G.I. Joe (franchise)

This article is about the real-world Hasbro franchise. For the fictional counter-terrorist team, see G.I. Joe (team).

G.I. Joe is one of Hasbro's most long-lived franchises, originating in the 1960s as the very first line of "action figures." Though it has undergone many revisions and relaunches since then, it has always maintained a military theme, often with a science-fiction edge. In part because of the nature of the franchise and in part because of similarities in presentation, G.I. Joe and Transformers share much of the same fanbase. The fictional universes of the two franchises have also overlapped on several occasions, originally due to pure marketing but more recently due to nostalgia.

History

1980s

Following its initial popularity in the mid to late 1960s, the G.I. Joe line underwent several rebrandings and redesigns in the '70s with varying degrees of success. In 1982 Hasbro decided to try a complete overhaul, drastically reducing the size of the figures, broadening the cast, and commissioning Marvel Comics to develop a brand-new universe for them to occupy. The resulting comic book and toyline proved massively popular, and Hasbro quickly expanded the scope of their marketing to include a television cartoon by Sunbow Productions in 1983.

The success of this formula led Hasbro to repeat it a year later when the Transformers property was developed, having Marvel create the universe and print a comic while Sunbow produced a cartoon based on Marvel's premise. The G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons were often broadcast in the same programming block, and their similar art style, shared musical scores and voice-actors, and mutual sci-fi action themes made them popular with roughly the same audience. The third season of the Transformers cartoon even featured cameos by characters intended to be (but never officially identified as) Flint and Cobra Commander. The comics were more dissimilar in tone, but they actually shared a bona fide crossover, G.I. Joe and the Transformers. (While this crossover was fully in-continuity with the contemporary Transformers storyline, the G.I. Joe comic ignored it.)

Meanwhile, in the UK, Hasbro had licensed Palitoy to sell similar products, but the marketing was somewhat different. The term "G.I." specifically refers to the U.S. military, so the line was sold abroad as "Action Man". When the A Real American Hero line caught on in the U.S., Palitoy responded with Action Force, which was similar in engineering but contained its own unique characters and storylines. In 1985, Hasbro's characters and concepts finally began to seep into Action Force, and an awkward transitional period commenced. During this time, a brief crossover with the UK Generation 1 comic occurred, wherein an entirely G.I.-Joe-specific cast, calling itself "Action Force", fought Megatron underneath London. Meanwhile, in a display of incongruity in the UK's approach to the G.I. Joe franchise, another storyline in the Action Force comic featured an ad for the Transformers comic... in the background of one of its panels!

In time, Action Force was rebranded as G.I. Joe: The Action Force, with a promotional comic explaining that the North American and European teams had been too divided to effectively fight Cobra. Eventually the term "Action Force" was dropped altogether.

1990s

Where the 1980s had seen A Real American Hero and Generation 1 ruling toy aisles, comic shops, and TV screens, that glory quickly faded in the '90s. The death of Generation 1 came in 1991, and when it was reborn as Generation 2 in 1993, Hasbro decided to promote it through the A Real American Hero comic, itself on death's door. Where the previous crossover had been politely ignored in the pages of the more "serious" G.I. Joe book, this one was unavoidable, and the author simply ran with it as though the first crossover had happened all along. But then, when the crossover ended, the universes seemed to split again, as the Generation 2 comic featured worldwide apocalyptic havoc and the obliteration of San Francisco, events that showed no signs of happening in the contemporary Joe issues.

By the end of that year, A Real American Hero came to a close, and with it, the G.I. Joe franchise in general. It would remain dormant for the remainder of the decade outside of the occasional collectors' sets.

2000s

Around the same time that nostalgia filled the sails of Generation 1 once more, G.I. Joe also enjoyed a comeback. Hasbro began to invest again in new A Real American Hero toys and comics, commissioning Devil's Due Press to continue Marvel's continuity. While these new comics also pointedly ignored the Transformers crossovers nominally in their backstory, Devil's Due happily produced several Transformers crossover miniseries set in a fresh, unique universe of their own. As usual, this universe was based on a mixture of A Real American Hero and Generation 1 elements, but by the end, it had also referenced some older concepts, such as the '70s-era Atomic Man and Adventure Team.

Meanwhile, the comic company with the Transformers license, Dreamwave Productions, produced its own alternate-universe G.I. Joe crossover. The first miniseries transplanted A Real American Hero and Generation 1 concepts into an alternate version of World War II, with Cobra playing the role of the Nazis. A second miniseries followed that universe into the present day, but it was halted after a mere single issue by Dreamwave's bankruptcy and collapse.

Outside of comics, there was virtually no connection between the G.I. Joe and Transformers franchises except for a couple of homages in the Unicron Trilogy toys, of all places. First, the Energon character Snow Cat was clearly designed to look like the G.I. Joe vehicle of the same name. Then the Mini-Con Skyhammer, sold under the 2008 Universe franchise's "Armada Series", was given a deco very similar to a Cobra Rattler. However, this universe has never featured any other kind of G.I. Joe crossover, so the significance of these toys is unclear.

Future

With IDW Publishing now holding the rights to print both G.I. Joe and Transformers comics, they have hinted at crossovers to come. What form they may take remains to be seen.