A Geek History of Time - Episode 210 - GI Joe and Latchkey Kids, Reaganism vs Reagonomics Part II

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

You know, Stalin and the Nazis were these welfare state types. One of us is a stand-up comic. Can you tell what it is? Ladies and gentlemen, everyone, brick. Um. But the problem. Oh my god. That's like, I could use that to teach the whole world. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută.

Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută.

Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută. Nu-i văzută. This is the key history of time. Where we connect Nurgere to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylor, I have a little history in the English teacher with the sixth grade role here in Northern California. And for once, I don't really have very much to report. Things have been pretty unaventful. And rather than take up the bedtime, I know what happened taking late like I'm just gonna hand it off to you.

Oh, Mr. Who are you again? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin and US history teacher at the high school level up here in Northern California. I'm at the lever. And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh...

And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... And uh... Yeah, wrong lever. You know, I was driving with my son to an appointment. He's now 13. He sits in the front seat with me. We have talks. It's weird. And I asked him because he's also 13. So we're talking at the inflection point of having all your toys.

And maybe transitioning away from toys. But he takes after me a bit. So he's probably not transitioning away from toys as much. But his closet is a goddamn mess. You can't open one of the doors. So I asked him, okay. Yeah. I noticed that your closet needs a lot of work. Are you okay with me cleaning it while you're at your moms so you don't have to deal with it? I asked him this because he has trouble,

he doesn't have trouble doing a task at all. He does have trouble letting go of things and saying goodbye to things. And so, if I do it, he doesn't have to. And it's not an executive functioning thing per se because I'm also a pack rat of sentimental shit. So I get it. Like I have an attachment issue.

Yeah, and some levels. Okay. But he does it to the point where like, if you, he has Legos, it's so help me God. If anybody buys him more Legos, I'm going to punch people because he hasn't opened the box three years ago on one of the Legos. Like he just keeps shit in its package. And it's not because he's a collector either.

He just has trouble transitioning it to the next step. And therefore transitioning things out is also a problem. So I said, Hey, do you mind if I clean your closet for you while you're in moms? He's like, well, I don't need to think on that. I said, I'll tell you what, when we park, when we arrive at our destination, I would like you to give me an answer. Just a simple yes or no. We parked. He gave me an answer. It's like, cool. I have unlocked this thing. So then I asked him on the way back, hey, do you mind if I open your toys that are still in the packages because he's got like three levels deep in front of his closet, action figures that he's

bought with his own money that he has never opened, that he wants to, that he wants me to bring to him at his moms, that he wants to play with and have nearby, but he doesn't open them. And I said, can you, you know, let me know once we get home, we do. He lets me know, but he says, can you save the backboards for me? I said, that sounds great. No problem. So that's what I was doing today. It was, uh, it was, it was nice, but what was really cool was, uh, at the appointment, I mean, all those things were really cool.

I mean, he's in the front seat with me. That's really neat. At the appointment, he does the wingspan test, you know, see, see how far as wingspan is. It's like four inches taller than he is or like, actually, I can't do that math, but it is his wingspan is taller than he is, right? So he's got a slightly longer arm. He's five foot six and three quarters of an inch. Okay. He is, uh, he is almost the height of the English teacher next door to me. So, well, he's three quarters of an inch taller than I am. Yeah. I really, I really want to see you two together like his giant puppy hands and giant puppy feet. Next full grown adult male. Yeah, well, yeah, for certain values of full grown, but yes. But just it'd be cool. So anyway, that was that was kind of just like, you know, he thought about it. And and he, he's very good faith

about that. He's like, I need to think about it. But like, I give him a time frame, he was able to decide. So I spent most of my day today, or yesterday, um, cleaning out closet. So it was very cool. Yeah. Very cool. Speaking of action figures. Yeah. I give you a homework assignment after the show last night or last time and you had to watch the commercials Yeah, or the GI Joe comic book Oh, don't don't give me that bullshit those were not ads for the comic book Well, they were they were gonna get to that okay, yeah, we're gonna get to that they were phrased as comic book

Because well, we're gonna get all up in that shit We're gonna get to that. They were phrased as comic book because, well, we're gonna get all up in that shit, but you're right, you're absolutely right. Wasn't it fun hearing different voices for the characters? Oh, grew up. Bizarre House, right?

Right. Yeah. Like, like, Destro did not sound like that. Yeah, Cobra Commander, yeah. The Cobra Commander, I'm gonna say, I think Cobra Commander might have been an improvement, which might be heretical. I think so. My co-ber commander will always sound like Starscream.

Okay, well, yeah. Okay, good point. Meaningful. Yeah. But, but Destro sounded more like Starscream than the co-ber commander. He did. And people's out. Was it hot? in those commercials. Yeah. And people's out. Was it hot?

A little off. Yeah. Yeah. The uniforms were not right. Yeah. Hot sounded bad. Like tweaky bad. Like, yeah, the voice acting was just crap.

And you know, it was phrased as advertisements for the comic book. Check, find out in Marvel Comics. That was like, okay, I remember the Marvel comics because the thing is, the comic books were, I think aimed at a slightly older audience than the TV show was, because there was actually pretty good writing. They weren't.

In a lot of the... What it was. And I will get into it because that is a significant chunk of this episode. They weren't aimed at a slightly older audience, but they were written for a slightly older audience. And I think that's a distinction worth making. Okay. But what you saw were GI Joe. And to some extent, Transformers does this too.

There's Transformers commercials for the comic books too. GI Joe and Transformers are likely the most infomercial infomercially versions of 30-minute cartoons. Although there's others that are really close to it, the man being amongst them, masked being another. The characters, the vehicles, the accessories, the animals, the play sets, they all derived from their appearance on very colorful and varied cartoons, which were initially 30-second spots on TV shows. Now, originally, the GI Joe action figure was a 12-inch toy for kids.

And it dwindled in sales through the 1970s and was gone from shelves by the 1980s. And I suspect this is because the Vietnam War had a lot to do with that. by the 1980s, and I suspect this is because the Vietnam War had a lot to do with that. Oh, yeah, undoubtedly. However, in 1978, a new kind of action figure had come along, and it was a lot smaller. In fact, it was a lot more plastic, too. Micronauts. Oh, okay. Also Star Wars.

Yeah, I was going to... Star Wars was where my head immediately went from Henter. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they were both sold at the three and three-quarters inch size, largely because the head of Henter, his fist plus his thumb on a table measured three and three-quarters inches. Yeah, I suddenly want to go get a ruler. Because I feel like he had midget hands. I'm just like I'm looking at my own hand. Right. Do I feel like Charlie Sheen in in bears,

builers. Yeah. Okay. Some. Yeah. And weird. Okay. So the head of Hasbro and the head of Marvel were both taking a leak at a charity event.

They got to talking. Hey, this is all true. Oh, how the sausage is made. Okay. Yeah. Oh, or shown. Man, well, actually, that's only a second. Remember if it's more than there's more than three times your plan with it. Speaking of getting a ruler. Yeah.

But this actually my second favorite urinal story, my favorite being with Winston Churchill, where he and I forget who from the other party were in the men's laboratory. And they were arguing opposite sides the whole day and they ended up next to each other at the men's lavatory in front of urinals and one of them says finally a platform we can both stand on. That's pretty much. But this is my second favorite. Okay, second's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But this is my second favorite. Okay. Second favorite one. All right. Um, so according to Jim Shooter, editor at chief of the Marvel comics at the time, he said, quote, the president or CEO of Hasbro was at a charity event.

At that Marvel's president was also app. They ended up in the men's room standing next to each other, peeing. And I think that's how they met. and I think that's how they met. They were talking about each other's respective businesses and it came up that Hasbro wanted to reactivate the trademark on GI Joe, but they were trying to come up with a new approach. Marvel's guy was like, we have the best creative people in the world. Let me bring in this editor and chief of mine and we'll fix it for you.

Now, that's Jim Schudder telling the story. Yeah, well, yeah. And I don't think they're peeing that whole time they're probably washing their hands and talking. Yeah, well, yeah. And I don't think they're peeing that whole time. They're probably washing their hands and talking. Yeah, yeah. Now Hasbro was thirsty for those action figured dollars and Bob, but proofrish Hasbro executive figured out that advertisement didn't have to be a TV commercial that would only last a few seconds. It could be a whole ass comic book because comic books were protected by the first amendment and since you couldn't put regulations on how to advertise for publication like you could for a toy, it

was good. Okay. Wow. Now in an interview, yeah. Oh, shitty. Right. Okay. Okay.

In an interview back in the Halcyon days of 2010, Jim Shooter said this. So take this with the Salt Lake that it probably deserves. That he was in a meeting that was set up at that urinal. So they they're peeing. They set up that meeting. He's one of the head guys in that meeting. They're all in a boardroom now. And the Hasbro execs have just just have GI Joe real American hero. That's pretty much all they've got that that GI Joe real American hero. It kind of rhymes. That's a good cadence to it. But that's about it. They wanted to make the toys smaller and they wanted to make lots of different ones. That's about it. You know, they're like, look, we get six 12,

you know, 12 action figures. They're this size. We can mass produce some shooter claimed that it was his idea to make the code name for the whole outfit. Quote, they can't be soldiers. It has to be anti terrorists because war won't go. Now remember, this is like 1982. So yeah. Okay. Maybe it's like a secret squad of the best soldiers and sailors and airmen. They're all this secret group and they fight terrorists and have a special technology. That's all his recollection anyway Okay, now this meant that Hasbro in an effort to make toys could get Marvel on board for a comic book line And Marvel would get to design the characters that Hasbro would sell and Then Hasbro could make a half hour long animated commercial in the form of a cartoon

that would then be referential to the comic book. That's how you get around it all. Okay. So those comment are those those commercials that I made you watch. Yeah. They were kind of test marketing. Okay. Um, they weren't the original cartoons, obviously, but they were the first cartoons, if you will. Yeah. Shooter then shifted most of the credit over to Larry Hama in his interview. Now, Larry Hama was born just after World War II in New York. He went to an art focused high school in Manhattan and was even taught by former comic book

the comic book artist Bernard Creekestein, who'd written one of the first comic book stories about the Holocaust for EC Comics called Master Race. Oh, wow. It's considered like one of them groundbreaking type comics. Okay. It's only like an eight-page or two. Like it's a short one, but it was important. Okay.

I read it for this. Anyway, Hama joins the military after his high school years, and he serves in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971, which I think we can all agree was a terrible time to have to serve. Yeah. When he got back into the U.S., he became more active in the Asian American community in New York. He took over for Gil Kane on the Iron Fist character after the premiere of Iron Fist for Marvel Comics in 1974. He was a journeyman who freelance

for a bunch of different groups, including a stint as editor for Wonder Woman in 1978 for DC. And eventually he joined Marvel in 1980 as an editor. Now Larry Hama had been towing that with the idea for a spin-off for Nick Fury, agent of shield, but that never materialized. So Jim Shooter gave the GI Joe project to Hama after a meeting when Shooter brought Larry Hama Archie Goodwin and Tom Defalco to the meeting with the Hasbro Bigwigs. Now these are really three of some of the most important names

in comic book history now. Oh yeah. But you know, Archie Goodwin is responsible for a power man. Tom Defalco, I mean, Jesus Christ. And so Larry Hama seemed to be the one that everyone agrees had the most creative input. Hasbro, still according to Jim Shooter at least didn't know the gold mine that they had they had designed 10 distinctive three and three

quarter inch heroes along with a few vehicles and Hama took it and ran with it. Now if Archie good one does sound familiar like I said he was the original writer for the Iron Man series, as well as the creator of Luke Cage, Power Man. Tom DeFalco was the one behind Spidey's symbiote suit and the creator of Silver Sable. Okay. Now Hasbro agreed to produce and pay for what they called the animated commercials for one year that would back the comic, which was really a clever way to get around regulation that was kind of on its way out anyway. So, making all these plans, so they're advertising for the comic. They're definitely advertising for the comic.

Comic is advertising for the toys. Yeah. And this is 78? No, by this point, it's 82, 83, and they're developing this. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now, if you recall the toys, the back of the packaging had a short dossier on each character. Oh, yeah.

Right. Vividly, I remember. Yeah. Larry Hama said that Marvel, and he himself specifically, came up with that idea, largely because nobody wanted to quote, touch it with a 10 foot pole. Which I'm like, how? Like I remember reading those for what felt like hours. Oh, obsessively. Oh, yeah.

You know, Larry Hama was really the brains behind the narrative structure too. Hasbro seemed to just kind of be a drift on that as well. Larry Hama recalled asking who the G.I. Joe's were going to fight to which Hasbro responded, huh? What? And apparently Hama credits Archie Goodwin with the actual identity of the bad guys quote, we'll have some sort of semi fascistic paramilitary organization and we'll call them Cobra or something. So they basically spitballed the cartoons protagonist and antagonist into existence. Does that piss you off? Like, this is me off that it's so not thought out. Like, it's like,

I don't know. We'll like, we'll go cover some shit, but like, we'll take off the Y. Well, I mean, look, like seriously, look into names. Like, come on. I know. Does it really shock you? I mean, yes. There's such a mythos to it. Like it shouldn't be that accidental or like.

Okay, but okay, but here's the deal. Here's this is what I'm going to push back on that. It's the fact that, okay, we have these, you know, these character names that are just Tomax and Zaymot. I mean, come on. We have, we have, they've spitballed all this, as you say, they've spitballed all this stuff

into existence. And then Larry Hama takes all of this stuff that they've spit balls into existence. And then he writes the GI Joe comics, which what I'm pissed off about is the extent to which it was blatantly 110% rooted in, we're gonna figure out a way to get around to get around what skimpy, you know, broadcast regulations there are and we're going to advertise

this shit. You know, it's like the- To me that just feels like they wasted effort if they'd just been a little more patient, they would have been able to get around it anyway. Well, but yeah, they would have been able to get around it anyway. Well, but yeah, the thing is what Larry Hama created with all of that, to me just proves that if you're a good enough writer, you could take shit and make something good out of it. You can, in fact, polish a turd. Sure.

You know, and it makes me admire Larry Hama that much more. Sure. That's my take. Okay. To me, this feels, did you ever watch that movie with John Crier, where he had a beard, and then he witnessed a murder, so that he shaved his beard and went and hit out in a high school? Yeah. I did. Yeah. Vagally familiar. He hung out with his younger cousin. His name was the movie was called hiding out. Yeah. Right. There's a scene where he's enrolling in the school to stay hidden. And they ask him what his name is. And he didn't think that far ahead. And so he kind of looks to his left and goes, it's Maxwell. Oh, sir. Because he saw a pot of instant coffee.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, Maxwell, how's there? Max, right? House. Yeah, well, I mean, that's what it feels like. Okay, we're going to come up with like some sort of super secret and call it. I don't know. Snaky. Cobra.

Have you seen the movie, Riemel Williams? I don't know, Snaky Cogra. Have you seen the movie, Remo Williams? Eh, yeah. I mean, come on. Yeah. It's just like, it's Vince McMahon going to Jake Roberts going, I see Jake the snake. Oh, okay.

Like, Jesus Christ, really? Like, are you just, that's all you got? That's, that's it really really yeah really yeah I mean I'm not I don't want to discount your emotional response I'm just saying you know fucking stupid like the origin is it's like well why is the why's Apollo the God of the Sun well Well, he's Zeus's son. You know, it would be like that fucking dumb. Okay. Right. Yeah, it's a hominem, whatever. Yeah. Who you call it a hobo? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what is he called a Festus? Well, because he's half his tall as Festus. Like, you're like,

God damn it. Festus. Yeah, okay. All right. So, Hama really was the brains behind the narrative structure, like I said. Yeah. And so now you've got Marvel on board. And they were coming up with more and more characters, which in turn drove more and more toys. And now all that was needed was the cartoon. The comic got started in June of 1982. Hama was at the helm.

And essentially he ported over his idea for the off shoot from the fury comic. It was in his words, quote, an elite counterterrorist unit like Delta, and it was led by Nick Fury's son, Fury Force, also had an underground secret base under a motor pool. The basic concept was very similar. So he just, you know, hey, I've got So he just, hey, I've got this idea for an Irish bard. Yeah. Oh, cool. I'll play him in this game.

I was gonna play him in that game, but instead we needed a cleric. So now I've got an Irish cleric, you know? Yeah. Father, oh for Christ's sake, you know, that kind of thing. And now I know how I'm going to introduce you. And as I'm going to, how I'm going to talk to rise you in a, in, in a D&D game, I'm really father,

offer, Christ, father, offer, yeah, Christ, yeah, yeah, father, offer. Yeah. So Cobbock, Commander had his hood. He had Baroness at his right hand and he had a fanatic army of Cobra agents. Larry Hama wove together a pretty good first issue, giving good face time to each character, making sure that their codenames were folded into the dialogue and giving

good action overall. He had frankly what I dream of. Like, you know, that kind of creative, like, Genesis. Yeah, now I'm trying to remember, was that the issue where the, the, the, Uber got a hold of a, a bear, bomber, and they, they had a nuke. I'm trying to remember. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. I read through a bunch. So they all kind of I mean, yeah, I know I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. Yeah, they all they all bleed together after a while. But yeah. Now Hasbro gave him the look of the character and their specialty. And literally that was it. Like, so they'd be like, here's what this guy looks like. He's good at diffusing bombs. And Hama created everything around that. He got to design personality, code name, birthplace, psych profiles, everything. Wow. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. That is. Yeah. So basically he got to do professionally or what role playing gamers, like wish they could do and get paid for it. Like I'm just going to create character after character after character after character. Yeah. Yeah. And relationships and how do you damn dude? All right. I know. He saw his job as a pretty complex one, which it was.

Yeah. The information that he put into the comic would then be information that has row folks would use to sell the toys. Um, and as a result, Larry Hama said, quote, it has to read on two levels. A 10 year old kid has to be able to read it and think it's absolutely straight. And an adult reads it and should chuckle. There should be a joke in there for the adults. One of the factors that helped sell GI Joe figures was that the salesman, who sold it to retailers, used the dossiers as a selling point.

They could read the dossiers to an adult buyer in a polyester suit and they'd get a rise and understand what it was all about." So that's what I mean. It was for this, but deep into that. Oh, so yeah. It's that prismatic effect that I love that I think Caesar wrote with. In fact, the comic far outlasted the cartoon, by the way. But I'm not here to talk about the comic.

I've mostly been using that to bring you up to speed on the cartoon. While the comic and the cartoon shared a lot of broad strokes, Marvel and Hama were left largely alone by Hasbro to do their own thing. Essentially, they'd consult once in a while to give Marvel the plan for the next-use characters to start featuring them. But that was about it. And they had no real editorial control over the comic, which is why the comics were much darker, much more intricate,

and much more overarching with their plots than the G.I. Joe cartoon was. Mm-hmm. But as this is about the G.I. Joe cartoon, the G.I. Joe cartoon was quite something. It was initially used to advertise the comic, but Hasbro knew that this was merely the first step. This was how you get exposure for when they did advertise for the toys. So it was a bunch of cartoon advertisements advertising characters in a comic book.

Roughly 30-second commercials as you watched. Yeah. Each one had its own original song. I don't know if you noticed that. Oh my God. But did you also recognize parts of the songs? Like you're like, oh, shit, they clipping again. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Each commercial absolutely featured cool vehicles and cool characters all in theise of comics. What's next? Find out in Marvel comics, right? And what's cool with these cartoons and you can see their use as storyboards for the cartoon episodes which would come in due time because there are set pieces that you see in these these cartoon commercials and they absolutely get used in later episodes. Okay. Yeah. Probably recognize that.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Now, as I'd said early on, and I left myself a note here, pause to make sure Ed is seen these. As I'd said earlier, because of Fowlers and Reagan's efforts, the ability for a single company to make cartoons that were basically long-form versions of the commercials that we stopped to watch, or that I made you watch, they were now met with a lot less resistance. So in 1984, that regulation all but dissolved. So if they'd just been a little patient. Originally, G.I. Joe's cartoon was a joint venture

between Sunbow and Marvel, and it was a five-episode mini-series it started on September 12, G.I. Joe's cartoon was a joint venture between Sunbow and Marvel, and it was a five-episode mini-series that started on September 12, 1983. This is about a year after the toy line has already come out, about 15 months after the comics had come out. So not only do you have plausible deniability about the marketing, you have a lot of kids who've read the comic. you have plausible deniability about the marketing, you have a group of kids who've read the comic. Yeah. So shit, there's a cartoon about it. And you've got a group of kids who maybe have some of the toys. Shit, there's a cartoon about that. Like, and remember the original toys, their arms did not swivel. No, you had the up and down of the elbows and you had the articulation of the shoulders, but you did not have the rotation. Right.

That was a big deal. That was second breaker only up or down. Yeah, it was third generation, third gen. So Hasbro isn't directly tied to the cartoon. And it's not being used by them directly to sell toys to children. And it's an after-school cartoon anyway and it was syndicated everywhere so technically they could show where show it wherever and whenever they wanted. But what group of consumers were home alone with a television between 2.30 and 5.00 pm? That would be you and me. Yes. Yeah. It was an intensely militaristic

cartoon, right? It starts with the skyscrapers flying information. You see a bevy of camouflage individuals carrying rifles and charging forward in the original introduction to GI Joe. Yep. All the explosions a young kid could want tanks. A real American hero. There's jeeps galore. And then you see cobra on the right side of the screen, not the left, not the center, the right. This is important because bad guys come in from the right side. I mean in cinematography.

Yeah. Nice. I mean in cinematography. Yeah, nice. And the guy singing the original song says, it's GI Joe against Cobra and Destro fighting to save the day. He never gives up, he's always there fighting for freedom overland and air. Okay, so that's the original. Now later it changes to Cobra the enemy. But at first it's Cobra in Destro, which I think is is fun. GI Joe, a real American hero GI Joe is there. GI Joe is the codename for America's daring highly trained special mission force.

It's purpose to defend human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. He never gives up, he'll stay till the fights won. GI Joe will dare and so on and so on. Yeah. And like I said, once we get to the full series, changes to Cobra, the enemy, not Cobra, industrial. And as will the rest of the intro's visuals, because new toys got to sell. Yeah. So it ceases to be just skyscrapers and the tanks, then it becomes the awestrikers and it becomes like the Oh, shit, I forget what those were called, but the forward-facing wings and you have different, you know, all kinds of different toys And it ends the intro ends with a dozen characters raising victorious arms in front of an enormous patent-style American flag Yeah using victorious arms in front of an enormous patent style American flag.

Yeah. Remember when I said that Reaganism caused Reaganism to fight against Reaganism in the most Reaganistic possible way. Yeah. Well, without the removal of all sorts of regulations by the FCC under Reagan's appointee Mark Fowler, this could not have happened. And without the massive tax cuts at the beginning of his presidency for the rich and the cutting of social services, including several after-school programs, and an overall better tax base that would have allowed more people to remain single-income families. This would not have hit as hard as it did.

And without Reagan's desire to redeem the pain that he felt from his first divorce signing landmark legislation into being as governor before making it harder for most families to afford to live off of one income, it's entirely possible that the divorce wave wouldn't have would have come later than it did. And then we get to the cartoon. Okay. So G.I. Joe's hyper militarized, right? They fight with massive funding from the government toward their, uh, toward its own arsenal. Yeah, you do eventually have to wonder like, where exactly is all this funding coming from? Well, they have episodes that talk about it too. Yeah, that is true. And they're fighting against an unfettered authoritarian capitalist in the guise of Cobra Commander and Destro has a centerpiece to the whole show. Now in order to prove that this is

Reaganism versus Reaganism, the militarism versus hyper capitalism, we've got to unpack some of the aspects of the show. So first of all, you have violence that's not really violent, ultimately. There was still enough regulation to sanitize the violence. Larry Hama didn't like this, by the way, when he was writing the comic, he specifically aimed to unglore a fire war. He said, well, I wanted to have real deaths in GI Joe. Okay. But unfortunately, comics weren't in charge of the cartoons and there was enough pressure to still to show that for every plane that was shot down, the pilot would get to safety. Right. How awesome did you and I watch it and go, okay, he parachuted to safety every single time. In fact, I only saw one person wounded by a laser blast. Every laser

that was fired at Mr. Person, no matter how close it got to them. So you have very sanitized violence. And the lasers were nicely color coded for us. Red was for GI Joe, blue was for Cobra. And after all these kids are alone and watching TV. So who knows what they could pick up from GI Joe. So yeah. And the characters are largely sexless, despite the overwhelming majority of them being men. By and large, there's a little chatter here and there in the first season about crushes and beauty and such like that, but it's nearly nil. Yeah's three pseudo relationships that I could find, but nothing that's overtly kissy-kissy. You get the will they won't they stage a couple of times with each couple,

flint and lady Jay, Scarlett and Duke. But it fizzles after a line or two. I wanted to say goodbye to you. Okay. Well, thanks. Uh, is there anything else? No, of course not. All right. I'll see you when I get back, Lady J. But then other times, you know, like she's like, who's going to take me to dinner and then Alpine and Bizzouk are like, Oh, we will. And France says, and you'll be on K P for a month. Come on, Lady J. She's like, you sure know how to treat a lady Flint. And then that's it.

Like it's just that kind of back and forth. And then of course, there's shipwreck who is doing his damnedest to try to get a date with cover girl or Scarlett or Lady J. But anybody, yeah, but it's also largely for laughs. Like we know that he's not going to get there. Now you do have cosmetic diversity in that there's no real dress code in G.I. Joe. In fact, that's one of the jokes later made is that G.I. Joe, the least restrictive dress code of all the military forces. Yeah.

But it's absolutely tied to toys, right? You know, selling the colorful toys, the different outfits. You know, hey, this guy has a hat, this guy doesn't, this guy has a different gun, you know, that kind of stuff. Scarlett has a crossbow, but there's no real outward sign of conformity. And yet there's a near lock step set of virtues on the side of the Joes. And Cobra outwardly is almost all the same, Lew and Black with a red insignia to mostly mimic Cobra Commander with just a few characters who differ from the norm.

Did GIGO episodes can be broken down into a few categories themselves with the larger thread being what it just says in the intro. Cobra is always trying to take over the world. Most of the time it's through sci-fi means. The next highest category is via supernatural means and then there's kind of standard espionage and then the hairbrain schemes of a mundane sort. Yeah. So the very first one is a five part mini series in the first week of school, interestingly enough, in 1983.

And then they did another one in 1984. And in the 83 one, we have Duke, Scarlett, Snake Eyes, Stalker, Cover Girl, those are our main characters, right? Yeah. Cobra is largely staffed by minions, but there is Cobra Commander, Desero and Baroness, those are your main baddies. And Baroness and Desero do have the most romantic

relationship on screen. There's actual kisses. Yeah. But they're bad guys. The mass device. Yeah. But they're bad guys. The mass device. Well, it does. They're bad guys. Yeah.

In many ways. Yeah. The mass device is the main plot point. And it's where Cobra is using it to steal satellites and somehow teleport forces to other places. It's never really clear, but it's a lot of go to the place and get the thing before the other side does kind of quest. Yeah.

Lots of red and blue lasers. Duke gets captured. There's mind control. Eventually, the Joe's get to Cobra mountain in time to stop the mass device. I think they made their own mass device. And eventually they stop. They stopped from destroying the Earth's core, which was apparently a thing that they were thinking to do.

Okay. Yeah. the Earth's core, which was apparently a thing that they were thinking to do. Okay, yeah. In 1984, there's another, and this is a mini series that starts off the actual full season. Okay, so now they're like, okay, we're going to do another mini series, but that'll just be the first five episodes. And then we'll get it's like the continuing adventures of you, I Joe. Okay. So in 84, Cobras making something called the weather dominator, which is essentially another go to the place and get the thing by part series after cobra attacks Washington DC and then the Joe split it into three parts and then you got to go and stop them from getting it or get it. And we get introduced to a lot more characters in a more in depth way. We get spirit, doc, torpedo, clutch, rock and roll, Lady Jane, snow, or Lady J, snow job,

get gung ho, Flint, roadblock, shipwreck, Zartan, storm shadow, and firefly. Okay. Now this is similar stuff by and large. Yeah. But I would note that both of these hinge on some level of control of satellites to force the world to do their bidding in 1983 to 1984. Okay. Because MX missiles, Star Wars, SSTI initiatives, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. You may remember the boringest. So the more it's liver more labs in 1975, had begun theorizing working on developing an X-ray laser

to a field, an X-ray laser field, to shoot down multiple missiles at once. And by February of 1981, the idea that many X-rays could hit multiple ICBMs launched at America comes to the fore and theoretically a single nuclear satellite in orbit could take out enough that in the event of a nuclear war with all the missiles being launched, US casualties would be reduced to only 30 million. Only. Yeah, put another way, 15 times the amount of latch keykits. There you go. That's somehow good.

There's a few groups that I follow on social media. One of them is Americans will do anything to avoid using the metric system. Well, we will. It's historically proven fact that, yeah. Somebody's response to it was come to within three blue whales of me and say that. Nice. I like it. Yeah. So anyway, it's somehow good that we'll only lose 30 million. And anyway, that meant that the US could launch a first strike and not have to worry about as much of a counter strike.

Great. Yeah. Now, in February of 1981, that very argument was presented to Congress in an ask for funding from Edward Teller and Lowell Wood. The current record holder on utility patents, interestingly enough. Teller and Wood also spoke with the new president of the United States about the financial needs in order to realize such a possibility. The name of this projected idea, which was a large number of X-ray laser devices in orbit that would each hold about 50 X-ray laser devices, providing a laser shield from orbit against a Soviet launch was SDI. Okay, so basically,

or strategic defense, yeah. And it was colloquially referred to as Star Wars. That's right. Now imagine if you had a president who had a background in show business who didn't really understand much but certainly liked slogans. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Now, Teller had been a contributing scientist in the Manhattan project and he had

actually watched the Trinity test, which was against orders. He was told with the rest of the scientists to lay down face down on the ground facing away from the test. He actually made sure he saw it. His report on it was kind of interesting. It's just, you know, it is what you'd expect. It was really fucking bright. But he was also one of the first scientists to sound any kind of alert about global climate

change as being due to our burning of fossil fuels. He went on to write editorial and newspapers blaming a heart attack that he had after. So you remember three mile island, right? Yeah. Well, three mile island had a partial meltdown is nuclear partial meltdown. I want to say like Pennsylvania or or New Jersey. I thought it was upstate New York. Oh, you're right. Through Island. Yeah. Sorry, those areas all kind of run together. Yeah. So he blamed, he had a heart attack

right after that happened. He blamed it on Jane Fonda. I'm again, because, and it wasn't her aerobics tape. So no, not because he came again. It was because she had played a role in the film, The China Syndrome, which had just come out like two weeks before Three Mile Island happened. Okay. And The China Syndrome was about a nuclear meltdown and an American plant. Okay. And it was just like too much of like

holy shit. This is a little weird that it's this close to being true. Yeah. So he's kind of the perfect guy to bring fantastical tech to an actor who charmed his way into the presidency. Yeah. And boy did it land. Reagan loved it March of 1983 Ronald Reagan announced the strategic defense initiative in a 30 minute speech saying quote, I call upon the scientific community in this country. Those who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace to give us the means of rendering those nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. impotent and obsolete. Okay, no wait, that's not what you're trying to do. Yeah, he's really saying, give me space lasers to shoot down nuclear ICBMs. Yeah, you're looking for a way so that we can hit him with nooks without them hitting us. Right. That's not rendering them obsolete. That's okay. Well, you know, you to pop tartan to comedy free world like, you know, thank you to Berkeley, breathed by the way for that for that chick lowline. But like,

really? Oh my God. Yeah. And so the SDI, the Star Wars program that that actor turned governor, turned president, largely relied on was the idea of orbiting satellites with the capabilities to do fantastical things, right? Orbitting satellites that did fantastical things. So it later came out that Teller and Wood vastly oversold it to the old man in the old office, getting lots of funds that didn't really do anything. But in September 83, and again in 84, the SDI put satellites and weaponized lasers in

everyone's mind. Okay. And you'll recall that in August of 85, the movie Real Genius also hit the theaters, which centered around science geniuses building and perfecting a space laser that could kill individual people at will. Yep. So let's go back to the mass device, which is, right, fantastical satellite tech. And then let's go back to the weather dominator, which is fantastical satellite tech. Yep.

So it's no wonder that the first too many series that GI Joe involved or that G I Joe had were involving satellite launches takeovers and the ability to control and teleport shit from space. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Once September of 85 rolled around, G I Joe was ready for more than just a mini series. And once again, we're in space.

It's this time it's space Asian Delta, which sounds good. Okay. And cober commander has come up with the plan of a pyramid of darkness. Okay. This is a scheme that's designed to deprive the world of electricity, which starts with the dreadnocks capturing space station Delta. And they do it with like these like ferocious furries, which like when you blow a whistle, they grow into like gray minotaur type creatures

that can also be technicians and use guns. Okay. Yeah. So the dreadlocks, hired more on mercenaries. Yeah, bikers. Yeah, they're a biker, they're an Australian biker gang.

That's right, which makes a lot of sense if you remember Mad Max and Road Warrior. Uh-huh, yeah. And, uh, um, oh, damn it. Paul Hogan, what was it? Oh, oh, Crocodile Dundee. Crocodile Dundee, yeah. That's not for another couple of years.

Oh, really? Yeah, that's not to 87. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's not to 87. Okay. Never mind. But the Drednox capture space and space station Delta and eventually the Joe's gain their bearing and we learned something about the Cobra Underworld, which has sub snake eyes is still dressed as snake eyes, but he wears a wig. is still dressed as snake eyes, but he wears a wig. And he doesn't talk, but that's okay, because he's with shipwreck, who is just totally not distinctive at all. But those two get end up in the cobra underworld, which includes an entertainment industry that bleakly sings to cobra agents in their off hours. And apparently there's a high degree

of willingness to help animal companion GI Joe's on the run. Okay. So again, satellites, hair brain scheme to shut off electricity so that only cobra has it, right? We're the only one with this power in its satellites that are powering us. And what stops them? Militarism. So Reaganism against fighting Reaganism. Reaganism. Okay. In the next few episodes, Cobra tries its hand at sabotage first simply by planting a bomb in the worldwide defense center, which I think is supposed to be like a gun-based United Nations. And then they, and that fails, of course. And then they get a corporation to install real nuclear rockets on top of a chain of diners throughout the United States,

called the Red Rocket, which if you've ever owned a dog. But yeah, it's, there's a corporation that works hand in fist with cobra commander. It's called extensive enterprises and it's run by the Crimson guard twins, Tomax, Tomax and Zaymah. Yeah. Right. Who have the dumbest power. Oh, yeah, they're linked to each other. Yeah. After pleasure just, just pain. Which, um, well, I mean, to be honest, since the cartoon is as sexless as it is, we don't really know. Good point.

But it brings up the question to me that the two of them are a framing a woman. Um, are they quadrupling their own pleasure? Yeah, one wonders. Yeah. One wonders. This really the point of this is these thoughts that say the Billy good schools. Yeah. Yeah. A framing the Baroness because you know she'd be down for that. And somebody has drawn all the gear and two.

Tomax and Zaymah spit roasting the hell out of her. Yeah. Not that you've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I'm just curious, like, is it like, is it stacked or is it like a multiplier? Like, I mean, is this, is this Pemdos? Like how are we calculating the amount of it? Like if they both feel each other's pain, maybe are they feeling each other's ex to see if one of them's kind of into pain,

like does that translate to this shit that I wanna know? Okay. Yeah. I am very glad I don't live in your head. So, or most people. And you know, something struck me when I was watching those cartoons, the advertisements for my homework, but Crimson Guard. So they got introduced in 80.

They were introduced in that season. Yeah, 84. 84. Yes. Return of the Jedi was 83. Yeah, oh. And return of the Jedi introduced the Emperor's personal guards who are the ultra elite of the stormtroopers. Right. In the, you know, swoopy-looking helmets

and the long crimson red robes. Right. And like that suddenly struck me that like, hey, wait a minute, high ranking bad guy MOOCs wore red in the 80s. Yeah, that's a really good point. I remember reading the dossier on the back of a Crimson Guardsman and like their minimum requirements

is that they had to bench press 500 pounds. Oh, wow. I had forgotten that tidbit. That's a lot of fucking weight. That's that's holy shit, man. So I was like out of three. So I was like out of three. When it knocked them out, which is one punch while they're still masked. Well, you know, the kind of muscle mass that's required to do that kind of thing,

actually can lead to hypertension, which could potentially give him a glass jaw. So, I mean, there's that like, you know, they're operating at such, such high, high diastolic that, you know, you hit them and like they stroke out like right there. I can see that. Yeah, you know, could be. But the other thing that I remember about the Crimson Guards, and this was 80, 85, you said, they were all sleeper agents. It was like they all had some kind of cover identity. Oh, yes. Actually, they that will come up when we talk about, okay, which, you know, the farming episode. Okay, because like how cold work can you get?

Oh, I didn't even think about that. Because Baroness was doing that over and over, and she's clearly East German. Oh, Baroness. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. And yeah, honestly, it's not till second season that you really start to see them exploring any of that,

despite it being used as a plot device in so many first season episodes. But you're absolutely right. I didn't even think about the espionage aspect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so extensive enterprises is a corporation run by Tomax and Zeyma and or a fee they do all kinds of bidding for cober commander. So including the red rocket. Cober commander, of course, threatens to launch all of the missiles of the red rocket diners. If the United States government doesn't turn over total control to him. doesn't turn over total control to him. Now, I think it's interesting, the tag is based on diners,

which you don't get much more American. And get one either, is that? Nuclear weapons and they can bind them. Yeah, no, it's true. The part that immediately strikes me though is so constitutionally, how would that even work? Like all of these schemes, all of these schemes are based on this idea, like, you know, the ten-year-olds idea that, well, you know, the president is like the king.

And like, no, that's not how any of this works. Like you can't actually make a demand like that one of a republic. Well, I don't think it becomes a legal thing at that point. Like, you know, it's not like there's gonna be a constitutional crisis when a fascist completely takes over. Yeah, well, no, you're right.

Like, you know, they take over due to a constitutional crisis that they've created maybe, but the government commander's just side-stepping that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Which by the way, G.I. Joe stormed the capital in 1983. Just, they were not G.I. Joe, but Cobra did. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Funny that. Although in all fairness,

Cobra understood the importance of wearing masks. in all fairness, Cobra understood the importance of wearing masks. Ow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so. Okay. Then in the next episode, Cobra tries to take control

of the world's fuel supply, attacking and capturing the world's oil reserves. This of course grinds the Joe's to a halt as it's clear that even a daring highly trained special mission force whose purpose is specifically defend human to defend human freedom against cobra, ruthless terror, terrorist organization that it is still runs on oil. Luckily, there's big enough sales that can be found on aircraft carriers to get the Joe's to where they need to go. So many things wrong with that go for it so many like captures the world's oil reserves.

Yes. Oh, and they straight up take over vaguely Arab oil fields. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Gips in the Gulf of Mexico that are filled with oil presumably that came from Texas. How? They are stopping oil from transporting anywhere.

How many, how many minions would you have to have to, to, to affect that? Well, how many guys took over Captain, what's his face's ship with? I am de-captan now, right? Okay. There were like four guys with gun that took over that whole ship. Okay. All right. I mean, I don't know any. I okay.

And there has. Cobra has a lot of hydrofoils. And you know, you and I both know how mobile hydrophoils can be. So and don't forget they also have the copper submarines. You can put the frog men. Yeah, yeah. We've got a lot of going on there, you know? Yeah, I'm.

There's the ATVs that have forward and rear-facing missiles. I mean, you only need like three of those around an oil derrick. Yeah, I, I I yeah. So anyway, one minute. So many can take care of all of Alaska. I mean, well, okay, based on the law of conservation of Ninja 2. Right. As long as it's only one tank, remember? Yeah, as long as it's only one ninja. Yes. The moment you have like five, well, the moment you the moment you go to a team of five ninja, you're going to get caught. Hope would never do that. They would never hire out to more than one ninja. It was always only storm shadow. That was it. Yeah, all right. He even found a scalaburt at one point.

Well, no, footloose found a scalaburt, but, but, but Stormshadow got away from him. That's true. Yeah. No, Stormshadow found it at the bottom of the, at the bottom of the ocean of the lake. It wasn't even a lake. It was the ocean. And then he was the shore. And he takes it. Footloose gets it from him. Okay. That's what it was. Yeah. So. All right. Anyway, yeah, um, stealing the world's oil reserves. So. All right. Anyway, yeah.

Stealing the world's oil reserves. Okay. Cool. Just controlling. You don't have to steal. You just have to control. Well, the treaties did say he who can destroy a thing has control of the thing. So all right.

Yeah. I would just point out that all they really had to do was march into Iraq and with Cobra and they would be graded as liberators and they would be given the oil. Yeah, thank you. Mr. Cheney, we appreciate that. Yeah, each episode and you should assume that Cobra is thwarted each episode. So next that cover is thwarted each episode. So next, they get thwarted. And then they try to use the Vulcan machine, which is meant to attack the world cities by bringing lava up from the Earth.

Yeah, because Vulcan, yeah, Vulcan. Unless, of course, blah, blah, blah, control. Well, yeah, I mean, it's all pseudoscience. It's all, you know, hurtune-D. It is- It is tech or supernatural. Yeah. Yeah.

And it is that particular kind of super tech that either works really well in the comics or you read the comic and you're like, oh my god. This is such shit Right, well, I think that varies based on age Yeah, sometimes yeah, I mean when you're six and Iron Man bust out the roller skates You're like, oh man, that's some cool shit right there. Yeah, okay. Good boy. Yeah, by the time you're 19 You're like the fuck yeah, why is there a nose on his mask? Yeah.

Yeah. So then, Cobra then works with Dr. Lucifer on a special weapon called High Freak, which is a mind control device that takes over all the animals in the world and makes them do Cobra's bidding. So the whales then stop all the oil ships from getting anywhere. The lions take over the oil Derrick's and Cobra will continue to do that unless blah, blah, blah, blah.

Mm hmm. Turns junkyard against mutt and hunt some down. It's just, you know, it's terrible. Yeah, terrible. There's a Mezzel American Funhouse episode of which there's a plan by Cobra to invade the Rocky Mountains chemical weapons arsenal, which is fun because sensational journalist Hector Ramirez is doing right along as the whole time. And he's roasting the GI Joe's on his TV show, 20 questions, questioning if Cobra even exists. Okay. Yeah. Um, that's, that's obviously a dig at her all the room. Yes, it is. Like, I remember, I actually, I vaguely remember seeing that and going. Yeah, they're they're making fun of an actual reporter there.

Right. Because at that point, Geraldo, I think he had done. So he had his own TV show. Um, and he had also, and this is all blending together for me. Because, you know, childhood, but he'd also done the vault of, oh God, who's the gangster? Was that Capone? Yes, Al Capone's vault. That's what I mean.

Okay. Yeah. And he'd gotten himself smacked to the scorer. I think that's kind of like an 86, 87. Really? After Al Capone's vault? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. But he'd been on, was it, was it 2020 or was it 60 minutes? Oh, you're thinking of John Stossel. Oh Okay, Stascio fellow. Okay. Yeah, no, I mean, you know They did easy enough similar shit. Yeah, yeah, but okay. Yeah, no, I am thinking I was thinking of Stossel But but her all done it was the one who got who got slapped by Yeah, he was the one who got smacked by the wrestler when he said something that it being fake and the guy's No, no, that was John Stossel. That was Stossel. Okay. Yeah. All right Stossel because Stossel sews for like 250,000 after getting zirjum broken by Dr. D

Okay, And then what's his name? Richard Belzer. Okay. Best in power. Richard Belzer was, he said to Hulk Hogan, I think this is fake too. And Hogan said, it's not. I'll put you in a chokehold. And so he did. And Belzer like tried to tap out, but Hogan didn't feel it. And and then and then Mr. T you can hear him from the side going, oh you slept him.

He's sleeping. Um, and so Hogan met some go and his head just cracks to the ground. Oh shit. And like he's bleeding off the back of his head and Hogan like wakes him up and picks him up and he immediately gets back in the car. He's like, we'll be right back. No, no, no. And then like, I mean, he's just fucking out of it.

Wow. He sued the WWF and he got $250,000 and he used it to buy a French Rivera Riviera house, like a farmhouse. It was a French farmhouse. Oh, nice. He named it Shay Hogan. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's awesome. Yeah. So yeah, Haraldo had a talk show in 86, but he'd done work in 2020 prior to that.

Okay. Yeah. So it was 2020, but it was 2020 that Rivera had been on. All right. Yes. Yeah. He'd also been. Okay. And then yeah, he gets his nose broken in 1988 by white supremacists who start a fight. Right. Yeah. It's like, it's like peak, like, let's see if we can top Morton Downey. Yeah. So, yeah. Um, Hector Ramirez, um, who actually actually shows up in another cartoon,

and I forget which one it is, but... Transformers? I don't know. Yes, yes, I think so, because it shows that they're in the same universe. I wanted to say it was another one that we had covered in one of the cartoons that should have gotten more episodes, but I don't remember. But anyway, Cobra then, in another another episode steals a top secret nitrogen rocket fuel in another episode.

And here's your Crimson Guard guy, right? So the Crimson Guard dressed as a janitor steals the top secret nitrogen rocket fuel and he stashes it in a nearby suburban greenhouse, which of course the nitrogen in a greenhouse is gonna cause all of the produce to grow. Exactly, and it grows to enormous size. And then, like, and there's a state fair, of course. And, Destro figures out, we can use this and weaponize it.

And so, I mean, we're talking like giant fist size sunflower seeds shooting out and like, you know, ready to impale people. Nice. Corn exploding and all kinds of stuff. And so they have to figure out how to destroy that. Then Cobra creates something called the Ion attractor, which can hold down the Aurora Borealis in order to melt the polar ice caps and flood the world. And GIO has to work with the bunches,

scientists to stop this. I'm okay, I'm a humanities teacher. Uh-huh. And that sentence gave me a headache because there's so much wrong with it scientifically. Okay, but look at the broader brush. Yeah. I've just mentioned, um, animal mind control. Yeah. Okay, so you're dealing with the sentience of animals. Yeah. I've mentioned bubbling up, um, yeah, yeah, back out of the earth's core. Yeah, from fracking essential. Okay.

All right. I've just mentioned trying to control the world's fuel supplies. Yeah. I've just meant, which, you know, 1973, one that far away. Hmm. I've just mentioned, uh, we'll leave aside the Mesoamerican funhouse, which was just really fucking weird. Um, but, uh, I think honestly, which was just really fucking weird. But I think

honestly that was, hey, let's do an Indiana Jones thing. But like, okay, I'm not saying from Marvel. But I've also just. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But the nitrogen. GMOs. Yeah. No, I mean, I understand thematically how it is. But but was there was a GMO that was starting toward organic. Okay. And so that's reacting to pesticides. Yeah. Okay. So by the way, yes, I had to look it up because I am that kind of nerd

and it was driving me crazy. So Hector Ramirez, yes. This is on Joe Pedia online. Oh, I spent hours on Joe Pedia. I'm sure you did. Yes, I did. Ramirez is,

this is their commentary. Ramirez is, this is their commentary. Ramirez is notable for appearing in episodes of Giajo, the Transformers in that same episode, Dana of the October Garden made a quick cameo. In humanoids, which I think is the one you're thinking of, where he played a major role several times, including getting turned into a 15-foot tall living zombie. Yes.

And jam. I did not. I did not remember that. Some viewers concluded to this place as all four shows in the same universe, a position supported by series writer Buzz Dixon, who describes the character in the many faces of Hector Ramirez, and adds that he came this close to working my little pony in there. Buzz Dixon directed a bulk of not necessarily the majority, but a he drink of G.I. Joe stuff. Yeah. Yeah. During the D.I.C. animated G.I GI Joe series, a recorder named Jose Riviera.

There's more than a striking resemblance to Hector Ramirez in both looks and personality. The season one episode in Justice and the Cobra way. Yep. Featured a front-page newspaper article written by Riviera, yet credited to Ramirez, the name may have been changed to avoid legal issues with Sunbow. That's entirely possible. But I didn't really get into the public, which that in itself, the switchover from Sunbow to Deek was actually a really fascinating aspect of it, but it was a part of this. Yeah. So I'm doing the greatest hits of all the global issues, right? Oh shit, they're like, okay,

and this is stuff that conservatives, Reaganites are ending up on one side of, right? This is also stuff that Cobra Commander is trying to do in order to control the people, and G.I. Joe has to use militarism to stop, and these are the backdrops of it. Okay. There's also several nuclear issues,

lots of satellite issues. I forgot to mention that one of the satellites with special intel that the Joe's and Cobras have to race against each other to find in deepest darkest Africa, and they find a group of subhumans called, I wanna say, hominoids. And they are not coded as people though. They are fully freed up and they look like baboons who walk. Okay. And like clearly, they're

with the antitals. Okay. That, okay. That's less bad that it could have been. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I feel like somebody on the, in the writing room had read Michael Crite and Congo Yeah, yeah, not gonna lie good. Well, be like but okay, yeah, and at the end They're like you're Joe You're Joe and they're like your clubs and shit. Yeah, I mean of course. Yeah So yeah, all those are yeah, all right, so And of course, yeah. So yeah, all those. Marco.

Yeah. All right. So kind of similar to what I said a hundred years ago about the Fantastic Four about how I think in some ways it is a deliberate satire on the nuclear family. I think that having all of these things as a constant backdrop is kind of indicative of you know, people are not able to clap back that heart against Reagan. I mean, he'd won by this point, he had won his reelection or he was in the middle of winning his reelection because this is, you know, September of 84

all the way through. He wins in a huge landslide. He beats Mondale in every state except for Mondale's own state. And I think I want to say and DC, but it might have just been Mondale's own state. Yeah, because Nixon had won everything except for Massachusetts and DC. Monday, I lost everything except for his home state. Yeah. Yeah. So you have a single power wanting to control and hedge ammonia over the world in a time of detent. Back ruin.

Yeah. Through an increasingly fantastical effort to use technology science and force. Okay. So who is that? Right. I mean, obviously it's the USSR. Is it so? Is it?

What? I mean, we're asleep for the SDI part. No, I was not. I'm just I'm throwing your own shit back at you. And yeah, the solution is more military shit. And who is that? So again, Reagan is a versus Reaganism. And I'm watching it as a child at home alone half the time. Mm-hmm. So anyway, in the Synthoid conspiracy, parts one and two, the GIOs get infiltrated by smart

putty. Um, it's yeah, I vaguely remember that one. Yeah, and they end up so discredited that the government totally disbands them and surrenders all GIO aspect assets to cobra, but Destro, the manufacturer, and Zartan, the espionage mercenary, they both feed information to the disbanded Joe's to expose Cobra commander and return to the much more profitable parity that existed with Cobra and GI Joe when they were instated. I'm getting I'm getting vibes of. Oh, shit. I forgot in the title, but episode eight.

With canto bite and I forgot in the actor's name. Yeah, but the code, the code breaker Yeah, but the code breaker. Yeah, the code breaker. I think his name was. Yeah, saying, saying, no, these same people are selling to both sides. They don't care. Right. You know, there is nobody, nobody else cares about your ideology, but you guys.

Right. You know, really kind of putting it to Finn of like, why are you choosing a side? Yeah. I really liked episode eight because Finn did choose a side finally too. He wasn't just trying to get away. He was actually, you know, rebels scum.

Yeah. But yeah, in the next episode, Baroness and Cobra Commander threatened, oh boy, they threatened a Romani woman. Of course, they use a different term to do vaguely Eastern European, Crone Magic. We're using three physical items to get ghosts of a Mongolian Amazon warrior, World War One fighter pilot and a Roman centurion to do their fighting for them. and a Roman centurion to do their fighting for them. Okay. Like I said, supernatural shit was the second highest

on the plots, right? Yeah. World War One fighter pilot. Yep. American. American. Yeah. Mongolian. Amazon warrior. Okay. So, so a a woman Mongolian warrior. Okay, Amazon being the term for that. Because I immediately thought like Amazon, Amazon, but anyway. Nope, and they're terms, by the way. Okay, oh.

Oh, god, of course. Like I said, Romani, they didn't. Yeah, yeah, no, no, and a Roman centurion. Yes, okay. All of whom spoke English, of course. Well, it's a, it's a kids cartoon. So all right. Of course, cober commander does things wrong.

He pisses off the Baroness who teaches end because the Baroness is what fucking Bavarian. I don't know. She's Eastern European, Eastern German, but as maybe check Germany has, she has ties to the mysticism stuff on some level. Yeah. Anyway, she, she teaches the Joe's to retrieve the items and bury them in order to break the obligate curse. Okay.

And a couple of episodes later, Cobra helps a sleazy mayoral politician to smear his opponents for him by using local gang members as a para paramilitary force because Cobra is a paramilitary force. So this has got to be a para paramilitary force. Yeah, okay. That disrupts the other candidates meetings. And luckily, G.I. Joe convinces the Latina coded gang leader to fight for real change. In the next episode, Cobra has developed a molecular disruptor to destroy all currency, making

their currency with Cobras commanders face on it, the only acceptable currency, bygold. And I mean, can you get more Reagan than these last four? No, you really can't. You fuck with the cult. You do dirty politics. You focus on deflationary monetary policy that only benefits the rich. Yeah. Yeah. Like do you think the writers room was was like, okay, how can we subvert this as hard as possible without being overt about it? Like, okay, and it's like, okay, no one will catch us because no one's home. And animation ghetto. Right. And it ends with tanks and shit.

Yeah. We're always going to win using military shit. So no one's going to notice, right? Yeah. So now Joan Quigley was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1927. And she moved to San Francisco with her father in 1942. When he, a lawyer, bought the Drake Wilshire Hotel, now known as the Taj Campton Place, it was boutique in. Quigley went with her sister to high end private schools in San Francisco, and her family lived on knob hill.

She was chauffeur departees and a Rolls Royce, and she and her sister were regularly mentioned in society columns when there were stupid things like that that existed. They were called the Quigley girls and they were always showing up to places and stuff. Now, Miss Quigley graduated from Vassar with a degree in art history and then she apprenticed herself to Jerome Pearson, a sooth saer. Her father disapproved of astrology, but her mother, conveniently named Zelda, was all for it, and as a result, Joan Quigley ended up writing an astrology column for 17 magazine. Now, this access, having and this exposure, also made her regular on the Merv Griffin show from 1972 to 1985

Okay, and as a Republican society person who had media exposure. She met Nancy Reagan around the beginning of that time Now you get me Okay, you're like who the fuck where the fuck? Why do we care? Okay, now I understand why do we care? Okay. Now I understand. Now, her ties to Nancy Reagan go back before the government editorial run of her husbands. And it was rumored that he actually delayed his, and his inauguration in 1967 by nine minutes based on her astrology of ice. But Reagan denies this regularly. Stay, he denied this regularly is dead now. Rest in peace stating that it was actually to prevent Jerry or not Jerry Pat Brown from making any last minute appointments, which that argument doesn't make sense to be perfectly honest. No, that that really doesn't you would want to do it nine minutes earlier, but whatever.

So that's questionable. Okay. Yeah. When Reagan began to run for president again in 1980, as this would have been his third time running for president, ladies and gentlemen, do not let people saying no, stump your ability to have ambition. Joan Quigley quickly volunteered to work for his campaign because, quote, he had the most brilliant horoscope I'd ever seen in this country in this century. Now, after Reagan's secret service did their job a little too well, turning a John Hinckley

miss into a near kill, Nancy Reagan reached out to Joan Quigley in 1981 and asked if she could have predicted the assassination attempt of a man trying to impress a child actress whom he was stalking. Okay. Quickly, quickly queried her quadri-sense and questioned quietly, which quasars could quench quintalennial quackery. Remember Squeaky from, tried to kill Ford, who quit being a quadri-regionarian eight quarters prior. Quaintly quelling in quashing queer and queasy feelings, which were quaking Nancy's quaking, Queenley Panic. Thank you, V. In other words, Quigley said, yeah, of course I would have,

if I was looking at my charts. And then from March of 1981 forward, Nancy Reagan began paying Quigley for her advice on the increasing art that should have been March of 82. Yeah, um, but She Nancy Reagan quickly began paying quickly for her advice on increasingly my new details and aspects of Ronald Reagan's life. Reagan knew about this and he told her if it make well, if it makes you happy, you go ahead and do that. So yeah, no, no, I want to hear what you're about to say. She paid her $3,000 a month in 1981 movie, money.

Fuck you. In 1984, a Toyota Tursell cost about 3,500. Fuck you. In today's money, that's $10,141.36 a month. Man, we got into the wrong business. What the hell? So, so, yeah, there are several thoughts competing with each other in my head about all this They've been overwhelmed by the fuck you, but

It's like okay, you could have if you'd been looking at your charts. Mm-hmm. What the fuck good are you? Like What the fuck good are you? Like, so you're telling me that you've read his chart, you said he had the most dazzling horoscope of any American in the century. There are some other horse shit to that effect. You know, part of that chart didn't say anything about, oh yes, I'm just going to try to fucking kill him. Right. Like, like really? Right. Like, really?

Right? Like, how convenient. Mm-hmm. And so, like, I mean, I understand how people get sucked in, sucked into Wu, like, I get it. I understand the psychology behind it, but part of it wants to, you know, dig Nancy up and be like, really? Yeah. Really? Yeah, really.

Yeah, she paid her the equivalent of $10,000 in today's money. A month. A month to tell the president's wife the relative position of several balls of gas and rock that will influence his policy's success, which if you look at criticisms of his economic policies, that actually might have made more sense. It might have.

Like if we'd found out, oh no, he was doing all this based on astrology charts. Oh, well, okay, it explains it. Like, okay, that's logical. It's one of those long-ows. Oh, you know. Yeah, and then, you know, part of me is like, okay, she's paying 10, you know, yeah, and and then you know part of me is like okay, she's paying 10, you know, $10,000 a month and you know, today's money, $23,000 back then. Yeah, $3,000 a month in 80 to money, which is full enough to rent like a studio apartment in San Francisco. Yeah. So,

San Francisco. Yeah. And, and, you know, part of me is like, why didn't Ronnie like tell her, okay, no, look, no, like no. And then the other part of me that, you know, is married, likes being married is like, well, I can, this is one of those times where I can look at Ronald Reagan and go, yeah, okay, I can identify with that. All right. Add to that the baggage of his second marriage, or his first marriage. First marriage, yeah. Add to that, right? So the frankly abusive relationship that they had, like she said, if he was mentally cruel, I don't doubt it to be perfectly honest

because he was a guy in the 1940s. But also, like he had to ask her to marry him under duress. Like, there was a lot of... Oh yeah, no, no. It was his, it was Wyman's like third marriage, I think. Oh yeah, well, yeah. So Wyman was a character, but yeah, she was.

I genuinely think his experience as, as James Wyman's husband absolutely made him much more willing to do whatever it took to make mommy happy. Yeah. I mean, I, I think there's something going on there. I genuinely do. Also, I think he probably believed in this shit because she quickly would make phone calls daily, sometimes

three times daily from San Francisco. And she had private direct lines put into the White House and at Camp David. Now, it could still be that this is just to accommodate Nancy and I could see that as well. I really could. Yeah. But. But the possibility that he bought into it is pretty. Took his wife's advice all the time.

She's his number one advisor. He is also, we're gonna get into this probably in the next episode. His mental faculties are quickly diminishing. And they might not be diminishing from Alzheimer's. They might actually be diminishing from the fact that he had damn near died. And when you go through bypass surgery and stuff like that, you get what's called pump head syndrome for a while. Okay. Very often when you're put under deep anesthesia, it almost activates brain problems. Oh, yeah.

Like, there's a lot of stuff going on there that I can be sympathetic to and also say the 25th Amendment was a beautiful thing when it was written and we should have used it. But Nancy has his ear one way or the other. Yeah. And Joan Quigley's name is largely unknown to much of Reagan's staff, but her influence was very known. Once Nancy's secret was out, that she was consulting with Joan Quigley. Nancy actually quit accepting any help from Quigley at all and cut off all contact.

So there's something going on there. Anyway, Cobber Commander, used spiritual woo-woo stuff and then Nancy Reagan, I mean, I mean, Baroness, turned on that once she saw that it wasn't something that she had full control over. Wow. Yeah. Now, when Edmund Muskie was running

for the presidential nomination of the Democrats in 1972, he was campaigning in New Hampshire. He was one for the presidential nomination of the Democrats in 1972. He was campaigning in New Hampshire. He was one of the early front runners who had a possible chance of defeating wrong or Richard Nixon. However, the editor of the Manchester Union leader received a letter from a New Hampshire citizen accusing Muskie of using racial slur. Um, I don't think we have that many Canadian listeners. We've dropped to like 67th. So, and I'm not sure how many of them are French Canadian. So, forgive me for using this word Canadian listeners. He used the word canuck. In New Hampshire, there's a lot of French Canadians who are a significant portion of the voting population, and they don't like that racial slur. Really? Evidently.

Okay. Yeah. I know. The walk mom came for the muskie. I just had to add a new term to my okay, remember not to use this word. Right. Library. Like I didn't realize that was okay. Yeah. Oh great. Good to see Kinnuck now this word. Right. Library, like I didn't realize that was okay.

Yep. Oh great. We can't just say, canuck now. Okay. Yeah, okay. All right, fine. Yeah. No.

Well, something new every day. All right, so Muskie, use the C word. Except he never did. The letter was later one that was discovered to be the efforts of a White House aide to President Nixon, a guy named Kenneth Clawson. Further, there was a character assassination in the works. The editor of that newspaper cited Muske's wife as being a drunk who joked too much. No evidence there.

Muske was painted as being a soft man because he looked like he was crying in frustration in 72 because it was snowing and the snow was melting on his face. And since New Hampshire is the bellweather state as far as primaries go, his showing there and the troubles that he had there made him far less attractive as a candidate, and he starts trending in the wrong direction. And as a result of his rather flaxid win, Muskie loses, or McGovern rather, picks up steam and picks up the nomination from the Democrats.

McGovern is the candidate Nixon wanted in the first place, because he was easier to inflame his base against because McGovern was a dove. And Nixon won in a landslide losing only Massachusetts and DC. Okay. Now you go back to that episode where a mayoral candidate is running and it's a pity that Muskie didn't have GI Joe. Yeah, it is. Now that's Nixon, but Lee outwater also had a long and storied history along the same lines within the same timeline of popular memory of those who were writing GI Joe. Ronald Reagan won the primary in South Carolina by virtue of atwater's efforts.

Lee outwater planted a false story that Reagan's opponents, note plural and not and also note the vagueness, were attempting to buy the black vote in South Carolina. Now, this, this attack, this misinformation campaign largely centered on John Connolly, who was his strongest opponent in that primary of the Republicans. Okay. This absolutely electrified the defiant Reagan base in supporting him so much harder and stronger that he won the South Carolina primary in 1980 and swept the South. I'm sorry, John Connelly was was running as. No, no, yeah, that was yeah, Connelly started out as a Republican, but he was dependent in hand. Um, nice job. I remember it from one of my own episodes.

Right, Right. Uh, so, uh, Reagan wins the South Carolina primary and he sweeps the South. And despite the fact that he would go on to lose five more primaries, he was an early lock with that Southern suite, which was made possible by Cobra funding street tuffs to throw eggs and cabbage at the opposing mayoral candidate. Wait. throw eggs in cabbage at the opposing mayoral candidate. Wait, reread your notes there. Hold on. I see. Then of course, there's the Reaganomics aspects, right?

Not too confused with the 2003 economic philosophy of Thuginomics, which purports in a word life type of economy, economic policy, policy in which you cannot see the invisible hand being operated by the one in charge. Okay. But Reaganomics was marked by a number of really dumb fucking things. But at its center was a tightening of the money supply in order to reduce inflation, even when people are out of work. Yes.

In 1980, the US hit peak inflation and then began deflating throughout until 1986, where it hit its low point of about 2%. At this same time, the purchasing power parity Big Mac index got its start. This is an actual thing. Right. The Big Mac index is a way to measure purchasing power parity throughout the world using US currency as a measure of how many big Macs it could purchase at various McDonalds franchises globally, which pins the measure of the currency to the deflated dollar. And it discusses it in terms of how many American-made, iconographic items it can buy. For fun, you could buy 30 big Macs in India for

$50, whereas in Ukraine and Hong Kong, you could only buy 23 big Macs. In Pakistan and Lithuania, it would be 17 big Macs. In the US, you could get 11 big Macs, which means that the US economy's PPP, also known as PPP, was twice as strong as Ukraine's, and nearly thrice as strong as India's. Okay. Okay. So again, deflating, getting rid of the entire currency so you only have gold with the icon of corporate commander on it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There were plenty of other episodes that dealt similarly and the solution was almost always the same. G.I.J. tanks, planes, rifles, and soldiers.

And it took militarism in order to defeat dumbass economic policy and weird ass spiritual efforts and shitty political efforts. Those things were always defeated by militarism. And then in three episodes in a row, Cobra tried to steal all the gold bars from Fort Knox, attack a chic oil supply with a sonic device and cause the oil to leak everywhere, and tried to take over a solar power farm to mess with the power grid. And then a few episodes later, Cobra steals a dangerous bacterium, which turns into a giant

germ monster that devours all in its path, which G.I. Joe then defeats by blowing up all the ground around it to guide it toward an apple orchard, which this episode actually taught me that apples have a little bit of poison in their seeds. So literally, American apples saved everyone. So literally American apples saved everyone. All right. So deflationary policy check oil spills. Now exon Valdez is not going to happen for a few more years, but the Delaware River and Marcus Hook saw oil spills in September of 85. Okay. When 435,000 gallons of oil spilled from the grand eagle tanker after running a ground on the Marcus Hook bar. And a month later, that episode came out.

So check. In the bacterial biological warfare side of things. Do you remember Oregon in 1984? No. No. That's okay. Most people in Oregon don't remember Oregon in 1984. Largely because the population is younger. But recall that in 1984, the Rajneesh cult, we now call it

Ocho, tried like hell to incapacitate the people of Dalai's Oregon, D-A-L-L-E-S. So I don't want to say it's Dallas. Dallas, Dallas Oregon by deliberately contaminating salad bars with Salmonella. Their goal was to win the upcoming Wasco County elections in 1984 so that they could get political control over the County's commission and the Sheriff's Department in order to get building permits granted for their commune. They'd already done this in Antelope, Oregon, where the population was only about 75 people, but their Raj Nishi had brought in lots of homeless folks with the intention of inflating their side of the vote, and the poisoning would deflate the opposition. It didn't work, and while dozens were sick and a few hospitalized, nobody died. And it cannot be ignored that this

was a grotesque representation of, you know, the germ war that that, uh, Phobos using of the rainbow herbicides that the US used in Vietnam during the war. In many ways, this is a re fantasization, uh, effort to re-skins something that the US had done dropping defolience on a population. And it showed the US is the hero when it comes to bioterrorism instead of the agent. Okay, yo, Joe, I can, I can see, yeah, okay, reframing. Anyway, there's also an episode where cobrath retens to cause an earthquake that'll

ruin Tokyo. This episode comes roughly a year after the 1984 Nagano earthquake, which was the deadliest earthquake of 1984. And there's a two part episode series where Cobra kidnaps and brainwashes, the family members of a bunch of GI Joe's to retrieve really unstable explosive crystals. Okay. In 1984, there was a book released that was an effort to debunk the idea of brainwashing and there were plenty of claims all around the world that cults were brainwashing people, not the least of which were the Unification Church commonly referred to as moonies. In 1983, the American Psychological Association created a group called the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control, or DimPAC to look into cults and brainwashing.

As that was big and the zeitgeist at the time. I mean, it's not quick, Sam, but it's pretty close. Yeah. Now, that report won't get released until 86. So it's results certainly didn't impact the writers of these episodes. And in 87, the impact came back saying essentially that they couldn't ethically take a stand. But keep in mind that just over a decade prior to this, these writers would have been watching a clockwork orange, which features brainwashing as a central plot point.

Mm-hmm. Given the amount of creative energy that went on to quick-sand, a plot device in the 50s and 60s, one could say that the brain stuff was a similar import to 70s and 80s fictions. The brain is so powerful from psycho canesist to brainwashing. And it's a lot to play with in terms of plot devices. And they do it again in an episode where cobra has built a model, a company town, and they're using TV to brainwash everyone in town, which Flint figures out, of course, when he goes to visit his cousin,

the newscast is perpetually brainwashing the denizens of that town because reasons, and it nearly leads to domestic abuse, brainwashing and girlfriend beating all in one. And all of this is on cartoon for children after school. And this brings me to the latter half of the first season. This cartoon didn't spare any part of Reaganism as a problem. In addition to the rampant capitalistic evil villainous plots, the cult of personality leadership of Cobra Commander and the Chronyism, Destro's and Arms Manufacturer who works alongside Cobra and has an uneasy friendship with Cobra Commander, as well as a romantic one with Baroness.

Cobra is also a union buster. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. In the, in the episode when they figure out how to create dinosaurs again by like de-evolving birds. The Crimson Guard literally refused to work saying that they're union and that they're on break.

But then they're physically intimidated back to work by the arms manufacturer or a destro. And a few episodes later, which I'm just like, okay, he's clearly a villain. Like that's, yeah, well, yeah. I mean, yeah, if you didn't think so before. Right. Now, that's a bridge, that's a bridge to far. Exactly.

Well, a few episodes later when I try to monopolize the world oil supply. Yeah. Trying to create super cyclones, death weather, you know, smart cities, like that, that's certainly sketchy, but the moment you go union busting, you earned a 15 minute break. Yeah, there you go. Goddamn right. Yeah. And again, I would point out that Cobra is the one that actually provides masks to its

employees. Self. Well, yeah. And a rec room, by the way. And and healthcare and a rec room. Yeah. A few episodes later, when Cobra decides that the best way to take over the world is through heavy metal music, cold slither with Zartian as a frontman. Using subliminal messaging

in their music, they're filming a music video. Someone tries to stop the recording because the union workers need their break and they get beaten down by Cobra Commander. Oh, Cobra Commander is the one who actually delivers the, uh, rabs the union guide hurls him across. Wow. Yeah. And more on the heavy metal episode in a minute. But first,

Okay. G.I. Joe delves into an alternative dystopian timeline. The days of future past is already coming gone at Marvel in 1981, but G.I. Joe was trying its hand as well in this two-parter called Worlds Without End. There's a glowy, purple, beam device that sent a bunch of Joe's into an alternate reality where Cobra had defeated the Joe's. And it turns out that the Baroness is actually a double agent and in love with Stealer, who you never really met prior to this point.

Here to for barely mentioned, who ends up suffering from a fever for a while. He also finds the corpses of his alternate universe self, clutch and grunt. And he wigs out a bit. Eventually, Baroness helps start a civil war between Destro and Cobra commander and the rest of the Joe's escape back in a reality, but Steeler clutch and grunt all stay behind in the other reality Which is a convenient way to discontinue their action figures which weren't really all that interesting to begin with

So there you go. Mm-hmm. Now your your huge fan of buckaroo bonsai. Yeah, I am. Tirely about this very thing. Trying to, yeah. Yeah, there's, yeah. So I'm going to leave that for you as a topic. That seems more up your app. Oh, well, yeah. Yeah, but suffice to say, the idea of a parallel and alternate realities is much more than a fringe

idea at this point in fiction. In another episode, Dusty pretends to be a traitor so that he can be a triple agent. So you get into that kind of spy. Yeah. The problem is again. Yeah, the problem, though, is that Duke ends in another of his comas. And he's the only one that knew. Interestingly, Cobra Commander actually quotes Joseph Stalin while talking to Dusty. Because Dusty is like, you know, don't you trust me? And Cobra Commander says, quote, as Stalin said, don't trust anyone, not even yourself. Okay.

Also in this episode, there's a mention of the Ausley Mind Control chemical. Okay. Now for those that don't know, that's LSD. Mk. Oh, okay. And then 1950's CIA was experimenting with the use of LSD to see if they could find some sort of way to enact mind control, and create sleeper agents and brainwash people. And this came after Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke were discontinued. MK Ultra involved plenty of well-involunteers, but no good science at all.

Like there wasn't a controlled environment, no real kind of like reporting that scientists would have done, no real accountability, no replicability of those results. Oh, yeah, no. It was a shitshow. Yeah. And it was made known to the public by the Rockefeller Commission in 75 and a 77 FOIA request

that brought to light over 20,000 documents that had previously be classified. And again, that's about eight years before Aosley Mind Control was even mentioned. So, right? I'm eight years old this time. Now the tie-in is the LSD. Aoslie Stanley was called the King of Asset. And between 65 and 67, he was the first and most prolific private producer of LSD on a massive scale.

He was responsible for roughly five million doses that were made available to the public. Yeah. The Heisenberg of acid. Yes. And the thing is he was able to do so largely as a runoff from the MK Ultra efforts. Okay. Anyway, dusty, convinces Cobra Commander to use the new armor treatment on all of Cobra's gear. And the thing is though that the Joe's figured out that when the treatment gets heated up a lot, it disintegrates everything it touches. And Duke came out of his coma and everything was saved. Okay. In the wrong stuff episode, Cobra captures yet another satellite,

and they set up a TV station on a space station that ran its own TV network to propagandize everyone. Okay. At its core, Cobra's plan here, if for world domination, is 24 hour news cycle punditry. Well, okay, CNN started when is 24 hour news cycle punditry. What? Well, okay, CNN started when 80 80 80.

Okay, but this is like super part. Yeah, I think so. Because it's a turner thing and Turner really gets the super station going in like 87. I want to say, I might be off by a few, but. All right. This is partisan propaganda, not just 24 hour news, not just bring us news. This is news that's designed to activate your fear. This is news that is going to cast everything in a certain light.

This is going to have a kids cartoon on their news network. That's about zero diversity and how conformity is the goal and diversity is bad and that's for the kids. And cober commander actually does the globe dance from the great dictator in this episode. Oh wow. Yeah. Now here this will give you a clue as to what network I'm really talking about. Cober commander appeals to free speech and asks for money to continue staying on the air in order to protect his free speech. Okay. Yeah.

And here's the thing. Yeah. This cartoon is not reflective. It's predictive. Yeah, it really is also. Yeah, I because again, I had to look at that. Sure. CNN launched at 5 p.m. Eastern time on June 1, 1980. Oh, shit. I was off.

Yeah. So anyway, sorry. So, um, it's absolutely prescient with its spot on depiction of punditry. Yeah. The ails, Rupert Murdockch, and the toxic 24-hour cycle, it predicted so much about the values of such a network and its potential danger.

Luckily, the might of G.I. Joe's space force is able to derail his plans, despite Ace getting shot down, I think three times in this episode, and come to think of it, for a man named Ace, there's not a single episode, and I checked that he doesn't get shot down in. Well you know it could just be that he's he's related to john mccain.

It's entirely possible. I you know yeah. I feel a little bad saying that as the son of a your, but you know, how many times did I crash? Multiple. And like straight up was like, Hey, my dad's an admiral. Yeah. So I will say this McCain did deal with a lot of torture and came out fully against torture. That's like the one way that he stayed consistent that I agreed with the rest of it was a lot of image management.

Yeah. Anyway, that is the end of season one. I think that's a good place to break off. I think so, yeah. Yeah. So what have you gleaned in this trip through season one of a cartoon that you should be grateful you didn't have to watch?

Yeah. That William Gibson had a great line in, I want to say it was a forward he wrote and it might have been for a collection of his own work, but he talked about science fiction writers having the role of being the court gestures of literature that because the not being taken seriously is a dull edge sword, that because you're not taken seriously, you can play with ideas and concepts that, quote unquote, serious literature can't do anything with. Like if a serious quote unquote literary writer

were to touch on a certain issue, or to try to say something with a certain issue, there would be, you know, it's a third rail kind of effect, but a science fiction author can go in and say, oh, well, you know, I'm writing this story that, you know, very clearly is an allegory about whatever this issue is or about this thing. And I'm going to take it to 11. Mm hmm. And I can do that because, well, you know, it's, it's, it's a high tech fairy story. It's not real. Sure. And I feel like the same thing is happening with everything you're saying here with the GIGO

series that all of these issues are coming up in these literally cartoony ways. Right. are coming up in these literally cartoony ways, right? But they're bringing all of this stuff up in this way that a live action TV show would not have been able to get away with. Or would have, you know, people would have looked at it and gone, well, okay, no, that's just ridiculous.

But because this is a cartoon, well, of course it's ridiculous. It's a cartoon. Right. But they're not wrong. Yeah. You know, I mean, yeah, I have said a couple of times that they're, the fact that they're right is a stunning indictment of where we are. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would, I would not disagree with where we are. Yeah. Yeah. I would not disagree with that at all. Yeah.

So yeah, I think the court jester effect of, in this case, the animation ghetto is definitely present and very much a thing, because that's something that I've kind of been shaking my head about the whole time. Sure. Hearing all of this. Yeah. That works.

So what's you, what's you recommending? Let's see. What am I recommending? I'm going to very strongly recommend Strange Days, the film. Strange Days from 1990, I don't remember what. That is, again, it's homework for the upcoming Cyberpunk episode. It is one of a very few live action truly cyberpunk films. It is not, it is not visually anything like Blade Runner. Okay. But it brings up some ideas that are intensely cyberpunk. The interaction between individuals and technology,

the epistemiological issues that come up of, what is real, and to an extent, not so much what does it mean to be human, which is frequently in cyberpunk, but in strange days, it's a bit more of how genuine are our experiences. Oh, okay. You know, where do we draw the line between a real experience and a fake one? Sure, sure.

You know, if we have technology where you can record events from your own point of view and somebody else can put on a device and experience that thing from your point of view, is that a real experience for them or is it not? I like that. And I'm blanking right now on the lead actor's name, but Angela Bassett's in it. She's amazing. It's, yeah, it's, it's a great movie. Very highly recommended and a really good example of cinematic cyberpunk. And so strongly recommend that.

Okay. How about you? I'm going to make two part of a recommendation. First of all, if you have access to I'm going to make two part of a recommendation. First of all, if you have access to G.I. Joe, the comic book, the original read issue 21. It's called silent interlude. Oh, yeah. It's groundbreaking. You're welcome. It comes about in the way that so many great things come about through sheer dumb fucking

luck. Essentially, they ran out of time and they're like, just make it a silent issue. Uh, it's really, really good. The other one I'm gonna bring up is by James Asmiss ASMUS. It's called Survival Street. It just popped out as a, you know, by the time this, this hits the air, it just popped out.

It's called Survival Street. And essentially, it is, how to put, the country is completely taken over by corporate America. Everything's deregulated and it's feudal shit with billionaires running things. But that means the PBS is gone. But there's a group of people who are kind of like the A team and teaching kids hand puppets. And it's meant to be satire.

That's trippy. Oh, it's great. It's fantastic. Okay. You get into like all kinds of really cool ethical shit of like, well, if it's a corporation and it's an entity, that means we can try it. I say, oh, yes, you can. But it needs to be tried as a minor minor because this corporation is only 12 years old

and and There's like there's some humans there's like a Levar Burton type character in it and he is leading the rebels he is leading the rebels. And he's still a pacifist and it's weird, but you also have like literally the muppets teaching kids how to make bombs and form resistant squads and stuff like that. It's fantastic.

Here's the funny part. Ted Cruz picked a fight with Big Bird in the last year or so over vaccinations. Yeah. So, no matter how absurd our satire gets. Yeah. Yeah. So, we go back to G.I. Joe Joe no matter how fucking absurd that is. Yeah shit was happening in real time. Yeah, like oh, we're gonna control these ghosts using astrology. Yeah So just just prove it like maybe satire

Has a shelf life of that day like we used to say it had a shelf life of half generation. Maybe it's just the day. Not even. So you bring up corporate feudalism. I actually have another recommendation I have to make off of it. piggybacking off of that snow crash by Neil Stevenson. Oh, okay. Published in 1992. Neil Stevenson. Oh, okay. Published in 1992. It is another classic of the genre. And it takes place in an America where corporate entities have literally Balkanized the country. So you will live in an that operates under the law as written by a pizza delivery chain. So yeah, this sounds like the guiding principle behind a shadow run. Yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely there. It's, I mean, they're, they're coming at a very similar place.

Very cool. So yeah. So there we go. Awesome. Well, you want people to be able to find you at all or you hermitted up. I'm hermitting up for now. Good view. We can be found collectively at woobahwoobahwoobah.yikhistoryoftime.com.

And on Twitter, as long as that shibboleth, not that that shambling beast, it's our come around. As long as that continues to shamble, we can be found there as gikhistory time on the Twitter. And how about you? What do you got going on? You can find me. Let's see as of this recording. Maybe it's in time for the May 5th show. You should go see the May 5th show of

Capital Punishment at Luna's $10 proof of Vax. It's gonna be an awesome freaking show. If you miss that then there's the June June second show, same time, same place, 8 p.m. Luna's in Sacramento, bring proof of wax to either show. We probably are going to be providing masks, but feel free to bring your own, bring money to buy food. Art makes really good smoothies. They're delicious. It's getting to be warm enough to enjoy them and bring some money for some merch. So yeah, well for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, you know, half the battle. Oh, it's the end of the episode. Knowing is half the battle. There we go. Now we know. And yeah, right. Anyway, fucking worse. There we go.

There we go. Now we know. And yeah, right. Anyway, fucking worse.