G. I. Joe Sigma 6 and Legos...

When I was a kid, I used to watch the Saturday morning cartoons on the French TV channel. Then they stopped showing those, and since as a child you intuitively comprehend languages even when you don't yet understand them, I switched to the English TV channel instead. They showed several interesting series: Dr. Who, Photon, Thunderbolts, Macron One (an odd intercut version of the Anime shows Goshogun and Macross, IIRC) and G. I. Joe.

G. I. Joe is one of those toy-line tie-in shows (like "He-Man"), and since it was the 80ies, they hammered home a "moral of the story" each time at the end. However, even though it was an action-packed hightech-military TV show, it also worked as a fairly decent animated TV show, since the characters actually had a personality. Which was fortunate, because the toys weren't available in Germany at the time (They were later sold under the name "Action Force" in Switzerland and also in Germany for a short while, but apparently didn't do too well).

When I talked to other people about G.I. Joe or Action Force, all they understood was the stupid "Action Man" dolls, which was a quite silly attempt of Hasbro's managers to use the larger (military replica) action figures they also offered under the G.I.Joe moniker with some more scifi-ish gadgets in Europe.

So, when today I turned on the telly, I caught first an ad for the new "Action Man A.T.O.M." toy line (where they seem to have finally understood that children don't want 30 variants of two characters), and then the actual episode. And of course it reminded me of ... G. I. Joe. So, I googled around a little.

Apparently there's now a new G.I. Joe toy line called "G. I. Joe Sigma 6". Some of the old characters are back, and they also have a new US-Anime-styled TV show to go with it. I hope it does better than the new He-Man toy line, because just like that one, it looks like a nice update to the old property, but with a few changes to modernise it a little. Of course, I'm not the real target audience, but I'm still hoping they get to releasing the toys for some of my favorite characters so I can buy a few to set up on a bookshelf somewhere... That didn't work with He-Man, sadly, because they started shipping here shortly before they were discontinued, so we never really got the later figures.

Anyway, during that Googling, I also came across a nice web site that has pictures of someone's Lego imitations of G.I. Joe characters: A real American Lego. If you know the figures, you'll enjoy the trip down memory lane when you see this site.

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