G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

[Rollo Tomassi]

The 7 Most Unintentionally Hilarious GI Joe Characters

Thank you cracked.

Funny story about Cesspool. Long after I had stopped collecting and/or playing with GIJoe figures my little sister (who was probably four or five at the time) got me Cesspool for my birthday. I still have him MoC as a reminder. He is/was officially my last vintage figure I ever had.

[anarky]

I didn't put together in my head until much later that Cesspool seems to have been based on Dick Cheney.

I think we commented on this article before, but may be thinking of somewhere else. I think their reasoning is iffy. Cesspool is a shoo-in; even the comic couldn't make the premise less ridiculous. Grid-Iron, too; the comic didn't even bother with him, he was so stupid. Raptor, yeah, shoo-in; they worked him into the comic but had everyone else making fun of him all the time. Metal-Head was cool in the comic book (I always dug the way hostilities between him and Dusty ended with them both commenting on the treaty with basically a "What the fuck?" and walked off), but he was so fucking dumb in the DiC cartoon he belongs there.

But Darklon is pushing it. There were plenty of stupider characters affiliated with the McCullen clan (Voltar comes to mind immediately). Darklon at least looked cool. SAW-Viper makes no sense, unless you throw in the snigtarded Devil's Due "resurrection as a cyborg" bullshit. Their "Crowning Moment (of Ignominy)" for him is dumb; it showed how callous and cunning he was--he knew Duke was the consummate "good guy" and wouldn't break international law, even to avenge his comrades, and flaunted it in his face like a dickweed. (Personally, I would've picked him laughing at the guys in their pajamas with no guns... seconds before being beaten to death.)

Deep Six, though.... That one makes no sense. He's an antisocial prick, but he's badass. And he never had a fucking pet dolphin. Never. Suck it, 1990s Hasbro toy designers on crack!

[Rollo Tomassi]

I think Deep-Six might qualify just because his figure is such shit. I mean, if you were at a party with 24 other kids and everybody was a handed a different GIJoe figure, and you got handed the Deep-Six figure, you'd be pretty pissed right?

[Ran]

I was looking at the Deep Six figure. If you compare it to the other Joes, he is too wide for his arms to be where they are.

[anarky]

Oh, yeah, the figure sucks major ass, but I don't think that qualifies him as "unintentionally hilarious."

Ran, I seem to recall thinking that as a kid, too, and one of my friends showed me something in a book. It was a diagram of a similar (hypothetical, IIRC) deep-sea diving suit, and the arms were not actually his arms, but robotic manipulators. His arms were in the immensely fat body of the diving suit.

[Ran]

Yeah, I wouldn't call Deep Six hilarious either. He's rather boring.

The only other characters other than Deep Six I was remotely familiar with were Metal Head and Gridiron. I remember seeing Gridiron at some point when he came out and thought it was a bad idea back then.

[anarky]

They didn't use him much in the cartoon, but he showed up quite a bit in the comic. They really played up the "creepy" aspect of a guy who was so completely antisocial.

I forgot to mention earlier about the arms: it had something to do with the protection required to deal with the pressure at such depths. In order to make a suit that could keep a diver from being crushed at those depths, they had to sacrifice mobility, so the choices were "robot arms" or "completely useless arms."

I don't think Darklon showed up in the 'toon. In the comic book, he was a cousin of Destro in eastern Europe. He dealt to both sides in a regional conflict. The Python Patrol line of repaints in the comics were never actually used by Cobra; it was a scheme by Darklon and Dr. Mindbender to put some cheap radar baffling on outdated surplus that they couldn't sell, paint the cool scale pattern, lie that it was the paint job that gave the equipment limited stealth capabilities, and sell them for a shitload more.

Cesspool was just stupid. In the comic, I think he was a former undercover Cobra operative who was injured, went nuts, and tried to take over Cobra Island, and maybe he was chased away when Firefly decided to do the same thing. I've blocked that period out of my memory rather well except for the artwork.

The SAW-Viper was never named in the original comic book. He was a nameless operative. Early on, it looked like he was the only one, until a couple other SAW-Vipers showed up in the background of a later issue. Basically, a team of twelve Joes was captured by a Cobra force led by Tomax and Xamot. Snake Eyes had infiltrated Cobra Commander's personal hideout to send a message: fine, you're a bad guy, but stop fucking with my close friends. CC ordered the twins to "take care of the Joes," not wanting to piss off Snakes (and not knowing who his buddies were), and the twins misinterpreted what he meant. SAW-Viper wasted nine of them in a single issue and, when CC arrived on the scene to chew him out, stood his ground and basically said, "I accomplished in an hour what your entire organization couldn't accomplish in over a decade." He was attacked in a helicopter by the ninjas a bit later, make some crack about them, and was next seen lying on the floor of the copter, clearly dead.

When Devil's Due got the license to publish shitty fanfiction continue the series, they first had some ridiculous comment in a reference book that the Joes had assumed him dead, but he'd surfaced in Europe hunting both Joes and Cobras (that last part was never explained). He joined the resurrected Serpentor's organization (what was that I said about shitty fanfiction?) and wanted a new code name, Overkill. Hasbro actually had a completely unrelated cybernetic BAT Commander named Overkill, and Devil's Due eventually combined them by having him supposedly killed again, only to be resurrected as a cyborg.

Seriously, in retrospect, the only thing about the Devil's Due run that was truly cool was Cobra Commander shooting Serpentor and pushing him off a cliff. Even then, they managed to resurrect him at least one more time as the new commander of the Joe team, unaware of who he really was. (Again, shitty fanfiction.)

[Ran]

Bought the Rock Viper and Cobra Viper today from Walmart. Passed on Crazylegs and Croc Master. I'm sure both will pegwarm. Aside from not really knowing much about Crazylegs, it didn't look like a very good figure.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Okay, as mentioned in the Thor Comics thread, I just started reading Walt Simonson's epic run circa 84-85. I just came across an ad for GIJoe videos from FHE and I can't stop laughing.
It has Gung-ho, Duke, and Scarlett standing abreast of each other, all in heroic poses.
Gung-ho says "Well, Duke, now that we've joined forces with Family Home Entertainment...We'll lick Cobra for sure!"
To which Duke responds "Jus' because FHE is releasing "GIJoe-A Real American Hero" on videocassette...doesn't mean those snakes are whipped!"
Then Scarlett chimes in with "Not even if our tape is so affordably priced at $39.95 that every kid can own a copy?"

She presumably said that with a straight face.

[anarky]

What's worse, Duke dropping consonants when he's a goody-goody intellectual who speaks 73 languages, the insane price (fuck, do season boxes run that much?), or the gayest-looking Joe of the time threatening to "lick" Cobra?

[jjreason]

The price is absurd - but it brings me right back to just how "hot" GI Joe was back then. If you didn't get to the store quick, those figures vehicles and comics were GONE. Everyone wanted it. One of the great toy finds of my brother and I's young lives was being the first of our friends to find the Blowtorch/Spirit/Ripcord wave en masse at Eatons - we both had birthday money and bought about 12 figures between us. We were literally rock stars for a bit after that. Fuck those were AWESOME figures.

[Ran]

SDCC Exclusive Zarana pictures.

I can see why that figure wouldn't be appropriate for normal retail stores.

[Ran]

BBTScut the price on the Resolute sets. $60 for both.

[Ran]

Carded pictures of Hazard Viper, Stalker, & 30th Anniv. Viper & Cobra trooper.

[jjreason]

Not wild about the packaging or Stalker's dreads - I'm sure those were dreads, right??? He's from Detroit, not Montego Bay. ><