Like most of you, I grew up with ARAH. I have a lukewarm response to it. I much prefer the original 12" GI Joe concept - that Joe was supposed to be the everyman soldier, Marine, sailor or airman, like your dad was. But that works better in the 12" line and just as that was tailored to a time when there was a mass of WWII and Korean veterans, ARAH was tailored to the VOLAR military and the 1980's.
You guys probably know more about the comics than I do. I only had a couple. But I do remember that Vietnam was a permeating theme in anything military in the 1980's. The GI JOE ARAH story comes out of Vietnam. ALL of the major first tier characters (Duke, Snake Eyes, Stalker, Storm Shadow and Joe Colton) and many of the second tier men (Leatherneck) had a backstory in Vietnam. The blurbs on the filecards always struck me as strikingly accurate on military details - down to the serial numbers and MOS's. That makes sense since Larry Hama was a Vietnam Vet and he wrote them as well as the comics. Hama's Vietnam backstories on the primary characters are pretty rich and subtly match the military's own transition from Vietnam to the Reagan era.
Re-doing the ARAH characters in the 21st century is now a ham-fisted affair. The characters were perfect for their place in time. But I doubt that anyone who is trying to re-imagine Duke and Stalker has the military background of Hama, so we get the "Retaliation" Ultimate Duke filecard that sounds like someone just puked up an article he read about drones. Or we get the "Renegades" filecard that is just a bunch of banalty on how great a military leader Duke is. The backgrounds of all the ARAH characters need to be completely re-worked by someone with real, modern military experience if they are to be recycled. There could be rich history between the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The overall problem is that HASBRO, aside from being too pussy about what it sells, can't come up with anything cohesive for GI JOE. As a kid, the figures were successful because they followed the same general storyline for over a decade. Everything was 3 3/4". Now, I see more of the 12" "Retaliation" figures with no articulation on sale than 3 3/4" figures, but then below them are a couple of the rehashed Tomahawks and other 3 3/4" vehicles. First we had a cartoon series that was a total bust with toy tie-ins, then on to the movies. With marketing like that, there'll be no traction. Personally, I hate the "secret ninja force" theme. GI JOE was modeled after the military's RDF in the late 1970's.
Frankly, I don't like the changing of races either. But that's because I grew up with images and expectations in my head of the characters based off of the cartoon series. I have a hard time with The Rock as Roadblock. The cartoon character was a much different person. When I first saw Ripcord in the movie I dug deep down and thought, "wait, wasn't he white?" But then again, kids these days don't have that knowledge.
Even as a kid I personally hated COBRA as a concept and I still do. I thought it was too far out. It would not have been politically correct to have JOE fighting nameless Soviets in the 1980's. But I never got into the worldwide terrorist organization that is big enough to field a massive conventional Army of incompetents that no country decides to simply destroy. There's a missing backstory: why isn't the whole U.S. Army fighting COBRA? Is it because the Army is supposed to be ready to fight its own conventional war against the USSR? The U.S. fought skirmishes in Grenada, Lebanon and Panama. Why not make an enemy out of the nameless commie narco terrorists like they did in all the action movies of the 80's (Predator, Commando, etc.)? Regardless, COBRA with their blue and red uniforms never made much sense to me and never will. So in my mind, GI JOE was ALWAYS squeamish about its enemy. Remember in the 1960's that GI JOE was not given an enemy. Don Levine wrote about this. It wasn't until the "Soldiers of the World" line was there a weak tie in with some sort of enemy. But even then, the Nazi, Jap and Russian weren't called enemies.
I think it's time for a GI JOE reboot. New characters (or new stories on the old ones). Get rid of the stupid science fiction gizmos and crazy gear and root JOE into a modern military setting that makes sense for kids who have now grown up hearing about Iraq and Afghanistan.
I'm still pissed that GI JOE dropped "A Real American Hero" with the movies. I remember that controversy.
