This was pretty well known info from (probably) 1998-2002. There were very few JOe discussion boards but when DD opened their's up in 2001, a lot of guys were there. And a lot of stuff came to light. When Brian Savage Peterson jumped ship and created SavageSoundoffs.com, a lot of people jumped ship. Savage eventually left and SS became JBL. Then it went to Ring of Collectors and then it went back to it's own entity as JoeBattlelines.

Now here's the kicker. EEJ and Justin have explained this to me many times but I'm not sure how much I can remember accurately.

There are rights (copyrights) for all sorts of names.

The concept of Spirit, let's say, needs rights to
1. The Name
2. The likeness of the character in toy form.
3. the likeness of the character in print form.
4. the likeness of the character in cartoon/onscreen visual form.

You lose one of those and things can get messy. Someone like Hawk lost his names to Lanard (in fact, I believe Lanard grabbed all the names they could as quickly as possible cuz they are Walmart's army soldier toy division). There is, most likely, a HAWK figure under their toyline, Corps. So for JvC, Hasbro used General Tomahawk. Later on, it became General Abernathy. A lot of the characters suddenly had "-" around their codenames. That's how Hasbro got around a lot of the problems. Look for Hawk over on Yojoe.com and see how far you get. And then look up General Abernathy.

The only group that can do a canonized history would be Hasbro itself. You want history, read the filecards and make the history up yourself. People like to think that Hama's universe is canon but he's even said it interviews that he's telling the story of what he thinks GI Joe is. And the fact that it catered to SE and Scar and CC in the end, that was his story.

In the 80s, did any of us NEED the comic or cartoon to push a figure to want it? Not usually. I had Falcon and Tunnel Rat before I ever saw them in the movie and they were my fave. Flash was my 1st fave Joe in 82 and the comic had nothing to do with that.

BTW, I believe the Steel Brigade was created during the late ARAH days.

And to REALLY mess with your mind, you DO know that some of the Joes are named after real people, right? And I don't mean The Fridge and Sgt. Slaughter. Like, some of the biggest fans in the GI Joe club had figures. Perhaps the name David Lane is known? He's aka Surefire.

Actually, I was trying to point out that people who could swing their wait (ie; the hardcore fans aka the Steel Brigade) had toys made of them. You wonder why articulated wrists weren't the norm?

That's the only reason Hasbro make any Joe toy...to make a profit, pure and simple. I know it makes sense to reproduce classic figures for an anniversary set, but I just can not get excited about Snake Eyes v.64, or CC v.51, or Destro v.33, etc. As stated, I would love some new characters, but I would also be happier if they redid some of the more obscure figures that have only had one or two incarnations.

80% of the toons in the 80's were half hour long commercials, look at He-Man, Thundercats, you name it....even Jem for frig's sakes. However...those toys were bad-ass. I miss my Lion-o figure with the light up eyes....

i heard that the price was going to be $6.00 for one single pack and $25 for 5 of them just thought i'd let everyone know this :)

It's kind of getting to its own topic, but I just wanted to chip in on the new characters outside the toys thing... A few from Sonneilon's list did make it into the comics, I'm sure - didn't a few Joes including Snake Eyes and/or Falcon go up against some Sand Vipers and the newly-cyborg Overkill? And Burnout had a few non-speaking appearances in some Dreadnok group shots, as did con-exclusives Crusher and Demolisher (or at least the one with Sagat's head).

I'd add VvV Croc Master to the list as he's stated as being a new claimant to the name on his FC (and is appearing alongside some Jungle Vipers in next month's America's Elite #21), and the ROCC driver Long Range is a different guy to the Thunderclap driver (think Sky Patrol Airborne). He's not been in the DDP continued-universe series but as far as I was aware it's meant to be the same basic Long Range as the Sigma Six guy.

Overkill from Spy Troops onwards I would not count as the RAH character because the Talking Battle Commander's filecard is vastly different, saying he was a prototype for a new BAT series but cost too much to mass-produce; no mention of cyborg parts. And there's the pedantic matter that the RAH one was "Overkill" and the rest have been "Over Kill"...! :P

Medi-Viper is interesting in that we saw the troop at the end of the Marvel run but it took over a decade for a figure to show -- classing them as a new character would mean including Kwinn and the other comic pack Oktober Guard characters who'd not been figures before...

Oh, it's all so convoluted! Is it any wonder that for the anniversary Hasbro probably just went to the local colleges & bars, asked random people to name some GI Joe characters, then took the most-given 25 names to make the "most popular characters" into new figures!?

thats the truth. well for the most part. if you have the G.I. Joe seasons on dvd you can watch the extras. the thing the writers said they liked the most was the fact that hasbro never said " were coming out with this figure, so you have to do a 30 min show on him/her". i think they were smart enough to know that no matter who they had on the cartoon, it would only help sell figures, if you went to pick up shipwreck and you saw someone cooler, you would buy them too. and god knows i agree with you on snake eyes outrider. im sure everyone has saw me write a 100 times of how he was my fave character at first and now i think im at the edge of being anti-snake eyes. as far as the new characters go, i dont think i said it right when i said i didnt like them. i mean that is what i said, but what i mean is that i want new characters more like shipwreck, lowlight, bazooka, outback, or letherneck. i guess what im looking for in new joes are some gritty types. give them some facial hair and make them mean and dirty. the pretty boys like barrel row are great for customs but id like to see some new joes who look battle worn.

Get a load of this, Leshreh. People didn't want gritty Joes! I know, it sounds unreal but DD tried that with Reloaded and it bombed! Reloaded was also a redux of GI Joe, trying to start it over, which didn't quite work. GI Joe the comic sells around 20k. There's probably less than a thousand on the Joe boards combined. It's those OTHER guys who made Reloaded fail. (well, DD too, but uh, you get the idea. lol)

The game is, if you make a toy, it needs an outlet. 3.75" Joe simply didn't do well these last few years due to lack of cartoon and lack of marketing. Imagine if Hasbro pushed GI Joe as hard as the guys who did Pokemon back in 98? So the problem now is, EVEN if Joe is in B&M, how are they gonna market these to the non-internet kids? We already know that the online Joe thing didn't quite pan out (the collector base was not enough to make it 'successful').

Let's keep in mind that there are 15 OTHER figures to show up. We know Hasbro's TOP 10 and most likely that is THE CORE. You almost can't question it if this is considered a CLASSICS line by most people. (And if they punk us and repaint people, WE have every right to be pissed off. Cobra Officer the exception, of course.)

There is no reason why Shipwreck, LowLight (he was 85, right?) and Leatherneck (85 also? Or 86?) wouldn't be made. Hasbro cut the date at 1985, that's already been stated by them. Hasbro knows that people will recognize a duder like Duke or Snake Eyes or Cobra Commander before Leatherneck and LowLight, no matter HOW cool the latter two are. Personally, I'd like them to push till 87 so Falcon and Tunnel Rat could be made.