Over the past week or so, wave 2 of the Target Special Teams have started to hit retail (Bazooka, Recondo, Cobra Trooper), and today I just got the notification for my preorder on the Tiger Force guys shipping soon from Hasbro Pulse. In addition, during an unboxing stream for the HasLab Skystriker, Hasbro let slip that Helix and a troop builder pack for GI Joe (aka, the greenshirts) is on the way.
Entertainment Earth‘s Drop Zone has a strong hint that February 14 with feature some new GI Joe preorders, so we should be getting news of a fan stream or something in the coming week or so. Or we’ll just get a drop on Valentine’s Day.
Apparently
Gilroy talked about the real reason for GI Joe Renegades cancelation...
It sounds more like they axed it for some of the same reasons they did Animated and Classics (minus the wacky Avengers connection).
Some of that really doesn’t jive with prior explanations, or even Hasbro’s own business at the time. I don’t know if there is some context missing or just faulty memory at play here. Renegades was still in production when the film came out, the show didn’t premiere until nearly a year and half AFTER the film’s release.
I think Renegades was just caught up in the aftermath of the first film’s lackluster performance. Indications from what I recall was that Hasbro and Paramount had initially “fast tracked” the sequel (whose story was VERY similar to Renegades), leading to Hasbro being worried about the two being too similar. Then the first film hit, underperformed (both as a film and a toy line), and that sequel’s progress stalled out after Renegades had already been cancelled. I firmly believe Hasbro EXPECTED GI Joe to do well enough to justify a two line structure like what Transformers got (with Classics/Universe/Generations running alongside a media tie in line), but when that didn’t happen…they basically salvaged what they could from the abandoned, first iteration, of Pursuit of Cobra.
But in terms of the superhero angle…I think that may have been a failure in communication. The last time GI Joe was a really viable mainstream property was in the early 2000s, where it seemed the design group DID take the angle of “superheroes without super powers” in terms of GI Joe product and fiction design. Maybe the exec wanted something like what Gilroy thought, or maybe they just wanted each character to have more distinctive look with a more defined role in the overall brand.
Today, Stalker has been largely relegated to being a “pre tool” or retool, depending, of Snake Eyes. It is expected they would share the same base design because that’s how the first toys were. But in the 2000s, Stalker was a bespoke character with bespoke look that was wholly unique from Snake Eyes or Grunt.
I think THAT Is, perhaps, what the exec was thinking about. And within that realm, most of GI Joe‘s central characters DO fit into many of the archetypes the Avengers ended up being:
Snake Eyes - Wolverine/Winter Soldier (badass with a secret past)
Duke- Captain America (all American stoic hero)
Roadblock- Hulk (gentle giant with big guns)
Scarlett- Black Widow (super spy with crossbow weapon)
Gung Ho- Thor (strong, but dim, heavy weapons with big personality)
Flint- Iron Man (secondary leader, sarcastic but skilled)
Lady Jaye- Captain Marvel (Frontline heroine)
Beachhead- War Machine (Serious counterpoint to Flint)
Stalker- Falcon (charismatic friend to Duke)
And GI Joe has the assorted specialists which fall into the likes of Ant-Man or Wasp as being prominent but not necessarily always present except for needed missions.
I maintain that the biggest failing of the brand since 2008 has been the inability to “let go” of the hardcore realism angle that has permeated the existing fandom and really embrace the fun side of GI Joe. Hell, regardless of scale, if I were making a “kids angle” GI Joe toy line, every one of them would have Nerf inspired sci-fi blasters, not replications of existing real world weapons. Major Bludd is probably my favorite Classified BECAUSE they embraced the cyborg angle and gave him that sweet oversized revolver he’s got.
