The G.I. Joe Movie You Didn't Realize Marvel Helped Make

The original G.I. Joe toyline was conceived in 1963 by designer Stanley Weston and was meant to serve as a more "masculine" counterpart to the female dolls designed for girls. Indeed, the word "doll" was used by marketers to describe babies or dress-up miniature women, not soldiers or men of action. Hasbro came up with the term "action figure" to refer to its G.I. Joes, and the term stuck. For several generations, children's toys were heavily gendered along those lines, with "girl" toys encouraging motherhood, domesticity, and fashion, while "boy" toys encouraged combat and violence.

By 1982, the G.I. Joe brand had become moribund and was in need of a sprucing up. A new line of toys was launched under the new name G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. These figures were only 3.75 inches high (the older ones were 12 inches) and were composed of 11 cartoony characters. They were American soldiers ... kind of. G.I. Joe was really a multinational organization that fought a freelance band of world terrorists known as Cobra. The toys were released alongside a Marvel comic book and a full-blown animated show, itself overseen by Marvel and Sunbow Productions.

The series, although little more than a glorified toy commercial, was phenomenally successful, running 95 episodes over three years. It entrenched itself deeply in the consciousnesses of the children watching, a prime example of successful branding. '80s kids tend to speak of the silly-ass paramilitary toy ad in glowing terms.

On April 20, 1987, "G.I. Joe: The Movie" was released on home media. It was a high-end, 93-minute feature that starred dozens of G.I. Joe characters, old and new, and featured a bigger, more expansive story. It was initially intended to be a theatrical release, but moved to home video after the Hasbro-produced films "My Little Pony: The Movie" and the deathly "The Transformers: The Movie" (both released in 1986) tanked at the box office.

Fun trivia: "G.I. Joe: The Movie," like the toy line, was partially overseen by Marvel Productions, the same company that made multiple superhero shows from 1981 to 1993.

It's worth recalling that Marvel wasn't always the united entertainment giant that it became in the 2010s. For many decades, the House of Ideas licensed its characters among many different companies, and its superheroes were often found alongside other, non-Marvel characters. Marvel Productions (not the same as Marvel Studios) oversaw the 1980s "Spider-Man" series, as well as "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends," and a little-remembered '80s cartoon TV show version of "The Incredible Hulk." The company also frequently teamed up with other entertainment companies, in addition to animating the '80s "Dungeons & Dragons" series and the very popular "Muppet Babies."

Marvel Productions also had its fingers deep into the Hasbro toy tie-in pie and oversaw production of toy-based shows like "Robotix," "Inhumanoids," "The GLO Friends," "Dino-Riders," "The Potato Head Kids," and "Jem and the Holograms." It wouldn't return to adapting Marvel Comics characters until the 1989 release of "Pryde of the X-Men," a one-time special that never made it to series. By 1993, the Marvel characters were licensed to other companies (Saban made the '90s "X-Men" series that was later revived with "X-Men '97" on Disney+, while Marvel Films Animation made the '90s "Spider-Man" cartoon), and Marvel Productions had changed names. It was thereafter called New World Animation, becoming a subsidiary of Roger Corman's film empire.

Of course, New World was ultimately purchased by the News Corporation/Fox, which was, in turn, purchased by the Walt Disney Company in 2001. As we all know, Disney eventually bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009 followed by 20th Century Fox in 2019, so Disney really owns everything mentioned in this article (including the TV version of "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero").

The 1980s version of "G.I. Joe," however, was always an unofficial adjunct of the Marvel Comics universe, as Marvel published the toy line's tie-in comics. Similarly, "G.I. Joe: The Movie" is definitely more like a superhero comic than a hard-edged military thriller. Its plot involves the discovery of an underground civilization called the Cobra-La, overseen by the evil Golobulus (Burgess Meredith) and his sidekicks Pythona (Jennifer Darling) and Nemesis Enforcer (the legendary Peter Cullen). Golobulus teams up with Serpentor (Dick Gautier) and Cobra Commander (Chris Latta) to capture a new team of G.I. Joe recruits with names like Jinx (Shuka Akune), Big Lob (Brad Sanders), Tunnel Rat (Laurie Faso), and Chuckles.

The film, of course, served only to introduce a heap of new characters as Hasbro had a new generation of toys it wanted to hawk. It was set in fantastical locations, and the characters all had high-tech weapons that bordered on the magical. In concept, "G.I. Joe" was meant as military propaganda (the Joes are, after all, real American heroes), but in execution, it was just as outlandish a fantasy as "Transformers."

"G.I. Joe: The Movie" was directed by longtime animation veteran Don Jurwich, who also directed the bulk of "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" and wrote shows like "Heyyy, It's the King!," "Heathcliff," and "The Tom & Jerry Kids Show." He even co-wrote and co-directed the little-known X-rated 1976 animated film "Once Upon a Girl...," so he clearly had a fun, raunchy sense of humor. "Girl" and "Joe" were the only two features he made.

Disney, Fox, Marvel, military propaganda, animated porn, and toy commercials. They all make strange bedfellows.