Cobra are absolutely terrorists... Most of the time. When Cobra Commander wasn't carving his face in the moon, he was controlling the weather in order to cause destruction and terror.
Agreed. Honestly, I'm not really sure why Resolute gets held up as this gold standard for "mature" GI Joe content when many of the things it attempted to do were just handled poorly and previously done much better in the comics. Like you said, Storm Shadow suddenly becoming a one-note villain is right up there in being pretty egregious. Okay, I see what you're getting at now. Looks like I missed Dr. Kain's original posts that triggered the convo also. Which kind of sets the whole tempo of what was being discussed and why.
Let's face it,in the 80s terrorists we all knew were the bad guys. But until 2001,terrorists didn't have a face for the youth of this country. Post 2001,we can all recognize that terrorists imply bad guys but I can't fault a toy company for not wanting to address that stigma in this day and age. We can all choose to display our toys however we want but in the end,they're still trying to market to kids and their parents.
Yes, the cartoon was, but we're not strictly talking about the cartoon, we were talking about a video game. Because Resolute was the best on screen content we ever got GI Joe that matched the original comics. They finally made Cobra Commander a serious threat.
Definitely agree. His portrayal there was shallow. I liked the animation for Resolute but it’s definitely not remembered most for story. Story complexity is something Hasbro probably wants to stick with over any real-world allusions to violence and villainy for Cobra anyways. Better to have a timeless over the top enemy in a toyline to keep pushing sales of joes rather than draw the attention of overly sensitive criticizers(especially now) who will think Hasbro glorifies real-world terrorism if they go with a more realistic portrayal of Cobra. Hasbro already has had a hard time as it is pushing Gijoe internally for the last 20 years and the move away from Fortnite/initial video game-aesthetic of Classified only started over a year ago. Any attempt to portray Cobra parallel to actual villains in the real world is likely just going to result in Hasbro moving even further away as a whole from its military roots and back into glowing blue communicators, soccer shin guards and tuning fork guns. The IDW Cobra comic was known for its story complexity and while Cobra there was definitely villainous, what they did there didn’t seem parallel to any particular organization in the real world at the time it was released. Definitely became a more personal story and it’s surprising that Hasbro never made figures of Chuckles and Cobra Commander from it. To put it simply too, if Cobra in general was written to be more realistic and parallel to actual bad guys currently, you’d have parents complaining and advocating against buying GI Joe figures. That in turn, would make Hasbro even more gunshy about doing anything with the brand. Maybe they would change direction and revisit the Adventure Team. Classified Adventure Team Grunt sent on a mission to find magical eucalyptus for a koala rescued from Cobra using only handmade tools in the forest and no guns. With video game inspired gear that looks as far away from military equipment as you can imagine. You like the initial Classified designs? Think that but even more video game, more pacified. Yea I’d rather just see joes going the way they currently are.
It’s mainly for its animation and designs. Almost all got modernized in a recognizable manner and the vehicles were awesome, freaking shame we never got a toy of any of the vehicles! And some of the figures just didn’t do the designs justice, especially Storm Shadow. That could’ve been awesome but the one we get was compromised by a disproportionate sculpt, weirdly attached backpack/sheathes along with a removable gi jacket that was way too big and a hood that didn’t fit right on top of it. Ironically adding that hood to the Renegades 4 pack Storm Shadow from Amazon made for a closer look. HISS Tank, Skystriker and Tomahawk all had modernized designs I was completely down with.
Oh certainly. If we're talking about the visual redesigns many of the characters got and the animation alone then it was great. I think these are some of the best-updated designs outside of POC honestly and I'd like to see some of them get referenced in Classified at some point. The story and characterization were, frankly, fairly lackluster impo.
I would buy a Classified Snake Eyes Vs Storm Shadow 2 pack. As much as I hate Storm Shadow’s portrayal in it, the I like the design since it has enough overlap with his original design that it’s still feasible as a modern Storm Shadow for my collection. It has a lot of potential; removable arm wraps, alternate post-7th step “death” portrait; plus Hasbro I’m sure could mold the backpack to the straps instead of using that inadequate high-mounted backpack peg. Snake Eyes needs the alternate green visor and wingpack. Alternate 7th step hand too.
Behaving more menacingly and violently does not equate to being a more serious threat. He still failed at his objective.
Agreed. If we want to talk about modern media making Cobra Commander a threat I'd say Sigma 6 did a pretty damned good job there. In that show, it seemed like the Joes were constantly on their toes and had to be reactionary instead of proactive in dealing with Cobra.
"Terrorist" keeps on getting redefined. Back in the early 80's they were mostly kidnappers, hijackers, and the odd assassination. We've seen plenty of that from Cobra in both the comic and cartoon. Special Missions especially focused on those kinds of operations. By the mid-1990's you saw more US domestic terrorism with the Oklahoma bombing and crazy cults getting into gunfights with the FBI/ATF. The comic pre-dated this with stories like Wingfield trying to build his own nuclear bomb and plenty of times when Cobra supplied arms to extremists who were going to do the shooting/bombing for them. In the comics, intel was always good enough that the Joes were there to prevent these worst case outcomes. By the late 90's there were plenty of countries with nationalist movements wanting to breakaway or "cleanse" the other half of the population or socialists/fascists wanting to overthrow governments. Cobra has been seen many times supplying arms to these groups as a method of gaining power and influence in parts of the fictional world. So, yes, Cobra is definitely a terrorist organization. Begun by a charismatic used car salesman able to run successful Ponzi and pyramid schemes in the USA and moving on to build an organization with nationalist scare tactics. Cobra has their own US Senators (by brainwave scanner and possibly bribes) as well as moles in the military-industrial complex (influencing the Jugglers). They fund nationalists and zealots out to wipe out their neighbors. Zartan was committing internet cyber-warfare 30 years ahead of schedule by destroying Interpol's "international criminal computer" (only failed since Gung-Ho set his digital watch ahead). In one of the modern cartoons Cobra was masquerading as an international corporation out to benefit the world including influencing social media with their propaganda. Cobra invaded Millville (a fictional mid-west city in the rustbelt) by appealing to local residents that the government failed them and promises to restore their community. In many respects, Cobra matches very closely what a US domestic terrorist group is today. What Cobra has never really embraced is the Al-qaeda or Isis style of terrorism as Hasbro wants to steer well clear of that kind of publicity. Although I seem to recall the Joes did support the Taliban back in the 1980's in their fight inside Afghanistan. But the idea that you need to be gunning down people in the street in order to qualify as a terrorist has existed for only the second half of GI Joe vs Cobra's existence and has never been Cobra Commander's MO as that kind of action gets you blacklisted across the globe.
Personally, I like the way Cobra was reimagined/updated on Renegades. If you like realism, that's the way to go, IMO.
Snake Eyes' popularity is completely off of his Marvel Comics appearances...he appeared in the first and second tv miniseries and barely after that...Storm Shadow even less than that...
Part of their popularity is definitely from the Sunbow cartoon. Snake Eyes wouldn’t appear in every episode but when he did show up to save or help the other Joes it was entertaining and he and Storm Shadow were the main 2 ninjas for a while. Didn’t hurt that his costume managed to still be unique despite reusing generic parts for the uniform. Neither had anything close to the depth of their back stories explored through the Marvel comics, but they were still popular onscreen. Going from the cartoons to the comics was a treat back then because the comics added much more relevance to both(Storm Shadow moreso, portrayal in the cartoons has never come close to how he was portrayed in the Marvel comics). Case in point, if watching the cartoon already left you kind of wanting figures of the 2, reading the comics would definitely lead you to buy their figures.
And that was the style of the time, I often think of cartoons from that era the way I think of Silver Age comic books. Then come the 90's with shows like Batman, Gargoyles, ExoSquad, Beast Wars, it was more like the 80's Bronze Age of comics. Granted Beast Wars got away with it because they were robots, Demona could be a mass murderer because she turned the humans in NYC to stone and then smashed four on screen and it's implied much more, and Batman TAS was very good at implying horrific atrocities. ExoSquad killed characters and had on screen concentration camps. Then things get a little more sanitized again, then the envelope gets pushed again. It's a pendulim.
I like the toy version better in every way except the fact that it has a black backpack. Why did the Retro version get a red backpack and not the regular release version?
