A to Z Challenge Day 25: YO JOE!

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:

Here's one of my favorites

There you go.  Monday we conclude with Z; there actually is a Z for both sides, so there.