20 Messed Up G I Joes That Actually Got Made

Although there is technically still an active G.I. Joe toy line to this day, the most famous was the “Real American Hero” era that lasted from 1982 to 1994. In that time, over 500 figures were produced, most of which went on to appear in the 1980s animated TV show and/or the Marvel Comics series.

Obviously, there are only so many variations on traditional military tropes, so Hasbro had to start getting creative with the direction of new toys as demand called for more and more figures. The results were mixed to say the least, producing both some of the best-loved toys in history as well as some of the strangest. Even apart from the celebrity stunt casting and inclusion of outside brands like Street Fighter within the G.I. Joe toy line, many of the original figure concepts that Hasbro came up with were completely off the wall and make even less sense in retrospect than they did at the time.

In some cases, toys that didn’t seem offensive in the 80s have retroactively become politically incorrect. In others, it’s hard to imagine that even within the craziness that was the 1980s did nobody stop and think, “Is this really a good idea for a children’s toy?” before a figure went into production and under Christmas trees everywhere.

Here are 20 Messed Up G.I. Joes That Actually Got Made.

20 Headman

A few years ago, Toys R Us got into some hot water for selling toys based on the TV series Breaking Bad– a valid complaint, as not only was Walter White a drug-dealing psychopath, his accessories included a baggie of blue meth. But as it turns out, having a toy based off of a drug dealer is a-ok so long as that drug dealer is a character from a kids’ TV show rather than an adult drama.

Or maybe it was just okay because, you know, it was the 80s.**

Not only does Headman peddle illegal substances, he does so in what can only be described as the uniform of a wrangler of ladies of the night– fedora, gold pinstriped suit, Fu Manchu facial hair, gold teeth; the whole deal. Again, can we just remind ourselves that this was a toy that was meant to be played with by young children?

19 Blanka

Like most things based on video games– movies, TV shows, novels, YouTube channels– toys based on games have always been a very hit-or-miss affair, with a heavy emphasis on the miss. Part of the problem is that video game companies never bother to properly vet the toy makers that buy the rights to their stuff, and the results are predictably poor.

Having Hasbro handle the Street Fighter toys seemed like a solid idea.

The company even went as far as to include the SF figures in the official G.I. Joe line. But that ended up being more of a blessing than a curse, as most of the figures were just re-purposed Joes with different heads. The most egregious of these was Blanka, who has the entire body of Road Pig– who looks nothing like Blanka– only with a different head. At least they bothered to turn him green.

18 Ice Cream Soldier

Sounding more like a boss from a Kirby game and less like the codename of a soldier, it’s impossible to take anything about Ice Cream Soldier seriously– and his neon orange and yellow uniform doesn’t help his case.

Supposedly, Ice Cream Soldier’s name is meant to cause his enemies to underestimate him, and have them eat crow when he shows up brandishing his rocket launcher and flamethrower. But when your weapons are a rocket launcher and a flamethrower, do you really need to rely on name-based trickery to get them to let their guard down first?

Ice Cream Soldier has gone on to be the poster boy for everything that was wrong with G.I. Joe in the 90s, in the era that eventually led to the demise of the original line. Nice work, dessert boy.

17 Ghostrider

Other than his stylish scarf that has no place on a battlefield, there’s nothing too wrong or embarrassing about Ghostrider except for one not-so-insignificant detail: his problematic name.

It’s a name that was already spoken for within the Marvel world.

And that presented a challenge when it inevitably came time for Ghostrider to join the universe of Marvel’s G.I. Joe comics. Obviously, Marvel wasn’t going to allow for a second Ghostrider, but the canon had to be consistent and his name couldn’t just be changed. The solution? In the comics, it becomes a running gag that nobody can remember Ghostrider’s name as a way around anyone having to actually say it, making the character’s appearance in the comics feel like an ongoing SNL sketch.

Not surprisingly, it’s a joke that was only (mildly) funny the first time.

16 Robo-JOE

One of the reasons that G.I. Joes were so popular initially is how much articulation the toys had. After generations of action figures that, at most, would only have arms that swiveled at the shoulders and legs that swiveled at the hips, G.I. Joes were revolutionary in having bendable elbows and knees as well as twistable waists.

And they threw all that progress away with Robo-J.O.E.

Not only did Robo-J.O.E. look like one of those cheap dollar store knock-offs that you’d beg your parents for but regret it within five minutes of bringing home home– you’d have been better off with a balloon, honestly– it played like one too, featuring a stiff body that barely moved at all. The impressive arsenal that he came with just felt like a tease since you could barely get him to effectively use any of that stuff anyway.

Robo-J.O.E.? More like Robo-N.O.P.E.

15 Grunt

When G.I. Joes first came out, Hasbro was still keeping things simple by having the crew consist of mostly standard soldier archetypes. The farthest that any of the initial batch of Joes strayed from normalcy is having one of them be a ninja.

In the case of Grunt, they took that simplicity just a little too far.

Grunt is a character who is as bland and uninteresting as his name suggests. Sure, there has to be some cannon fodder for the bad guys, but they turned Grunt into a legitimate character rather than just having his design be used to fill out the battlefield backgrounds on the show.

The only way that Grunt could be any less remarkable is if his name had literally just been “Soldier” and he wore a mask to make him even more anonymous.

14 Hannibal

This is a weird one– a G.I. Joe based on a real person. And no, not like a Hasbro employee or some kid who won a contest, but a well-known historical figure.

After all, kids love their Carthaginian history!

What’s even weirder about picking a Mediterranean general who terrorized the ancient Romans to base a G.I. Joe toy on is the direction they took his character. Being a clone of the legendary military strategist, G.I. Joe’s Hannibal was a teenaged metal head with a leather jacket and serious 90s ’tude. Other than thinking the name was cool, it’s hard to imagine why Hasbro even bothered linking Hannibal to the historical figure in the first place. Maybe they were hoping to catch some of that sweet Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? windfall.

13 Footloose

G.I. Joe largely existed alongside the rise of the D.A.R.E. campaign, which infiltrated every corner of pop culture it could weasel into, in order to keep kids sober. The G.I. Joe series was definitely a product of its time in that regard, with its iconic “And knowing is half the battle!” lessons at the end of each episode, which often revolved around talking kids out of doing bad stuff. Like substances.

So why not have a G.I. Joe who is a user?

His bio card stated that he dropped out of college and “became quite weird for about three years” and how he was prone to cosmic pondering. Sounds like they’re doing everything they can to say he’s a substance user without coming out and saying it. How did nobody tell Nancy Reagan about this!?

12 Starduster

It’s no big conspiracy that the G.I. Joe cartoon was created specifically to sell toys. The same goes for Transformers, He-Man, and the Care Bears. Sorry that we have to be the one to break your hearts about the truth behind your favorite childhood shows. Maybe don’t Google anything about the Easter Bunny until you’ve composed yourself.

That said, Starduster took an already sinister corporate ploy to ridiculous new lows. For not only is Starduster part of a brand that made cartoons to sell toys, but he was specifically designed to sell the cereal based on said cartoon and toy brand– and you had to buy the cereal to get him! Sure, he’s got a jetpack which is kind of cool, but none of that matters. Might as well have just made the Trix rabbit or Toucan Sam a member of the Joes instead.

11 Rapid-Fire

We’re living in a time when movies have so little value after they leave the theater that we can just stream most movies for basically pennies per view. But movies at home used to be a fairly expensive luxury, even in the days of subpar VHS tapes.

A G.I. Joe bundled with a VHS tape was actually a pretty good value for its time, even if the entire concept of a toy/VHS combo pack is about as dated a sentiment as you can come up with.

The problem was that the episode of G.I. Joe on the tape that came with Rapid-Fire didn’t even include him.

Like, at all! It feels more like they had this figure they weren’t confident in and decided to throw him in as a freebie with a tape, rather than the other way around.

10 Chuckles

A G.I. Joe named Chuckles is surely a clown, right? No? Then he has to be a stand-up comedian. Still no? We give up. What type of Joe could possibly have a codename as silly as Chuckles, then?

He’s an undercover cop with a Hawaiian shirt, of course.

So why would a cop who is trying to have a low profile look like a Mad Magazine spoof about Miami Vice? It’s better not to ask too many questions about such things. Even more nonsensical than the entire concept of Chuckles is that they thought any kid would want to play with him, especially as his accessories consist only of a shoulder strap and a small handgun.

Later versions of the comics would try to toughen/darken up the character a bit, but that didn’t change what a completely pointless toy he was in the 80s.

9 Croc Master

Oh boy, where do we even begin? The concept of a villain who has the persona of a crocodile isn’t a terrible one. See: the Batman villain with that same MO. But that’s where anything reasonable about Croc Master ends and the weirdness begins.

For starters, there’s Croc Master’s outfit, which is a bit on the fabulous side but it mostly matches his character.

However, it turns out that the “Master” in his name applies to more than just his dominance over aquatic animals, as evidenced by his two primary weapons– whips and chains– and a mask that is generally kept by people who have dungeons attached to their bedrooms. Sure, most of this was probably lost on innocent young children, but it doesn’t make it any less inappropriate as a basis for a kids’ action figure.

8 Hardball

A lot of G.I. Joes integrated their careers and hobbies off the battlefield into their military personae. Several Joes moonlighted as athletes, and when we’re talking a sport like football that is all about toughness and physicality, it makes some sense to work a sports theme into a soldier’s wartime presence.

Baseball, however, is anything but intimidating.

We’re not knocking the sport of baseball or questioning that it takes a large degree of strength and athleticism to be a baseball player. Rather, we’re suggesting that seeing someone approach you wearing a white baseball jersey and blue cap is unlikely to give you much doubt that the ensuing shootout isn’t going to go your way. We have to wonder if Hardball was originally supposed to be based on a star baseball player of the era and the deal fell through, but the toy was too far along in production to scrap it entirely.

7 Clean-Sweep

There are a lot of jobs in the military, and they can’t all be action-packed. For instance, someone needs to cook the food. But that doesn’t mean that there needed to be a toy based on the dude who ran the Joes’ mess hall.

However, at some point it was decided that the battlefield clean-up crew needed to be represented in toy form.

Few things are harder to make kids do than clean up their toys, so it would stand to reason that every kid would want to have a toy that lets them pretend to clean up. Fine, so Clean-Sweep isn’t just cleaning up discarded shell casings and crumbled up love letters from back home– he’s clearing out toxic sludge and the like.

Who cares? He’s still a glorified janitor which, all due respect to real-life janitors, but it’s not a profession that makes for a compelling toy.

6 Airborne

Despite your feelings on whether the current cultural landscape needs more or less political correctness, there’s little arguing that, a few decades ago, we were far less culturally-sensitive than we should have been. Native Americans in particular haven’t been especially well-represented in pop cultural, historically.

Naturally, an “Indian” G.I. Joe is cringeworthy by today’s standards.

The lack of proper respect to Airborne’s Native American heritage is obvious before you even opened the packaging, as his bio card couldn’t even be bothered to spell Navajo correctly. Things only get worse from there, as they really go hard on the whole those kooky Indians and their mystical hokum! thing. If Hasbro wasn’t going to do a Native American G.I. Joe with the proper level of respect and sensitivity, they shouldn’t have bothered to do one at all. And yet…

5 Spirit Iron-Knife

…they did more than one! Spirit Iron-Knife doesn’t fare much better than Airborne, beginning with his name that sounds like it was taken from a “What’s My Cherokee Name?” generator from the internet, circa 1997. In the case of Spirit, the contrived Native American stereotypes they lean in on are that he is a skilled hunter and that he is extremely impoverished.

So, they took one “positive” trope and one “negative” one about the Native American people.

Did they think that maybe they’d cancel each other out? Add in some stuff about him being a “mystic warrior” and it’s clear that the character designers Hasbro employed in the 80s learned everything they knew about Native Americans from John Wayne movies.

The sad thing is that Spirit’s card does use the term “Native American,” making the times that his and Airborne’s backstories also say “Indian” that much less excusable.

4 Raptor

Just looking at him as a toy concept, Raptor isn’t terrible. He’s basically a bad Vulture rip-off. But his cloth cape was guaranteed to be ripped and/or lost almost immediately, and any kid who had the toy for more than a couple of years most certainly found his bird hat to be improperly glued.

His backstory, though, is just plain bizarre.

Raptor is an “ex-yuppie tax consultant” with an interest in falconry, who was drafted by Cobra after they found him poaching some minks from their farm. Huh? We get it– it had to get extremely tedious having to come up with multi-paragraph biographies for literally hundreds of toys, and the writers probably got bored and just started coming up with off-the-wall stuff to make each other laugh.

But did these things not need to be approved before they went out?

3 Scoop

Representing another boring job that didn’t need its own toy, Scoop is literally just the Joes’ cameraman. It’s unclear as to why a military force employs their own field reporter rather than just letting a civilian journalist handle it, but it’s fairly obvious that the G.I. Joe organization had unlimited money and nobody to monitor any of their crazy spending.

Hasbro at least tried to make Scoop’s toy somewhat appealing to kids, with his camera looking like a futuristic laser and his microphone looks like a gun. But then again, didn’t we already have to exercise our imaginations enough to pretend that little plastic guns could actually fire without having to pretend that little plastic cameras were actually little plastic guns that could actually fire?

That just makes us want to take a nap.

2 Hit and Run

It isn’t entirely made clear who comes up with the Joes’ nicknames, but typically, nicknames aren’t self-awarded. Your peers generally give you your nickname based on something about you– some character quirk, some funny anecdote involving you, and so on. So let’s assume that Hit and Run’s nickname was given to him by his fellow Joes.

This means that the Joes are terrible, terrible people.

Why? Because Hit and Run’s nickname is tied to his backstory, which is that he was orphaned after his parents were killed by a drunk driver. Putting the pieces together yet? Hit and Run’s nickname is directly tied to the tragic death of his parents. How morbid is that? It would be like if Superman’s codename, as given to him by his friends, was “Exploded Planet.”

1 The Fridge

As previously mentioned, “football player” isn’t a completely ridiculous persona for a Joe to take on. Football players are nothing if not tough. Things get murky when you decide to bring in a real-life pro athlete and base a G.I. Joe off of him, giving him the job of the Joes’ “trainer.” And the coup de grace is that Hasbro chose a player who would turn out to be a flash in the pan and was only famous because he was a) enormous, and b) happened to play on a Super Bowl-winning team.

In fact, William “The Refrigerator” Perry is arguably more well-known as a G.I. Joe than an NFL player at this point.

A legacy which might not bother him, but it doesn’t make his toy any less stupid. The fact that kids had to send away for him like he was some super-special figure just made the whole thing that much worse.