As I’ve previously stated, I loved the Dreadnoks when I was younger, and still hold a soft spot for them to this day.

Though the cartoon version of the ‘noks portrayed them as brainless, incompetent goons who were more like childish bullies than a deadly gang, the comic portrayed them in a different light. All of the comic book ‘noks had individual personalities and roles that suited their nicknames and they were established as being a mostly roving gang with growing chapters in different cities. Though the comic ‘noks were still violent and mostly lowly educated (excepting the likes of Buzzer who was actually a professor), they were competent and indeed successful from time to time.

Obviously when it came time to play with my own ‘noks, they would always be based on the comic book version and not the cartoon, and quite often they were the key to Cobra’s constant victories.

But it wasn’t just the characters that had me enthralled in the comic book ‘noks, but also their vehicles. On the whole, the range of GI Joes vehicles were amazing, highly desirable and for the most part realisticly plausible and practical. The Dreadnoks had some of the greatest I had seen, and one that almost made me start to dislike the ‘noks for its level of suckitude.

Ferret ATV

In the cartoons the ‘noks were most frequently seen on the Ferret ATV, the dark blue four-wheelers, as this was pretty much one of the few vehicles that suited bikers in the toy range at the time. The Ferret actually suited the ‘noks fine in the cartoon, as they were mostly playing interference and just rallying around troops. The heavy vehicles still had the handling and speed to make them deadly bikers, though I’d imagine Buzzer’s chainsaw would have been a bit of a stretch to use effectively. As a toy, it was never really attached to the Dreadnoks, more an all party item, which was fine for me as I always wondered why Cobra would lend the freelance ‘noks their vital equipment.

Swamp Skier

Zartan, leader of the ‘noks, had his Chamelion Swamp Skier. This seemed so rarely to be used that I often wondered what the point of bothering to package him with it was. They may as well have used it as a partner or opponent to the Cobra Water Moccasin for all the use that it really saw. As a roving gang, Zartan was more often seen on a Ferret or motorbike, it was only when based in the Florida Everglades that it ever saw much use, and even then it was only a brief cameo. The Swamp Skier that we had eventually crumbled to little pieces, as the thing was too delicate for regular play - which I’m guessing is why Zartan used it sparingly.

Thunder Machine

To me, the Thunder Machine sums up what it is to be a Dreadnok. It’s an offensive, violent and unstable creation that tears up anything in it’s path or wake. The Thunder Machine is what happens when a crazed mechanic decides that you can never make a vehicle more liable to explode. Thraser, the driver and owner, had jet engines fitted to the back of his vehicle and chain guns to the front. It must definately have taken its inspiration from Mad Max or some dystopian Australian future.

I never owned a Thunder Machine, however I did own a second-hand, slightly beat-up Stinger Jeep which I used mostly as a Dreadnok vehicle. Granted, it didn’t have a chain gun or jets, but the passenger door was missing allowing Buzzer to lean out and Monkeywrench could drive while tossing out grenades.

I’m not alone in using the Stinger in such a way, as it appears Sears had an exclusive repaint of the Stinger just for the ‘noks as part of its Dreadnok Ground Assault set. The bike included in the set, I’ll get on to later.

Swampfire

I never really liked the Swampfire, it isn’t the object of my dislike though. I always thought that the Dreadnoks belonged on the ground or in the swamp and putting them in the air just didn’t seem fitting, especially in the cartoons where they were meant to be blithering idiots most of the time. I can understand to need for travelling across the Everglades, but I would have rather seen them use a boat, maybe retro-fitting an old Moccasin or captured Devilfish.

The Swampfire itself is likely modelled after a Gyro-Boat, which are small boats with a helicopter rotor above. They have a nice example at the local Helicopter Museum, and it’s shiny.

The airborne ‘nok idea wasn’t limited to the Swampfire though, as Sears had another set of repaints for the ‘noks in the form of the old single-seater F.A.N.G light helicopter and VTOL aircraft. If I accepted the Swampfire, I could understand the use of the F.A.N.G, and in fact it would make more sense to use the F.A.N.G as it could be considered a trashed Cobra vehicle that the ‘noks got running again. The VTOL just seemed slightly too out of place for the ‘noks, even with helicopter training. Had I been asked, and I wasn’t, I would have had this second Sears set be the Swamp Assault set and have the F.A.N.G repaint and small boat repaint.

Air Skiff

The Air Skiff was the much needed ‘nok swamp vehicle that the Swampfire should have been. It suffered slightly in that it’s use in the comic seemed to change whether it was a modified airboat that was just highly armed, or whether it was actually capable of limited flight. I still stick with the earlier boat concept.

Another problem was that at its release, Hasbro had started to go down the ‘brightly coloured paint and moulded to shape’ route for figures and vehicles, leaving it with highly threatening, under-detailed canary yellow weapons and a simplistic bodywork. If the skiff had come out a few years earlier, it could have been one of the best figure-supplied ‘nok vehicles going, but sadly the cheapening of the model crushed it in my mind.

The Dreadnok Cycle

The ‘noks had been around for years by the time they decided to give them their first full release bike; with Buzzer, Ripper and Torch coming in 1985 with the bike not being released until 1987 - a damn long time with toys.

With the previous releases of the Rapid Assault Motorbike (used in the Sears repaint) and the Silver Mirage motorbike (which I used as a Dreadnok bike), where both bikes focused on a simple design of motorcycle that wouldn’t be too out of place for a biker gang - though choppers or Harleys would have been more appropriate - it seemed to be obvious that the Dreadnoks bike would be a kick ass street bike that would roar down the streets allowing the mounted ‘nok to use their custom weapon to harass motorist, pedestrians and the authorities.

What we ended up with was the worst I could possible imagine, and the only Dreadnok item to never get anywhere near any of my wish lists. The Dreadnok cycle was a chopper-fronted trike with a raised seating area for a passenger. It was a gaudy colour combination that looked wrong even on the box art and it featured the most ridiculous purple ‘generic big gun’ they could shodely mold. What made me things suck even more was that in the advert, the colours actually looked reasonable!

Of course, in hindsight, I can compare this to the other vehicles of that production era and see that they were all this gaudy and undetailed, making a mockery of the forebearers, but back then my thoughts were more along the lines of how stupid it looked and it was the worst toy in the entire shop, if not the world.

Even with that hindsight, I wouldn’t buy this now, and I do want to rebuild my Dreadnok collection. I’d prefer to get a few Silver Mirages and take off the sidecar or see if I can get some cheap Taiwan generic bikes that would fit the figures. That’s all they needed to do, reuse most of the Silver Mirages mold and add transfer decals, and they could have done that from much earlier on. The Mirages were cheap to buy, and they could even have sold each ‘nok with a special one.

They never asked me, that was their problem. See, I knew…and knowing is half the battle.

Being born in 1981, I grew up in what I’d consider one of the Golden Ages for children’s toys. As a child there was always a new fad to get in to and a new idea just emerging to take over from that one. Regrettably, there were two things standing in my way from fully enjoying this golden age, the first is that if I had been born a few years earlier I wouldn’t have missed the first few years of toys, and secondly I wasn’t an American and so didn’t have the impact of all the cartoons and tie-ins for all the range.

Granted, there was a lot of choice in what to follow at the time and I bounced around happily in periods of collecting Star Wars, He-Man, Transformers, MASK and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, and following but never able to fully embrace Visionaries, Centurions, Galaxy Rangers and the like.

You see, saturation on the TV in the UK was never that grand, certain American shows would get played during the holidays or weekends and then never seen again (Transformers, Visionaries, Centurions), some would be rarely if ever shown (Galaxy Rangers), some would get re-shown (TMHT, He-Man) and some would almost never be shown (MASK). For the most part, we’d rely on VHS videos of two episodes or a story arc to see us through and stimulate us, with no chance to buy a whole set or season.

Comic books were fairly common, with the large format weekly comics for nearly every trend. In fact, it was probably the comics that influenced most children in how they thought characters were portrayed. The thing about UK comics is that they were huge, with lots of pages of comic strips and plenty of filler material, from character bios to maps to letter pages run by characters.

Toys were also hard to come by in most ranges, with most stores only carrying a few of the key ranges and not all that willing to hedge bets on what might prove popular. When something made it big, there would be a whole aisle dedicated to it, but the actual range of characters would always by limited. This was also compounded due to the locations and distribution of Toys R’ Us. As a child I grew up seeing these adverts for Geoffrey and this ‘magical place’ on TV, and we’d get catalogues through the door, but the stores were always far away for our family, and so we’d never go out to one or even really believe they’d exist except for when friends would go there. The thing was, Toys R Us had the huge ranges of toys, they had all the characters and they were considerably cheaper at the time, according to their adverts. While we were stuck with the few figures that we could afford in our home town, people willing to travel could get more.

This seems a long way, and a rather venting way, to get to the point: GI Joe happened.

Well, actually, Action Force happened.

It’s one of those deviations that we British deviants do, we already had a comic and toy line running from 1983 with an army of heroes (Action Force) up against a terrorist threat (Red Shadows). The original Action Force figures by Palitoy were stiff, barely posable characters that had a rough basis on realistic units (SAS, Nazi Stormtroopers) and the stories were very much told in the old fashioned war stories way.

When Hasbro started to really kick ass with their range in 1985, the two did a kind of merge. The new Hasbro articulated figures were put under the established Action Force name, and the comic saw the dissolution of Red Shadows and the start of Cobra. Things began to creep in to place.

Now, before this time there was much flapping about as to what was the big thing, with some staunchly holding on to Transformers and others looking in to all the other ranges. Action Force bought a new concept. The toys themselves were different and unique, more posable and with lots of different characters, and they were relatively cheap compared with other toys. As most of the range was the cheaper individual figures, there was more to collect in the less expensive price bracket than the larger toys, and for big presents there were vehicles with a larger price tag.

Comics wise, the old Battle Action Force comics disappeared and a new series of imported American stories started to appear in the comic that pretty much was the must-have, the Marvel UK publication of Transformers in 1987 and then get its own comic. To make things fit with what had been established, they took a few edits to the story, changing text and logos to say “Action Force” instead of “GI Joe” or to refer to British authorities or locations. The stories were otherwise the same, unlike the Transformers comic itself which frequently made-up new storylines to fill it’s bigger-than-the-US weekly comic.

The Action Force comics were out of sync slightly with the toyline, which got slightly confusing as we had no idea who the new blood was or why they were there. More importantly, sometimes we didn’t know how they would act when playing with or as them. The comics were great though, as they actually had a villain in Cobra Commander who, despite having a few strange plans, was a master tactician and devised a fully working covert military operation.

Eventually, they tied Action Force into the GI Joe global storyline. Well, they shoe-horned it rather uncomfortably in and then left it alone. Action Force became known as GI Joe and the world didn’t suddenly end.

Cartoon wise, to the best of my knowledge, we never got to see the cartoons on UK television and had to rely on videos. Part of this, I believe, was down to the rather obvious voice editing to remove any GI Joe reference and replace it with Action Force references (”Yo Joe” became “Full Force”). We managed to get quite a few story arcs from the Sunbow cartoons and the odd double/triple episode tape, though I never even saw a single tape for the DiC series.

They even redubbed part of the movie, as well as cropping from the opening. A while back, I actually specifically went out to get a copy of the VHS of the UK version and the DVD of the US version of the movie. The differences are quite small, but some of the biggies are noticeable.

It wasn’t until I was about 7 or 8 years old that I really got in to Action Force/GI Joe, but when I did I got in to it hard, and so did a few of my classmates. It was perhaps the first time we fell that hard in to collecting outside of Garbage Pail Kids and was likely the reason so many got hooked on Turtles.

This wasn’t just collecting, this was war. The emergence of playground fanboys, green-eyed monsters and storymakers. This was the time of arguments about best characters. It was an age of showing off the new figure and getting to see reactions if it was a ‘rare’, by which I mean one that you had to travel more than a 15 minute bus ride to get (Sam S. had a Lifeline, which wasn’t sold locally for an extra four months) or a vehicle (Paul J. used to get vehicles instead of figures, he even had the Killer WHALE!!). I had two - TWO - mail-away Super Troopers, the kind with the file card you designed based on tick boxes on the application, and the seething at that level of cheating to tip the scales was phenomenal.

The toys had some disadvantages, for example, the figure of the Baroness. She was meant to be a beautiful seductress, and in the comic and cartoon this was rather feasible. In the toy range, instead of using a typical slender, alluring body like Lady Jaye they decided to make her look like a Council Estate mother who’d spent the Child Support for little Chardonnay on a bucket of chocolate covered chicken drumsticks with smudged National Health Service glasses. Later versions paint job made her look slightly more along the NerdSex route, but still I could only think of her seducing if she went undercover as a government ministers Personal Assistant, the magic of the comic was lost. Also, things got stupid with the toyline, starting with the garish Python Patrol toyline, and by the time the War on Drugs, War on Pollution and War on Aliens started, I’d realised that GI Joe had lost the plot and moved on to the much more realistic WWF and Turtles toylines.

I always loved the cartoon, though even as a child I wondered why Cobra Commander was so much weaker than in the comic. The cartoon was, of course, intended to show the bad guys as squabbling, incompetent or imbecilic characters who were doomed to fail, and their plans always involved huge levels of suspension of disbelief, which as a kid I was happy to do because I knew when I replayed the events with the toys I’d make the plan much better and more realistic.

Cobra would win.

And, finally we reach the point: I loved Cobra.

I still do in the current comic book reincarnation, actually. Cobra in the toys and comic always seemed the better organised and regimented army. While GI Joe were just a bunch of specialists, Cobra had divisions of troops with specialist knowledge who could perform multiple functions, they had clandestine operatives in communities and legitimate business fronts through Extensive Enterprises.

From the rank-and-file Vipers to the named characters, from biker Dreadnoks to professional mercenaries, from outsourced weapon specialists to ninjas, there was so much going for Cobra. The toy line offered the most potential, as it was one of the few where you actually wanted multiple of the same figure to build up the army - unfortunately, parents were for once on the ball and were trying to avoid buying duplicates in an effort to ‘get you what you wanted’ or ‘wanted to get you something you didn’t already have’. My dream of owning a garrison of Vipers was scuppered early on.

Now, there was another thing I had over some of the kids in my class, which proved to be a surprising advantage and later a tragic disadvantage, I had two older brothers and both of them for a time had an interest in Action Force/GI Joe as the last of the childhood years fluttered away. Because of my brothers, our family had up to triple the turnover of figures than most of the kids had, this wasn’t a huge margin but it was enough to keep me entertained with an army to play with when I was alone, and a considerable number of figures and small number of vehicles to show off to visitors. One of the crowning achievements happened, my collection - my own personal part of our triple strong army - finally got Serpentor and his Air Chariot.

Serpentor. Air Chariot.

The two coolest toys merged in to one product and bought for me from Martin McColls, next to Sainsburys, in Worle, outside of Weston super Mare on a Saturday afternoon. I got it home, it was assembled, and together Serpentor and I watched the video of “Arise Serpentor, Arise”. I guess it was sort of like sitting with your child watching the video of its birth, only without the uncomfortableness and general illness.

Then peace was shattered. Well, technically it melted. One of my brothers had gone to secondary school and learnt more about woodwork, metalwork and electronics, and somehow he’d convinced our parental units that really giving this teenager a soldering iron was a ‘quite good idea’. Now, with a soldering iron my brother could have really done some great things. He could have built many wonderful devices to help out around the home or learnt how to weld a bike together.

For reasons known only to himself, my brother decided to become an artist. An artist in the same way that Leatherface could be considered a Fashion Designer. See, what my loving brother did was apply his soldering iron to different parts of different figures and watch as they melted. After a while, it got to the point of treason and regicide as the Cobra emperor, my Serpentor, had the soldering iron applied to his chest.

Not since the great MASK figure exodus from t’ other brother, or the female parentals handing over to a young child of the Transformer toys, had so many figures been sacrificed in so short a time. The troops dwindled before this breach of the Geneva Convention was uncovered, and by then the older toylines were gone, even Serpentor was irreplaceable.

Despite my efforts of trying to cling on, GI Joe and Cobra had met an end in our house. By the end of the next school term, World Wrestling Federation toys and the entire schoolyard politics of that would take over and then Turtlemania would swoop in. But, I’ll always love Cobra, in the same way I’ll always love some of the Decepticons, they made me what I am today.

COBRA!
Cross-posted from The Ramblings of Guise Dugal at http://www.rogues.1me.net/blog