For the final entry we actually have two guys with Z names so I didn't even have to do any finagling to make it work.
Zap was one of the original Real American Hero Joes. He was mostly a basic soldier with a bazooka. Despite this, he actually appeared a few times in the TV show and maybe in the comics. Not that he had a spotlight episode or issue or anything. Still, pretty good for a guy who was basically generic and didn't have much of a gimmick.
More interesting was Zartan, the master of disguise for COBRA. He could basically take on the appearance of anyone. And at least once in the TV show he could somehow become intangible and walk through a fence. I'm not sure what the deal was with that.
Anyway, he came with his own little aqua scooter thing. His action figure would change color in sunlight, turning a pale blue. Because that would really help him disguise himself! But I guess he came with an extra face you could put on so he would look different. Pretty neat.
He was a frequent part of the Sunbow episodes of the TV show. In the second season they added his brother and sister. Then after that he pretty well disappeared for a while. He was in the comics too along with his relatives and Dreadnoks.
In the live action movie in 2009 he was played by Arnold Vosloo, which was ironic because Vosloo played the face-changing Darkman in two direct-to-video sequels. At the end of that movie he impersonated the president and they didn't really use him in the sequel, just the president. And for some reason they said Zartan killed Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes's master, despite that Zartan was supposed to be a master of disguise mercenary, not a ninja.
So there you have it. Now you know...and knowing is half the battle!
There are no Joes or COBRA troops with a Y name. Not even International figures! So we'll have to get creative.
Yo Joe! was the GI JOE battle cry. It's also the website I used to look up information and find pictures and stuff. Yojoe.com is a pretty useful site for looking up anything on GI JOE. It's like Wookiepedia for Star Wars or Transformers Wiki. A very helpful site if you want to look up all the Joe toys of days gone by or the reissues of today.
It was also helpful when I was writing this story:
Like the novella Only Human that was based on a Transformers episode, this was based on a GI JOE episode from the Sunbow series: "Gray Hairs and Growing Pains." Dr. Mindbinder creates a gas that turns three Joes into little kids and an energy that turns three Joes into old men. I ignored the latter but otherwise the story is very similar. Three Marines investigate a place where human experiments are being conducted, only they become the experiments! They're trapped in a room with gas pumped in that turns them into little girls. They're able to escape and then have to find a way to stop the bad guys as children.
For the three Marines I used the names Al, Court, and Shane which are male versions of Allison, Courtney, and Shana, the first names of Lady Jaye, Cover Girl, and Scarlett, three of the female GI JOEs. There's also a fourth character named Kim for Jinx the female ninja. So I think I got them all! I also used names for some other Joes in there for the hell of it. So that's how the Yojoe.com site helped other than this A to Z Challenge.
And now just for fun, here are some of the oddball figures that were introduced:
In 1985 William "Refrigerator" Perry was part of the Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears team. So naturally they made a GI JOE figure of him. With a football on a chain for a weapon. I mean, duh, why wouldn't you?
The figure was mail-order only and like Fridge's NFL career, didn't last too long.
Another "sports" star got a GI JOE figure: Sgt. Slaughter. He was part of the WWE when it was still the WWF. As a big guy dressed like a drill sergeant, it just made sense to make him part of GI JOE.
The first figure was mail-in with just a baton and the "USA" tank top.
Don't make me have to whoop your ass!
There was then a second version that had a black tank top shown in the TV show and probably the comic book. He came with his own little tank called the Triple-T, which is kind of funny considering there was a later wrestler called Triple-H. (OK, not that funny.)
He was part of the animated movie and had his own squad of "Renegades." Shortly after, he had a team called "Slaughter's Marauders" that were recolored figures like Spirit and Barbecue. They were featured in a DIC miniseries and then went away. I'm not sure he was as much a part of the comics, but he was probably in them a little bit at least.
My favorite useless GI JOE figure I talked about in a blog post a few years ago. Stephen King (yes, that one) came up with the idea of a bad guy who uses mind control as a weapon. The end result was Crystal Ball, who had this goofy holographic wheel for a weapon. The figure was about as popular as the Edsel. It might have some value now because no one wanted it in the 80s; it ended up rotting in clearance bins. Last week I bought one on EBay for $10, though not in the package.
GI JOE episodes usually ended with a public service announcement to tell kids of dangers like not going with strangers or eating junk food or whatever. I plucked some off YouTube that I hope are not parodies:
Bad Joke Alert: who's Butler Blue III's favorite Joe? Tripwire of course! (Because his name is Trip.)
Finally, some of the GI JOE sketches on Robot Chicken, of which there have been a few:
There are no Xs for GI JOE but after the Real American Hero line ended in 1994, Hasbro's new subsidiary Kenner created GI JOE Extreme that were larger figures. The Joes were led by Lt. Stone and fought SKAR, commanded by Iron Klaw, who looked like Skeletor with a beret.
Lt. Stone was the Duke of the Extreme team
Black Dragon was Snake Eyes with frosted tips. Extreme!
The GI JOE Extreme line was maybe too extreme for kids; it folded by 1996. As the first graphic says, there was briefly a comic and TV show, but neither outlasted the toys. Bummer, dude.
An actual X is Xamot, one half of the Crimson Guard Commanders. Xamot is the name of his twin brother Tomax spelled backwards. They were introduced in the 1985 set as two rich businessmen who bought their way into COBRA with their own unit called the Crimson Guard. Xamot has a scar on his face so you can tell them apart.
In the TV show at least their company was called Extensive Enterprises. They worked in their New York skyscraper in suits but would then get into their circus outfits to fight. The thing about the brothers is if you hurt one, the other feels the same pain, something often exploited by the Joes.
They were in the first two seasons of the Sunbow series but then disappeared. In more recent comics one of the brothers was killed and the other changed sides or something. I haven't really read them myself but I think Tony Laplume mentioned it.
I already had a couple of COBRA water guys: EELs and Undertow, but GI JOE had its own water guys. First there was Torpedo and Deep-Six with the SHARK. In the 1986 set there was Wet-Suit who was a Navy SEAL. So I guess he could do more than just swim around; he could be pretty useful on land.
He was shown quite a bit in the second full season of the Sunbow series. His frenemy was the Marine Leatherneck. In the modern era there probably would have been a lot of "shippers" writing fan fiction about them hooking up.
He'd have a hard time killing bin Laden with a flashlight.
He shows up in the second season of the DIC series, though Leatherneck is no longer around. So sad.
A spear gun is a little better than a flashlight
Wild Weasel is a type of airplane that goes after enemy radar installations. It's also the pilot of the COBRA Rattler, which was loosely based on the A-10 Warthog. Though Warthogs don't have wings that turn 90 degrees or a tail gunner.
Bus wars? Was that when Greyhounds took on school buses?
He was shown a few times in the Sunbow series and I already mentioned the spotlight issue of the comic book where he and Ace get in an epic duel.
That was pretty much it for him. But a couple of years ago Hasbro recolored the Autobot Powerglide blue so it mostly looked like a COBRA Rattler. Wild Weasel was not included.
One of the early vehicles for the GI JOEs was the VAMP, which is sort of a cross between an original Jeep and a Hummer. The VAMP was first green and then there was a brown one that both came with Clutch as its driver.
The VAMP was shown somewhat often in the Sunbow series and in the comics, but it was replaced by new vehicles. The same for the comics.
The first batch of vehicles in 1982-1983 were fairly realistic, largely based on actual military equipment, though I'm pretty sure the military didn't have a jet pack launching pad.
Over time the vehicles got less realistic:
But they always had neat-looking planes that were often based on actual ones, or ones like the "F-19" that were fabled to exist. Actually if the designers had seen the F-117 they probably would have designed something like that.
Small vehicles for one or a few guys weren't enough, so they developed some more deluxe ones. There was the playset of the COBRA Terrordrome:
There was also the GI JOE Space Shuttle, the Defiant, which came out long before Deep Space Nine:
But there was nothing bigger than the USS Flagg, which was a GI JOE aircraft carrier. The toy was over 7 feet long! The size and cost made it impossible for kids like me to have, but some lucky kids did have it.
Since COBRA had a snake theme I guess it made sense that their generic troopers should be called Vipers. Though the Vipers didn't actually show up until the 1986 series. Before that you just had the generic COBRA trooper and COBRA officer.
But as you've already seen "Viper" then became a whole set of characters:
Today we have two completely forgettable characters: Updraft and Undertow.
Updraft was the driver of the Retaliator helicopter thing. The Retaliator was used in the DIC series but they didn't show Updraft. I guess he wasn't important enough.
Undertow was a replacement for the EELs as COBRA frogmen. Because they didn't have gaudy enough frogmen before. And their frogmen didn't have pet barracuda. He showed up a few times in the DIC series when a water guy was needed.
"Tunnel Rats" were mostly associated with the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese or sympathizers would often have networks of tunnels and a soldier referred to as a tunnel rat would have to crawl in with a flashlight, knife, and explosives to destroy the tunnel. The long-running Harry Bosch series's titular character was a tunnel rat in the war.
So unlike many other GI JOEs, Tunnel Rat is actually based on a real thing. And I suppose COBRA might dig tunnels from time to time that would require a tunnel rat to destroy them.
Tunnel Rat was one of the characters who appeared in the animated movie. He crawls in a water pipe to defeat a training exercise and later shows the Joes how to navigate some obstacles in the Himalyas to reach Cobra-la's base. He didn't really appear in the DIC cartoon series or the live action movies either. But I'm sure he was in the comics at least a few times. So that's something.
The Dreadnoks are the henchmen of Zartan. They're supposed to be punks from Australia or some damned thing. They aren't very bright, because good help is hard to find. The first three were Buzzer, Ripper, and Torch.
Torch had a brown beard and a flamethrower, which is what differentiated him from the other two. Otherwise they were pretty much inseparable. And later they added Monkeywrench and Thrasher, followed by Road Pig to their numbers. The Dreadnoks appeared in the Sunbow series fairly often, but not really in the DIC series. They also appeared in the comics a few times. Though Zartan was in the live action movies, his Dreadnoks weren't. Such a shame.
There are so many great S's but you have to go with the two most popular. Snake Eyes became the most popular Joe character and yet his creation was based on some penny pinching. In Netflix's The Toys That Made Us, they recount how in order to stretch the budget for the first line of Real American Hero toys, they decided to make one character just plain black. Snake Eyes was born!
At first Snake Eyes was just a guy with an Uzi. Then in the cartoon he got a wolf named Timber and so they reissued his figure with the wolf. Then he became a ninja!
It's interesting that he wasn't really that popular in the cartoon shows. He was in the Sunbow series from the beginning, though instead of black he was colored dark blue with peach flesh colored hands. In the miniseries The MASS Device, Snake Eyes is in a mine to get some crystals but gets irradiated in the process. Timber shows up and takes him to an old blind who fixes Snake Eyes up.
There was nothing on his file card about not talking; I'm not sure if the comics or the show came up with that first. Like every good legend, though, the legend of Snake Eyes kept getting bigger and bigger. He wasn't just some commando with a machine gun. He was a ninja whose master was killed by Storm Shadow and he took a vow of silence until he killed him! In the comics it got even more complicated where he was maybe Scarlett's brother or half-brother or some damned thing.
His popularity in the comics was such that at one point he even got top billing in the title, so it was Snake Eyes and GI JOE. That's pretty impressive!
In the live action movies he was played by Ray Park, aka Darth Maul. I always thought it was stupid they put a mouth on his costume. Why does a guy who swore a vow of silence need a mask with a mouth? I could try to go through all the variations of the character, but there have been 68 of them at least!
I still have my original Snake Eyes figure, but at the moment he's in three pieces. I have the Night Force reissue from '97 on my desk. The original was the first Joe I ever got. Snake Eyes was my first Joe and Bumblebee my first Transformer; I really lucked out there.
Thanks I think to the comics, Snake Eyes's mortal enemy became Storm Shadow, the COBRA ninja. Because what terrorist organization doesn't need a ninja? I think it was in the same Toys That Made Us episode that comics writer Larry Hama talked about that he wanted Storm Shadow as a Joe from the beginning, but he was overruled and the character was part of COBRA until about 1988, when he was remade as a Joe with some lame explanation that he joined COBRA to be a mole.
But by the time of the live action movies he was a bad guy again and Snake Eyes's sworn enemy. But then I think in the second movie they team up when they found out Zartan killed their master, which made absolutely no sense.
In the Sunbow series Storm Shadow far more often tangled with Spirit, the Native American GI JOE. I'm not sure why because Spirit wasn't even a ninja.
He was in the comic book quite a bit as an enemy of Snake Eyes and then later an ally. Like I've said previously the comics really pushed that whole ninja thing more than the cartoon shows. Which was great for the popularity of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. With the newer comics I'm not sure where Storm Shadow's loyalties lie. Him and Snake Eyes have switched sides a couple of times since the 80s.
