Finally saw the Season 3 Transformers episode with Old Snake / Cobra Commander. It's a pretty campy episode, but I have to admit it was fun seeing Cobra Commander survive into Transformer's "future." All of this is old news, obviously... but in all the times I've seen him mentioned, I haven't heard his gloves/hands brought up. I thought it was just a coloring error at first, but he's clearly wearing at least one fingerless glove, and the fingers shown are the gold color of his snake mutation from G.I. Joe The Movie. They show up more than once, though I think sometimes the gloves appear to be fully fingered. When they aren't though, it really looked like they weren't meant to be fully human hands underneath.

Anyone else notice, or am I just imagining it. The time line seems to work out, I think season 3 came out after GI Joe the movie.

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I heard once they were Serpentor's gloves, but I don't quite see that.

I'm pretty sure he was wearing Serpentor's gloves in that episode, although I haven't seen it in many years.

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I think it was, but why would he be there for? Megatron's pet.

Interesting, will have to look closer. That's kinda of a cool idea too. I've played with the idea of doing a custom of Cobra Commander in a blue/black version of Serpentor's armor, with the silver faceplate inside the snake mask, but I'm just not convinced "my" Cobra Commander would wear any of Serpentor's old clothes. I do like the idea of it being a trophy, and I REALLY love the idea that Cartoon Old Snake got the better of Serpentor some how.

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Okay, I grabbed some screens from the episode.

It's NOT serpentor's gauntlet/glove, though it does look like it in some far shots, especially because the skin color is a similar yellow gold to Serpentor's costume (and CC's mutated form).





But he absolutely has a scaled hand in this one shot:



I knew I wasn't crazy and I saw something that made me think movie/mutated Cobra Commander.

But in the next shot, it looks pretty normal except for the color.



But then there's this a few seconds later:



Now his hand looks more slender and clawed.

SOMETHING was up with hands in this incarnation/episode, and I can't think of what else it would be other than a reference to the (I believe) then recent G.I. Joe movie. But I don't think it's just an error/coloring issue (everyone else has a much more natural skin color in the episode). Also, the Transformer's human clothes are incredibly ridiculous. They look like long lost Mario Brothers.

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Ah yes, the clothes that they were shown to pull on, before they realized they were humans.

I miss 80s cartoons.

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Yeah, those hands were an oddity, especially seeing how this episode not only predates the DIC series where Cobra Commander is restored.... it even predates GI Joe: The Movie, having aired in the fall of 1986.


As for the varying appearance of the hands.... blame it on the penny-pinching cheapass South Korean animation studio that animated this episode (along with far too many episodes of Season 3) instead of Toei.

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Y'know, that coat looks an awful lot like something Destro might wear. I wonder if they were implying CC got the better of Destro, too.

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I'm going to say - cool theory - yet, I'll wager is an animation issue also. Wouldn't be shocking to learn that an animator for TF might have had difficulty pulling off natural looking human hands.

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The air date definitely far precedes the release of G.I. Joe: The Movie. However, like Transformers: The Movie, the Joe movie was probably in development for a long time, and that plot point may have been decided upon by the time this episode was written, so it's not impossible that this was an intentional connection. Nonetheless, it's also just as likely to be an animation error as you've stated.

Regardless, that's a nice find by DanOfTheDead!

This is a great thread.

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That one shot lends heavy weight to the mutated cc view.

Weren't GI Joe, Transformers, and the My Little Pony movie all made around the same time? And then Transformers didn't do well in theaters, so GI Joe was bumped back to a TV release (and the negative reaction to Prime's death being why we get the dubbed over "Duke's okay!" line at the end). I don't know the timeline exactly, but I'm convince this was supposed to be a nod to the movie's Cobra Commander..

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what ep of season 3