Spotted Online – “Have Politics Killed GI Joe?”
I posted a little last week about the current state of Hasbro’s G.I. Joe series (see “Hasbro Celebrates 50 Years of G.I. Joe . . . by killing the line?”) and word seems to be slowly spreading that things are not okay in G.I. Joeland.
How “not okay” are things? Well, word is Hasbro closed down the team that works on the line. That’s not a very good sign of near-future toys.
The most recent article I’ve seen is posted at columbusfreepress.com where J. J. Ulm writes:
“According to one former Hasbro employee, “The problem with GI Joe is that they have a GREAT set of villains and a worthless protagonist team—arguably, one tied so directly to the US Military that combined international disapproval of US military actions and domestic fatigue from two decade-long wars have rendered the brand toxic. The last time that happened, we got ‘Adventure Team’.—
I know I wouldn’t argue at all if someone over at Hasbro sat back and said: “We need to take another stab at 8-inch Adventure Team action figures.” Specifically, G.I. Joe: Sigma Six-style (Amazon.com search*) toys following the concept they used for Adventure Team toys in 2007.
Like these Adventure Team sets.
Yeah, I can dream.
Related articles
- G.I. Joe on Kindle Worlds (battlegrip.com)
- Remember, Only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe (battlegrip.com)
- Infographic: G.I. Joe Turns 50 (theonion.com)
I think it’s extremely reductive to claim that “politics” killed G..I. Joe. “Politics” sure haven’t reduced the popularity of real-world military-themed video games like Call of Duty and Battlefield among children the world over. (Yes, I know Call of Duty and Battlefield are “M-rated” games, but let’s not kid ourselves, log-in to any multiplayer game and chances are you’ll hear kids in the 10+ age range playing online.)
There are more factors in play with G.I. Joe’s decline than some nebulous connection between political climate and parents’ toy-buying preferences. I’m not saying that the political climate doesn’t influence action figure-buying behaviors, but at the same time, It’s probably easier for Hasbro or its apologists to claim that the property’s fading fortunes are due to some external factor they have no control over like “politics” than to admit that they perhaps haven’t handled the IP as well as they could have.
I’d love to see the return of the Adventure Team. But the thing is, the whole ”GI Joe is a military toy line” isn’t strictly true. Keep in mind we’ve had ninja forces, space battlers, toxic/eco-themed characters, adventure teams, superheroes, spies and countless other themes. The problem as I see it is that Hasbro has got itself stuck in the military mindset and rather than do as they did in the past and evolve the line to be something else, they’re sticking to the whole army guys thing.
The ARAH cartoon is almost as ridiculous as MOTU and ThunderCats in terms of the plots. They’re not gritty, military stories. They’re about a team of quasi-superheroes working with an international peacekeeping force to battle science being misused by an evil organization. That’s the spirit they need to recapture. Get product on the shelves and support it with a cartoon series that features this kind of theme to attract a new audience.
Or they could just bring back MASK.
Agreed. I’ve never seen a property so poorly handled as G.I. Joe in this last seven years. When I think of all the gorgeous toys they produced since 2007, I also think about horrible distribution, zero advertising and an overall lack of enthusiasm from Hasbro’ s higher-ups. I often wonder why they bothered keeping the brand alive at all if they were intent on allowing it to flounder and fail the way they have.
I was going to mention the Call of Duty conundrum as soon as I saw this, but Zed mentioned it first. This was the same thing we were told when Sigma 6 Launched: that military toys were unpopular and nonviable in the toy market, yet military games seem to fine with the same demographic.
Personally, I think the issue with G.I. Joe is that Hasbro can never stay on one theme for too long. When Sigma 6 was popular, look at how many different themes they covered? After the 25th Anniversary line was coming to a close (that actually lasted for a decent amount of time) and Rise of Cobra Hit, we then saw POC, Renegades, 30th anniv, and Resolute all within a short period of time. When Renegades was starting to get some good buzz and the 30th anniversary were exciting collectors again, Hasbro killed everything for Resolute, then didn’t release anything for almost a year when the movie got delayed.
Also, when Hasbro switches themes they don’t do it quickly. They completely wait for the old theme to be forgotten. When the 25th ended around Dec of 2009 we didn’t see new product for ROC until around June of 2009. There was about six months of no product on shelves. When new ROC product ended around Nov 2009, we didn’t see anything until POC in Sept or Oct of 2010. After a major film (even if it didn’t do well) Hasbro let shelves remain bare for almost a year. After pursuit of Cobra/Renegades/30th anniv ended in Fall of 2011, shelves stayed bare until May 2012 when the movie line trickled out, then got delayed, thus another year of nothing.
I appreciate that Hasbro lets multiple media forms exist (there were pretty much three different G.I. Joe comic universes running for awhile) and lets the club do its thing, but those projects only sustain Joe for the fans, not for the kids. To retailers, G.I. Joe is a movie line, no longer an evergreen property. While it can be argued that for Resolute most retailers ordered conservative amounts of product, all of the previous gaps were absolutely Hasbro not shipping anything. Sadly, I feel they’re doing the same thing with Star Wars as well. Let’s hope Disney lights a fire under them to keep SW going non-stop.