First, Iceberg. The first arctic-themed GI JOE was Snow Job in the second series. Then there was Frostbite, who came with the "Snow Cat." The main difference was those guys were white, whereas Iceberg is black. And from Texas. So becoming an arctic trooper was a natural career move!
He was in the Sunbow cartoon a couple of times, but the snow guys are kind of like Aquaman in that their usefulness is somewhat limited. There has to be a situation where the Joes need to go to the arctic for them to have any use. There was a Robot Chicken about this where some of the other Joes prank Snow Job by staging a mission in Switzerland and then after the Gotcha! have him go shovel the Joe headquarters driveway.
In one odd episode Iceberg uncovers an Arctic lab of Dr. Mindbender where he's got an Island of Dr. Moreau thing going on, turning people into seals, walruses, polar bears, and even an otter. Iceberg gets turned into a killer whale. Um, yeah, so that happened.
I'm sure Iceberg appeared in the comics once or twice because you have to advertise the toys, right? That was pretty much it for him. He was reissued as part of the Battle Corps line in 1993, the penultimate series, so that didn't have much impact.
For COBRA there was of course an Ice Viper. He drove the COBRA WOLF that had kind of a jet-fighter type cockpit, skis, and rockets. I used to have that one back in the day. Like the snow troopers themselves, it's not all that useful unless for some reason you have a battle in the snow. Though growing up in Michigan there were plenty of times where you could have used it in its native environment.
They showed up once or twice in the cartoon and probably the comics too. Hooray!
The most hilarious Ice-related one was "Ice Cream Soldier." But he had nothing to do with ice. He was a flamethrower trooper. The idea on the file card was that COBRA would never suspect a flamethrower guy when you shout Ice Cream Soldier! At least that would work one time, right?
Probably the most ridiculous name for any Joe figure.
3 comments:
I was so hoping you would mention the Ice Cream soldier because it is not only totally ridiculous but by that time it really lives up to the saying that everything's been done. They really were running out of ideas at that point lol.
Blowtorch was by far the better flamethrower trooper :p
ROFL I’ve never heard of the Ice Cream Soldier but I have an image of the guy cornering you and telling you to scream his name. Otherwise what would be the point?
The descriptions of these Joe's make me smile.
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