Classic G.I. Joe and Transformers Animated thoughts

[NextGen123]

　
I just found in my archives of VHS tapes a copy of G.I. Joe: The Animated Movie with Don Johnson voicing Lt. Falcon and Burgess Meredith as the C.O.B.R.A. commander. C.O.B.R.A .commander is not referring to the health care plan you have to pay out to when you lose employment. C.O.B.R.A. is a terrorist organization that was fighting the Joes in the cartoon series. I bought most of the series for Christmas Holiday because it was produced by Marvel and written by a lot of old school writers like Steve (Howard the Duck creator)Gerber.


Gerber was given a job as a story editor on the series while he was locked in legal combat over his creation and marketing of the Howard the Duck movie. He was never given residuals or credit on the film. The comic was canceled after he left. He had such a distinct writing style that the book never lasted without him. Howard the Duck was a champion of the disenfranchised. The story touched upon real social problems and had very poignant stories wrapped in fantasy. Howard came from another planet where ducks ruled as the primary life form. He was inexplicably pulled from his world into ours, Hence the title, “Howard the Duck: In a World He Never Made!”.


There were other Marvel writers such as Gerry Conway and Marv Wolfman. Both contributed scripts to this animated classic. I used to watch them in the morning before heading out to my college classes. If I remember G.I. Joe was broadcast every weekday morning. The Transformers were on approximately 3:00 in the afternoon in syndication. The Monday through Friday format allowed the producers to do stories they couldn’t make on Saturday morning.


For what reasons I don’t know but the shows could portray the heroes punching out the bad guys or using “laser” guns to finish the enemy. That was not allowed in the early seventies because parents groups that pressured the networks. You would never see that in Superfriends or the Batman cartoons by Filmation in the seventies.
　
I do remember the Fantastic Four by Hanna Barbera and Spider-Man on the ABC network in 1967. At the time they were criticized by pressure groups as “too violent” . For a long time the Saturday Morning toons were banned from showing any type of fisticuffs. G.I. Joe and Transformers changed all that. I don’t know how they got around the restrictions of the time but they were given free rein to show them as they were in the comics.
　

 

[captcalhoun]

GI Joe's from the '80s not the '70s. it's Cobra not C.O.B.R.A. and Burgess Meredith voiced Golobulus in GI Joe The Movie, not Cobra Commander.

 

[Morpheus 02]

GI Joe wasn't that violent. My friends and i would joke abiut how in GI Joe everyone ejects out of their vehicles. ROBOTECH was the cartoon at the time where people actually died.

 

[NextGen123]

GI Joe wasn't that violent. My friends and i would joke abiut how in GI Joe everyone ejects out of their vehicles. ROBOTECH was the cartoon at the time where people actually died.

I just picked up Robotech:The Macross Saga on DVD. It's five discs for only $12 dollars. I used to remember reading in Starlog where the VHS version was $150. I was glad to get this collection so i could see the story from start to finish.

In my above statements about cartoons I was comparing G.I. Joe and Transformers to what I saw in the 70's for cartoons. I was just contrasting and comparing what they could get away with in the 80s sydication. Producers could never, ever show the hero puching out a villian in the 1970's. So many parents groups would flood the network with negative press they'd have to shut down production. It was so different then when the networks would bow to pressure from the public.

 

[marillion]

GI Joe wasn't that violent. My friends and i would joke abiut how in GI Joe everyone ejects out of their vehicles. ROBOTECH was the cartoon at the time where people actually died.

This, this and this... I HATED G.I. Joe (and the Transformers for that matter) back in their TV heyday.. Robotech was my cartoon of choice because people died, ran through a gamit of emotion and had to deal with everyday life. Joe was just too clean and neat and everyone survived..

As for the Transformers, I really just didn't like the animation (and still don't).

 

[Disruptor]

GI JOE got away with punching and shooting weapons (ableit mostly lasers) because it was syndicated! No network to deal with.

I do remember groups complaining about its violence at the time.

Robotech got away with it, because it too was syndicated and of course, not made for kids in the first place.

Voltron on the other hand, was very much edited for content in its US version (actually, Voltron is the name of the US version of Beast King GoLion).

And I heard that no one died on the GI JOE cartoon because Hasbro's company president insisted on it. But anyway, I doubt they could've gotten away with it, even with syndication.

 

[Ultramann]

Yeah, depicting characters as going thru hell and being fine at the end was VERY realistic. (Insert sarcatic eyeborw here)

 

[captcalhoun]

they killed people in the comics. both Joe and Transformers.

 

[J.T.B.]

GI JOE got away with punching and shooting weapons (ableit mostly lasers) because it was syndicated! No network to deal with.

I was too old for the G.I. Joe series, but I do remember my little brother being very disappointed that the M-16s, AK-47s and Uzis of the toys had been replaced by gee-whiz lasers.



Justin

 

[captcalhoun]

the crazy part was that sometimes they used weapons that looked like AKs, M16s, Uzis et al, but they fired lasers...

 

[NextGen123]

I believe it was lasers because they could get around the standards and practices or whom ever oversaw the content of the cartoons. I remember reading in the credits in G.I. Joe. It had consultants with P.H.D. at the end of their title.

One question I'd like to get answered by an expert. How come there was never a G.I. Joe and Transformers team up? Marvel had a comic series dedicated to that idea long ago in a 4 part mini series. Was there an animated team up planned?

With direct to video releases, why wasn't there more Made for Video animated G.I. Joe and Transformers movies? Did they crash at the box office? Did the G.I. Joe and Transformers animated movies sell poorly?

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I'm gonna go out on a limb right now: I love both of these series.

First: I love the animation. People diss it because it isn't perfectly smooth. I had no problem with the smoothness, and I appreciated some of the ambitious angles they chose. I like how when Rumble starts pile-driving through the glass in TF:TM, the shot is from within the array looking up at him. But the main reason i love the animation is that the characters are not overly stylized and therefore we get all the iconic looks of the characters. Optimus Prime never looked more iconic then in the series, for example. And the human characters, such as the Joes, are all drawn in proportion. No one has huge draws, over sized chests, thin ankles, and super long arms. This allowed me to focus on the story and the people inhabiting these stories than focusing on how stupid the characters look.

And hell, I like the lasers, it brought something of the apmosphere of Star Wars to my TV every afternoon, and allowed me to see the combat.. --- it was visually appealing. Sure I also got a kick out how much everyone missed or how people instantly parachuted out of planes, etc.

The main thing I liked was the drawings when combined with the voice cast. Each character - especially the minor ones, couldn't be that developed due to time, so some great characteristics were done, and they each had a distinct personality.
for example, Shipwreck didn't have many episodes, but you can't say that his Jack Nicholson/Pop-Eye mixture wasn't cool. Check out Spirit's nobleness. or how Mirage was tenuous about fighting. or how Scarlett was a bit too cocky for her own good and she often got into trouble, whereas lady Jaye, another female, had the Demi Moore type assertiveness and cool-headedness going on. . Or how Hound was one character that preferred Earth to Cybertron. Rumble acted like a street punk, loyal to Megatron because of the guy's power. Hell, even characters people usually hated seemed real enough. like Arcee.. she seemed a little frightened going to combat, particularly when the humans are around. And check this; every character, from the frequent guys, to the one-off's had distinct personalities.. many of which I'll never forget.

 

[captcalhoun]

theTransformers movie did well financially, but was VERY unpopular for slaughtering all of the Autobots and in particular offing Optimus Prime. the GI Joe movie tanked and they had to add in a voice-over that Duke was going into a coma and then had pulled through since he was originally scripted to die.

that, plus the MLP movie tanking, pretty much put Hasbro off making more.

 

[Rarewolf]

GI Joe wasn't that violent. My friends and i would joke abiut how in GI Joe everyone ejects out of their vehicles. ROBOTECH was the cartoon at the time where people actually died.

This, this and this... I HATED G.I. Joe (and the Transformers for that matter) back in their TV heyday.. Robotech was my cartoon of choice because people died, ran through a gamit of emotion and had to deal with everyday life. Joe was just too clean and neat and everyone survived..

As for the Transformers, I really just didn't like the animation (and still don't).

I'm assuming I'm younger (born in '77) I've never heard of Robotech.

I'm not sure how much of G.I.Joe was shown in the UK (where it was renamed Action Force)

I still have plenty of time for Transformers though.

 

[Disruptor]

the GI Joe movie did well financially, but was VERY unpopular for slaughtering all of the Autobots and in particular offing Optimus Prime. the GI Joe movie tanked and they had to add in a voice-over that Duke was going into a coma and then had pulled through since he was originally scripted to die.

that, plus the MLP movie tanking, pretty much put Hasbro off making more.

The GI JOE animated movie was not released theatrically as planned. Instead went to syndication t.v.

Hasbro stopped funding cartoons because their market research told them they weren't helping toy sales as much as they'd hoped. And funding the toons was expensive. Both Transformers and GI JOE were past the 65 episodes required for continually syndication, too. So they just reran those for awhile (until they stopped, probably because the characters in the shows were no longer available at retail, and stations wanted newer shows.)

The later, far worse, GI JOE cartoon was made by DiC, which made it for free or dirt cheap, because they were trying to corner the syndicated market.

Also, in regards to the killing of Optimus and the other characters, it shows what happens sometimes when you give kids "realism" of death. They may say "cool if characters died!", then their favorites get whacked and they cry like babies.

 

[jep316]

One question I'd like to get answered by an expert. How come there was never a G.I. Joe and Transformers team up? Marvel had a comic series dedicated to that idea long ago in a 4 part mini series. Was there an animated team up planned?

Well Cobra Commander did appear on Transformers,though he wasn't called that instead he was called Old Snake but it was clearly him and he almost did the Cobra scream but started coughing and the Transformer's character Marissa Faireborn is supposedly the daughter of Flint and Lady Jaye.

 

[captcalhoun]

I'm not sure how much of G.I.Joe was shown in the UK (where it was renamed Action Force).

owing to the laws regarding the sale of toys and tie-in shows the Joe cartoon was never aired here, it was sold as a series of videos with various stories on.

(said law being TV first, toys second; since the Action Force name had already been used since '82 for the Pallitoy line of mini-Action Man figures, they couldn't air Joe cartoons under the AF name)

 

[NextGen123]

I remember when the G.I. Joe and Transformers hit the airwaves, because I was hoping there would be a marketing campaign behind a Marvel Super Hero cartoon. Why couldn't there be an Avengers or Hulk cartoon with a massive toy line behind it? I could just as easily see a lot of vehicles and playsets behind an Avengers toon.


Why didn't Marvel push it's characters into the limelight first? I remember seeing brief references to Spidey in G.I. Joe and I have to wonder if there was ever going to be a crossover with the Marvel Super Heroes?

 

[NextGen123]

One of the reasons I was never a fan in the early days was because I couldn't understand why Marvel would let G.I. Joe and Transformers take the lead over their own characters. If Marvel was helping in the animation department, why wasn't there a more of an agressive move to put the Marvel characters into their own animated shows?

On another note, do any of our board members know if G.I. Joe story editor, Steve (Howard the Duck creator) Gerber was ever interviewed about his time on G.I. Joe?
I'd be curious to know if his employment as story editor for G.I. Joe had anything to do with his lawsuit over Howard the Duck?

 

[C.E. Evans]

One of the reasons I was never a fan in the early days was because I couldn't understand why Marvel would let G.I. Joe and Transformers take the lead over their own characters.

When did that happen? It's been a long time and I might have forgotten, but I don't recall the Joes and Transformers playing a significant role in the Marvel Universe.

If Marvel was helping in the animation department, why wasn't there a more of an agressive move to put the Marvel characters into their own animated shows?

I think it because the Joes and Transformers were ultimately owned by Hasbro, and those shows were basically commercials for Hasbro, IMO. Marvel was producing the show for them.