G.I. Joe while perhaps not the most popular cartoon of my childhood certainly deserves its ranking here among the top 10. G.I. Joe came on every afternoon and was part of my daily regimen of cartoony goodness.
The premise was that the American armed forces were battling against C.O.B.R.A. some kind of terrorist group that was always trying to take over the world.
The Joes were made up of a crew of military men (and at least one woman) each of whom had their own special skills. Duke seemed to be the only regular soldier, and perhaps because of that he was the leader. Snake-Eyes was always my favorite and dressed like a ninja. There were also characters who specialized in nautical stuff, or drove tanks, or were a girl, each with their own inherent specialties.
C.O.B.R.A. was the biggest crew of freaky terrorists ever dredged up I'm sure. The COBRA commander hid his face behind a metal mask, and he was shortly joined by Destro who had a face apparently made of metal and flew around in some kind of flying chariot. There was also a guy (my research reminds me his name was Zartan) whose skin changed color in the light.
G.I. Joe had a very popular line of action figures, and I may have even had one or two at some point. I remember being surprised to find at my grandparents house some of my uncles old G.I. Joe action figures which were much larger than the ones we got, and not nearly as cool in my opinion. The old ones seemed much more like dolls than action figures.
Some of my favorite memories from the G.I. Joe cartoon were:
-an episode where Snake-Eyes was trapped behind a wall while a room filled with toxic gas and radioactivity of some kind, (Kind of reminiscint of Spock in Star Trek II) as the cliffhanger of an episode that I never saw the end of.
-actually sending in a postcard to some kind of drawing they used to have. I don't even know what you could win, but I remember when they used to roll that drum full of cards hoping that this would be my chance.
-the PSAs that would come on at the end of every episode where we learned such things as how to escape a burning building, not to swim right after eating, and the heimlich manuever. These always ended with the awesome lines "Now I know!" "And knowing is half the battle." Truer words have never been spoken.
Here's the updated countdown:
#10: Underdog
#9: Thundercats
#8: G.I. Joe
3 comments:
no mention of serpentor? i wasnt a huge joes fan, but i remember him. wasnt there also some joe named shipwreck, i remember him too for some reason.
Who was Serpentor again? I wasn't a huge joes fan myself, but their saturation of my childhood culture got them onto this list. That and the fact that one time playing at a friend's house we lost one of his guys (I think it was the color changing Zartan) and the stress of trying to find it has stayed with til this day. Perhaps I can exorcize some demons through the cathartic process of including the joes on this list.
he was the leasder later in the show. he wore a snake outfit. i looked up some info on wikipedia:
He was created through a breakthrough in cloning research by Dr. Mindbender from the DNA extracted from the unearthed remains of the most ruthless and effective military leaders in history, including Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Attila the Hun, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Genghis Khan. He also has DNA from Sgt. Slaughter and Grigori Rasputin.
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