It was the summer of 1988. Steve Winwood (apparently) was at the top of the charts. The theaters were being dominated by Die Hard, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Bull Durham. Meanwhile, I was waiting out the longest six weeks ever for the arrival of Super Trooper.
If you’re a kid, waiting for something in the mail during the summer months is a tricky business, because you don’t want to wish away your summer. You want to experience every single lazy day where there is no threat of homework or grades or lemming-like running around a stupid track because the teacher thinks we need to complete a mile run—FOR SCIENCE!
But this was Super Trooper. This was the G.I. Joe figure that promised to be THE GREATEST JOE FIGURE OF ALL TIME. Why? Because the commercials said so, that’s why. Behold!
That was how you made a toy commercial in 1988: bad effects, overacting and horrible sets. And we loved it.
G.I. Joe was all about escalation. It started out as a simple military line with colorful personalities fighting the good fight against a handful of nefarious and unique villains. Then it started slowly going nuts. But it was the good kind of nuts, the kind of nuts that allows a loudmouth wrestler and a fatass football player to get their own fully awesome figures in a line. The level of badass kept getting raised, to the point where we could get our own action figure in the line in the form of the Steel Brigade figure.
Then came the Super Trooper. He was so awesome that he wasn’t going to bother hanging out in the toy aisle. No, if you wanted his chrome-helmet wearing presence you’d have to do so by special request. That’s right, this isn’t some putz that would come to your school and give you a lecture on not going up to the dudes in the white van; this was the dude that traveled around the world rounding up everybody who has ever driven a white van, piling them up into a dirtbag pile and lighting them on fire, arms raised, screaming into the night.
Super Trooper could be had for a single dollar bill and four Super Trooper proof of purchase doohickeys. No Flag Points for this guy; you could only buy Super Trooper with Super Trooper. It was a moebius loop of awesome. Super Trooper was the answer to his own riddle. How many Super Troopers could Super Troopers Super Trooper when a Super Trooper would Super Trooper? Super Trooper, that’s how many.
Super Trooper was so awesome that he has never been re-released in any form. He exploded onto the scene in 1988 at the same time John McClane was making an entire skyscraper his bitch and then disappeared into Joe mythology as quickly as he arrived, leaving nothing but the tears of Cobra in his wake. Super Trooper didn’t do cartoons. Super Trooper didn’t do comics (well, he did one, but nobody remembers it and it was overseas, so…disavowed and stuff).
Super Trooper didn’t do neon colors, or Eco-force, or Ninja-Shminja stuff. Super Trooper hit you in the face with his chrome plated shield and made you cry.
It was a six week wait for this guy, and when he finally arrived with his trademark chrome-plated gun (how pimped out does someone have to be to chrome plate his machine gun? This is a guy who eats chrome-plated cereal out of a chrome-plated breakfast bowl) he absolutely annihilated the Cobra forces on my living room floor single-handedly, brusquely shoving Sgt. Slaughter and Snake Eyes aside because they were too damn wimpy to take on EVERY COBRA EVER while punching a HISS tank in the treads and causing it to tip over. Super Trooper was a chrome-plated dynamo of unending pain served on a chrome-plated platter to the forces of Cobra. This was the same summer I got Powermaster Optimus Prime. Super Trooper threw him into the sun.
I think it would be monumentally apropos if the only way to get a six inch Super trooper figure in the inevitable six-inch G.I. Joe line was by mail-order. I think it should be hand-delivered by a guy dressed up as Super Trooper, who immediately beaned you in the face with his full-sized chrome-plated shield, raised his arms in the air and yelled in defiant victory. I personally would be there ready and waiting, hands outstretched, because Super Trooper made my summer of 1988 kick ass.
