs.
Launch them together and not several months apart. They did it in the 80's so I'm sure they could do it today. Make the Joe team small à la Renegades with a guest specialist once in a while.
Let a new generation get familiar with the characters on a weekly basis and become new fans.

Market the brand.
Actually use GIJoe.com to promote the show, the toys and everything GI Joe instead of being a generic Hasbro site.
Create an interactivity between the toys and the website and an online game. The upcoming Battleground game for instance. Buy the figure, unlock the character right away in the game.

Video Games
Steel Brigade: the Sandbox action game.
Join the GI Joe Team. Participate in exciting missions to fight Cobra along your favorite Joes and gain experience points and build your skills according to your game play. Use the free play to explore the opened world and find off the books missions.
Will you be a stealth operative or will you go guns blazing. It's up to you. Yo Joe!


Go beyond the action figures
Kre-O sets
Tabletop RPGs and miniature war games
Die cast mini vehicles,
Nerf guns and swords.

Comics
The main comics could be parallel to the cartoon while other titles could focus on other characters.

Adventure Team
Market the Adventures of GI Joe towards a younger crew like Rescue Bots.
A cartoon with a matching toyline.
A mix between Thunderbirds and the old Adventure Team, they take off Adventure Island and search for lost treasures.
Using their special vehicles and gear, they explore lost cities, brave the elements, rescue the helpless and stop the plans of the evil Black Dragon Syndicate. This calls for the Kung Fu Grip!

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For the toys, I'd combine these two. Follow the Transformers model and have a cartoon with a toy line to go along with it (like TF:Prime Beast Hunters is now). Then have a "Universe" or "Classics" line, like TF is also doing now, that is geared toward collectors, giving updates of classic figures and characters that may not sell to the kids. Then have a third line that is adventure themed instead of military themed and put it out under the Playskool wing.

Get a series going. I don't see a Joe series working well on Showtime or HBO, but it could be great on Syfy (their movies suck, but they do some good shows). It could have just the right mix of sci-fi and real world to appeal to a wide audience. My series pitch:
A small team of Joes has to infiltrate a town that isn't what it seems and find out its secrets. The more they live in Springfield, the harder it is for them to get out. The first season arc could follow Duke, Scarlett, and Roadblock as they work their way through investigating the town, with occasional visits from Hawk. Each episode is a baddie of the week, where a new member of Cobra is revealed to the team during their investigations. In the middle of the season, they meet a sympathetic local. A former Navy guy named Hector who now works on a small fishing vessel. He's scruffy, a drunk, and a womanizer, but when the team needs help, he's there for them. The season finale cliffhanger sees the team made by the baddies and on the run, after stealing a MacGuffin. As they head to the docks to get help from Hector, Duke, carrying the MacGuffin, is shot and falls behind and disappears. Hector sees them approaching, with the baddies following. He turns his ship shoreward and wrecks it, causing enough of a distraction for Scarlett to get away, but in the confusion, Roadblock is captured. Scarlett and Hector hop in a speed boat and take off down the coast.
Season two opens with Flint and Lady Jaye doing some distance surveillance on the town. They're talking to an operative on the radio who is providing them some much needed, but gruesome, intel. The one bright point is that he may have found Roadblock. Once they're done with the communications, Lady Jaye sarcastically comments on how the operative is just always full of such wonderful chuckle-worthy information. The season focuses on a rotating team, depending on specialty needed, in skirmishes with Cobra agents, trying to rescue RB and find out what exactly happened to Duke and the MacGuffin.

You'll lost me at SyFy, man. I'd trust it to Bravo or TLC before giving it to those hacks.

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I would keep an animated show going aimed at kids, like TF:Prime and Clone Wars. That is where the glory days of Joe came from. That is keeping TF relevant. That is keeping Star Wars relevant. After all, these are toys. Without kids buying and destroying a large portion of what is produced, we as collectors and customizers couldn't buy enough to keep it a profitable business and keep prices affordable, at least that is my sense of it. Oh, and stop making movies. They are difficult to time correctly with the toy line and they are disruptive, especially when they cause a permanent hiatus to the bread and butter of the Joe franchise, which is animation aimed at kids. They were OK, but no more please. An animated series gets product on the shelves year round like TF and SW, instead of in spurts every couple years. Kids are impulse buyers, they need it right in front of them at all times.

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Live action series
Arashikage: Similar to comic mini series, follow Thomas Arashikage has he tries to find his place in the world after leaving Cobra.
Helping random people while dodging Cobra's assassins and thugs.

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I might even go with Lifetime or WE before SyFy.

There are two reasons... their mishandling of the Stargate franchise after it had performed very well for them for over a decade, and the fact that they changed their name from SciFi to SyFy, which made no sense to me.

Also... Stargate SG-1 was the best GI Joe show on TV.

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First I'd stop trying to fool myself into thinking Joe is ever going to be what it was in its heyday again.

Each iteration of Joe has been reflection of the times. In the 60s, war was on the average person's mind as more than an academic concept for the first time in a generation (thanks to the marriage of television and Viet Nam). Then in the 80s it was the lingering threat of war and the belief that evil could be hiding where we least expect it (and you can basically look at the 80s as the culmination of thirty-plus years of Cold War angst). Kids were fascinated by the idea of war, espionage and technolgy then. Today they're largely bored with/desensitized to those ideas.

Hasbro needs to acknowledge that G.I. Joe is a collector driven brand and stop trying to have its cake and eat it, too.

The only people that are going to buy classic Joe inspired toys are going to be adult collectors, and there's nothing wrong with that. They've tried to sell the concept to the next generation several times and it's failed.

For the kid audience they so desperately covet, i suggest they do what they doid back in the 70s when the general public was feeling war toy fatigue: reintroduce the Adventure Team concept and have some goofy fun with it. I'm talking cartoon, toys, video games, role play stuff...the works.

The industry as a whole should get away from the short attention span strategy of betting everything on movie tie ins.

TROOF.

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SG-1 was what made me think Syfy might be able to pull it off, actually.

Cancel it.

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Bring back ARAH o-ring style figures. Both repaints and all new sculpts/tooling.

Produce both new characters, as well as new versions of classic and forgotten ones.

At least one vintage vehicle remake/retool a year.