The year was 1987. G.I. Joe was about to take their mojo to the big screen. Unfortunately, unlike the Transformers a year before, they never made it. Despite being crazy awesome with absolutely bitchin’ music, the animated Transformers movie performed poorly, as did another movie based on a Hasbro property by the name of My Little Pony. I always knew the ponies were to blame for something. So G.I. Joe: the Movie was relegated to straight-to-video and television airplay only. This meant that theaters across the world were unable to revel in the most awesome intro scene in cinematic history.
But none of that is the point of this article.
If you look at 1987, and specifically the Cobra agents of 1987, you start to…wonder about some things.
In order to put it into perspective, let’s look at 1986 first. That year introduced several Cobras that became integral parts of the overall Joe myth. Dr. Mindbender was introduced in both comic and cartoon and immediately became an important part of several story-lines. Zartan’s family grew with the introduction of Zandar and Zarana and they were embraced. B.A.T.S. Were super-popular, and even Monkeywrench showed up regularly in the cartoon.
But then 1987 rolls around. The cartoon was no longer in production, but the comic was still rolling along as popular as ever, and there’s that movie. Several new Joes from 1987 were introduced (rather clumsily) in the movie, and the comics immediately embraced a handful of them. But the villains, the new Cobras…what about them? Sure, Cobra Commander’s swanky new battle armor ended up having plenty of screen time in the DIC cartoon and for plenty of comic issues, and the members of Cobra La were front and center in the movie even though Larry Hama refused to use them in his comic (I can’t blame him even though I love Cobra La).
The G.I. Joe line had hit an easy stride of a handful of new good guys, a handful of new “personality-type” bad guys and some different Viper types. The Cobra personalities were always a bit nutty, but they were embraced by whatever media was happening at the time. But in 1987 these new faces of Cobra barely made a blip. Nothing for the movie, and barely anything in the comic. Strange. Weird, even. For my part, I loved and love Joe stuff, and these new Cobras easily became integrated into my world. I was looking forward to seeing them either in action or on the printed page, but for the most part they got nothing. Let’s take a look at these misfits and see what’s under the hood or some other similarly bad metaphor.
Big Boa
Man, I loved this guy. How cool were the removable boxing gloves? Don’t answer, I already know how cool they were: really friggin’ cool. Big Boa was the Cobra trainer, and was created to be the foil to the G.I. Joe team’s intended trainer, who was going to be Rocky Balboa. While Rocky never joined the Fridge and Sgt. Slaughter as a real-world inspired Joe, his nemesis Big Boa stayed in the line. But he never seemed to catch on. He was even relegated to special subscription status in the new Joe line, which meant high prices and no sale for me. In the Devil’s Due Joe comic, he finally got a chance to shine, but was promptly killed. Nobody, it seems, gives a rat’s ass about Big Boa. But I care about him. Not only do I care about him, but I’d put him in the first year of figures if we got a six inch line. Super-stardom is waiting just around the corner.
Croc Master
I think with this second character you start to see a pattern: these are behind the scenes guys. That seems like an odd choice to make if you want to have your toys pop off the shelves, but Hasbro seemed to want to go in a weird direction. I’m assuming it’s because they front loaded with Cobra La and were pouring all of their energy into making them a hit. So they started filling in the odd jobs of the Cobra empire. Big Boa was a trainer and Croc Master was essentially a weird guard with a pet Croc. Like I keep saying; it’s all very strange. Croc Master was, like Big Boa, another oddity with a great design. But there was not even a passing shot of him in the movie, and if he showed up in the comic it was blink and miss it. In a year that included people like Cobra La, Croc Master was actually normal by comparison.
Crystal Ball
The only character on this list whose figure I never had. Crystal Ball is, of course, the Cobra Hypnotist. It just keeps getting odder and odder with these guys. Crystal Ball was straight out of a ’50s horror movie with supernatural mind-reading powers and hints of being the seventh son of the seventh son and other Stephen King-written stuff (literally, his bio was apparently written by Stephen King). Crystal Ball makes Dr. Mindbender look normal. Does it get any weirder than this? Wellll…
Raptor
Dude dresses like a bird. Yeah; it just got totally wackadoo. This is the guy that both Crystal Ball and Dr. Mindbender raise their eyebrows at and shake their heads while walking away slowly. First there’s a trainer, then a guard, then a hypnotist, and now a Falconer? I can’t tell if they were running out of ideas
and desperate or giggling like madmen at what they thought they could make kids buy. You just don’t find that kind of insanity nowadays, and I love it. I admit, Raptor was not high on my list at the time I bought him—he was a “car trip” purchase, meaning my family and I were in another state, and I was in the back seat and bored, and he was the only new Joe on the peg at the store we stopped in, so I got him, plus a Madball, and the Justice League annual, and one of those small G.I. Jo digests yes I have a weird memory shut up I wasn’t spoiled run on sentence–but when I got him, he immediately became this crazy bird-themed nutbag who the joes were terrified of because he was a frickin’ dude dressed as a bird. And those wings were actually uninhibiting and awesome. Raptor!
Zanzibar
The Pirate Dreadnok.There was a new Dreadnok every wave or two, and 1987 was Zanzibar’s turn. Zanzibar came with the Dreadnok Air Skiff and showed up in a couple issues of the comic. Zanzibar had no screen time and few comic appearances, meaning he’s kind of the forgotten Dreadnok in many ways. He was preceded by Monkeywrench in ’86 and followed by Road Pig in ’88, two dynamic personalities, which meant he quickly ended up being the old maid of the Dreadnok clan. I’m going to assume it was the topknot. Remember when that was a fashion thing? Yeah, good riddance to that year. He had a real rooted hair topknot, which meant he was actually a doll. I’m kidding, they’re all dolls. But yeah, he was a pirate, with his topknot and his eyepatch and his air skiff, so he felt a bit perfunctory and “fill in the blank.” While he faded into the Dreadnok background, a nok’s a nok, and Zanzibar is an awesome name. Like Charlie Brown’s tree, all he need is a little love.
So that was Cobra in 1987. What a weird year it was. But in an odd way, despite how ignored they seem to be in most media, I have a fondness for each and every one of them, and if I had my way, I’d put them into the first year of a 6-inch line of Joes. So how about making that dream line happen, Hasbro?
