A to Z Challenge Day 8: Hawk vs Headman

It's the second week of the A to Z Challenge!  For H for the Joes we have Hawk, or General Hawk as he was often called.

Actually in the first series of the 80s figures there was a Hawk but he was basically just a generic guy.  Most of his parts were shared with the rest of that first line.  He came with an artillery piece, not individually.

It wasn't until the 1986 set that General Hawk came out as the leader of the GI JOEs.  I guess they figured the Real American Heroes needed led by someone higher up than a sergeant or warrant officer.

Because of his higher rank, Hawk wasn't necessarily on the front line all the time.  Characters like Duke, Flint, or Beach Head would still mostly be in charge of the action on the ground.   His figure didn't have any cool weapons, just a pistol and a backpack.

The DIC cartoon series debuted a couple of new looks for the character.  First was one with a green spacesuit, yellow helmet, and jetpack.  It looked kind of goofy.

Then came this another one with brown fatigues, sunglasses, and the brown wedge hat thing.  An improvement?  I dunno.  He and Cobra Commander each had a backpack that also allowed them to talk or some junk.

He was in the comics around the time his figure came out and probably did some stuff.

In the 2009 movie, Hawk was played by Dennis Quaid, but I don't think he showed up in the sequel when most of the Joes were killed off.

The Headman was not part of COBRA.  He was a drug pusher since this was the early 90s and the whole "Just Say No" thing was still big.  GI JOE of course had to become part of the "war on drugs" and unlike the real war on drugs, they actually shut down bad guys like the Headman.

The Headman was in a "very special episode," or episodes of the DIC series where Lt. Falcon got hooked on some new drug pushed by the Headman.  Eventually Falcon got clean while the Headman was killed when he overdosed on his fictional drug Spark and self-destructed his Bond villain-style mountain lair.  (Because drug dealers totally have factories in the middle of nowhere hidden in mountains that have self-destruct buttons.  Why didn't Walter White think of that?)  Then a message came up:  Remember, Drugs Kill!  That was all for him!

Have to admire the design of the figure.  He totally looks like a drug dealer!  More like a pimp really.  But he was rocking the black fedora before Walter White.  I bet most drug dealers wish they had a missile launcher.  Say hello to my little friend!

Fun Fact:  For Beast Wars fans the episodes with the Headman were written by Beast Wars story editor Bob Forward and featured several of the same voice actors like Optimus Primal, Gary Chalk and jack-of-all-trades Scott McNeil.