 Zartan is a legendary character in G.I. Joe. He was a master of disguise, an assassin, and the leader of the Dreadnoughts. How did this character come about? I am in Des Moines, Iowa at the G.I. Joe Convention Assembly required, and their theme this year is Cold Slyther with Zartan and the Dreadnoughts. This is the perfect place to start a deep dive into one of the most unique characters in G.I. Joe, Zartan. Hello everybody, hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. This is not just a toy review. We are going to look deeply and thoroughly at Zartan. We're going to look at the vintage toys, we're going to look at the media appearances, and we are going to look at the controversy. We're going to look at why Hasbro had to apologize for Zartan. We're not going to skirt around the controversy, we're going to confront it straight on and see what we can learn from it. I have some special guests to help us look at this amazing character. Vlad Stallions, a great YouTube channel, is going to show us some possible influences for Zartan from the 1970s. Fun School Ronnie is going to show us a somewhat famous international release of Zartan. To dive into the controversy and to learn as much as we can about it, I'm going to talk to a friend who is a mental health professional so we can make sense of the offensive and controversial file card. HCC 788 presents Zartan. This is Zartan, the evil master of disguise and the chameleon swamp skier. This action figure and vehicle set were introduced to GI Joe in 1984. They were also available in 1985. They were discontinued for 1986. Version 2 of Zartan was introduced in 1993 as part of the Ninja Force subset. It's surprising there were only two vintage versions of such a popular character. Zartan was designed by Ron Rudat for Hasbro. The file card was written by Larry Hama, who is also the writer of the GI Joe comic book series for Marvel Comics. Both the file card and the detailed backstory written by Larry Hama in the comic book series are important and we will look at both of them. The 1984 Zartan action figure had the ability to change color in sunlight. Kirk Boziggian, who was in charge of GI Joe, said the color change plastic was brought to Hasbro by a plastic vendor. Bob Pruppus liked it, but it was too expensive for a vehicle. A small vehicle was added to give Zartan a higher price point, making Zartan a deluxe figure. They were able to include a form of the color changing plastic on the vehicle. Larry Hama is quoted as saying, when I first saw Zartan, you hold him under the light and he changes from one insipid color to this other insipid color. I'm telling you, nobody in the room was impressed. The name Zartan is an enneagram for Tarzan. Usually Larry Hama provided some suggestions for the character names, but in this case Zartan was given to him. He did not come up with that name. In the 1960s TV show The Herculoids, the character Xandor was originally going to be named Zartan, but it was changed because it was too similar to Tarzan, creating a possible copyright issue. Zartan's brother Xandor's name is very similar to the Herculoids Xandor. There is a piece of art by Ron Rudat floating around in which Zartan has the name Captain Chameleon. It's marked 1983, but it includes the text of the file card, which most likely would have been written well after the character design was finalized. We know that Larry Hama didn't create the name Zartan, it was given to him by Hasbro. The name came before the file card text. This is some evidence that Captain Chameleon may have been a pre-production name for Zartan. As the master of disguise, does he use a mask or holographic technology or super human power to disguise himself? The answer is yes, all of the above. Zartan was advertised like a single carded figure on card backs, unlike most vehicle drivers. The artwork was printed in the 1984 catalog. This is the source of Zartan art that does not match the art on the Chameleon box. As a deluxe figure, Zartan was included with a small vehicle, but the focus was on the figure. There were other deluxe figures with small vehicles. For example, 1986 Serpentor, 1986 Sergeant Slaughter, 1988 Destro Version 2, and others. There was usually at least one per year. Zartan was the leader of the Dreadnock's motorcycle gang, which was introduced in 1985. Buzzer, Ripper, and Torch were the original Dreadnock's. Later Dreadnock's included Monkey Wrench, Zanzibar, Thrasher, Road Pig, and Nogahide. According to Larry Hama, Hasbro wanted to do knock-off Ewoks, since Star Wars Return of the Jedi was so popular, he convinced them to do a Mad Max-style biker gang instead. Ron Rudat confirms the Mad Max inspiration for the Dreadnock. Zartan's brother and sister, Xandar and Serena, were also included in the Dreadnock's, but they were a notch above the rest of the gang. They also included the same color change plastic as Zartan. The Dreadnock's was a motorcycle gang with no motorcycles, at least at first. Sometimes they would all ride swamp skiers. Sometimes they would ride the Cobra Ferret ATV. The Dreadnock's cycle was introduced in 1987, which was sort of a motorcycle. In 1985, the Sears Exclusive Dreadnock Ground Assault set included a recolored Ram motorcycle, but this is often not counted because it was an exclusive and not available to most kids. They had some non-motorcycle vehicles, such as the Thunder Machine, the Swamp Fire, and the Air Skiff. Even though Zartan seems to be original to G.I. Joe, he may have had some inspiration before G.I. Joe. Please welcome Plaid Stallions to talk about the potential 1970s inspiration for Zartan. The toy influences of Zartan. Hi, my name is Brian from Plaid Stallions and I've been asked to talk about some of the toys that came before Zartan that may have had an influence on the concept. So one of the most notable features of the toy is the unique mask he uses for disguises. That concept goes right back to the dawn of action figures in the 1960s, most famously with Ideal's Captain Action utilizing masks into its structure, but also the James Bond line by Gilbert Toys also had his own disguise set. Heck, even G.I. Joe himself in the early 1970s did their own take on that set. However, the most successful toy to utilize this concept as a selling feature has to be Kenner's Mascotron from the $6 million Man Line. And it's possible that there was some sort of influence from this toy. Zartan's backpack always reminded me personally of Mascotron's mask storage in his own back. As for Zartan's name, it does remind me a little bit of another face changing bad guy, Zorak, who was from Mattel's big gym line in 1976. Both toys have a similar hooded look, essential to their play feature. And interestingly enough, Mattel spun this feature off in Europe, had a big gym that, you guessed it, could swap faces thanks to a series of masks he kept in his briefcase. Well, I'm not a hundred percent if these toys influence Zartan. One thing I can say for sure is Zartan kept a tradition going and that is action figures with removable masks are awesome and should be celebrated. And now back to your regularly scheduled program. I have been a follower and admirer of the Brickman Tooth plaid stallions YouTube channel for quite some time. There will be a link in the description of this video. Please check them out. Before we look at the Zartan action figure, let's look at the small vehicle that was included with the figure. This is the chameleon swamp skier. It's named after the lizard that can change its skin color. That's appropriate for Zartan's gimmick. The general shape and design mimics the look of a chameleon. As with Zartan, the chameleon swamp skier changes color in sunlight. It's a limited effect though. Only the light green body changes color. The other parts do not. All right, I've got a little patch of sunlight here. So let's place the chameleon swamp skier in the direct sunlight. And in a few moments, you should start to see a bit of a color change. This is a softer plastic than what's on the action figure. So I have to assume it was a cheaper plastic than what they used on Zartan according to Kirk Bozigian. This plastic was too expensive to use on a vehicle, but I guess they found a way to use it on a small vehicle like this. You can see the color is already changing. It's becoming a darker green color, almost the same color as the other parts of the chameleon. So that's it. The chameleon does change color a bit. The effect is perhaps not as dramatic as on the Zartan action figure, but we do have a color change vehicle. I have the instruction sheet and the blueprints for the chameleon swamp skier, and I will use this when referring to some of the parts and the features. There are two modes for the chameleon, assembled and unassembled. Let's look at the parts and the features for the assembled chameleon. We'll need to move these parts out of the way for now. Let's start right in front with the handlebars. The handlebars are jutted forward. They are dark green. The blueprints call these twin-position padded handlebars, and these are great because they are thin enough to fit in the action figure's hands with no problems. Next we look at the main body. It is light green. On the nose, on either side, there is a sticker showing a chameleon riding a lightning bolt. There is a ridged seat and a raised and tapered fuel tank cover. There is a round fuel receptacle on top of the fuel tank. Because of the design of the handlebars and the body, the driver must be in the prone position, and this is how it's shown on the box arc for the chameleon and when the chameleon is seen in media. Under the nose of the main body, we have this chin piece. It's in dark gray plastic. It attaches to the main body, and there's a hole in the bottom to attach the front skis. The front skis are in dark green plastic. They attach to that chin piece, and they will swing and pivot on that pin. At the front, there's this weapon, which the blueprints call a high-capacity water nozzle. I assume this is used to spray powerful jets of water at enemy craft, possibly designed to sink boats. Under the main body is the engine. It is in dark gray plastic, the same gray color as the chin piece. It looks like a jet turbine with some details on the exterior. The blueprints call this a 1x Z12A microjet engine. Under the main body is this frame. In dark green plastic, it connects from the front to the rear of the vehicle, and it provides a brace for the engine. On the sides, there are these pegs to rest the action figure's knees. The blueprints call this a lightweight polycarbonate tube frame. At the back of the frame, there are these two small knobs, which the blueprints call wide dispersion ink sprayers. This is another non-lethal weapon. Wedged between the main body and the frame is this hinged brace for the rear skis. Both the brace and the rear skis are in dark green plastic. They can swing forward and back, and the rear skis are detachable. And that's important for the disassembled mode of this vehicle. The parts for the chameleon are softly pegged together and can be removed. You can entirely take this vehicle apart. Although I would not remove the handlebars, that piece is a bit fragile, but the other pieces can simply be removed and it becomes just a pile of parts. This pile of parts may not look like much, but there's a purpose for the disassembly of the chameleon. For the disassembled mode, there are a couple extra parts. This dark green box and this dark green tow handle. This box is in dark green plastic. It has a textured bottom on the inside. And on the underside, it has some technical detail. The blueprints call this a welded aluminum armored towing container. The armor can't be very effective if it's aluminum. There are these knobs on the sides, and that is for connecting the skis from the swamp skier. Those just tab right on. And that helps complete the towing box. In addition to the box, we also have this tow handle in the same dark green plastic color. It has a loop for the action figure to grip. And it has this T connector that is supposed to hook under the box and into this notch. I do have to caution that this T connector is fragile and is broken on most examples. With the skis attached to the box and the tow handle carefully placed in that notch, the other parts for the chameleon just go into the box any which way they will fit. They don't go any particular way and they're not supposed to. This is supposed to look like a pile of junk. What's the purpose of all this? This is part of Zartan's disguise. He can transform into a swamp junk hauler. How effective is it? We'll have to look at Zartan's disguise to decide if it really works. To see Zartan's disguise, we need to look at his accessories. Let's start by looking at his weapon. This pistol in black plastic, it looks like some kind of laser gun. It's not based on any real world weapon that I'm aware of. But it does have a retro futuristic look. It reminds me of a Buck Rogers XZ38 disintegrator pistol. A green version of this pistol was included in 1985 Battle Gear accessory pack number three. The pistol that is original to Zartan is black. The next accessory is the backpack. And this is where the disguise comes into play because this backpack is a case for Zartan's mask. The backpack itself is in black plastic. It has some armor detail on the exterior. And it has a latch and a hinge so it can be opened up. To open this backpack case, you just move the latch on the side apart and swing it open at the hinge to reveal Zartan's mask. There's some additional detail on the inside of the backpack. Looks like some makeup and disguise equipment. And that mask can be removed. This mask is curved to fit on the action figure's face. It is in a slightly softer plastic. It has brown eyes and eyebrows and a brown beard. It looks a little bit like Jesus. This mask was sculpted by Bill Merkline, who had a beard at the time. But he insists this mask is not a portrait of himself. This is just a generic face. How does Zartan wear this mask? The figure has a cowl on his head. And the mask just wedges under that over his face. And once it's on, he is disguised. He is unrecognizable as Zartan. With the disguise, he no longer looks like Zartan. He is a swamp junk hauler. He can pull the disassembled chameleon in the towing container. This is Zartan's entire disguise. Yes, this is all of it. Yes, he is wearing a mask, but he's still wearing the same outfit. So GI Joe would have to ignore everything but his face to be fooled by this. The mask does not change color, so he will need to avoid sunlight when he's in disguise. Another way to disguise Zartan, which we often did as kids, is just swap him out for another action figure, and that would be his disguise. Zartan has a few more accessories, and they do sort of have a color change feature, though the color change does not work anymore online. He has a chest plate and two thigh pads, all of which are removable. And the figure included some heat-sensitive color-changing stickers to go inside of these. Unfortunately, the color change feature doesn't work anymore. The chest plate can be removed. It has some pegs that fit into some slots on the action figure. You can remove that. This chest piece is in clear plastic. It has paint on the inside for the straps, and there is a window for the chest. There's a bit of contouring for the chest and some detail. And this one has that heat-sensitive sticker on the inside, but it is not heat-sensitive anymore. Originally, that would change color if you touched it or put it out in the sun in the heat. In addition to the chest plate, he has two thigh pads. The box and other sources call these knee pads, but they don't go over his knees. They go on his thighs. They can be removed. They have tabs that fit into slots on the legs, and because they can be removed, they are frequently missing. As with the chest plate, these thigh pads have black paint on the inside framing a clear plastic window. These do not have the color change stickers anymore, unfortunately. Even though the stickers were activated in a different way than the color change plastic on the figures, they were heat-activated rather than sunlight-activated. It all played into this idea of camouflage and disguise that was the selling point for the action figure. With the accessories out of the way, we can finally look at the Zartan action figure itself, and let's start by looking at the articulation. This figure was released in 1984, so he had the standard articulation for a GI Joe figure in 1984. He had a swivel head. The ball-jointed head was not introduced until 1985. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow, so he had bent his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep, so he could swivel his arm all the way around. Swivel arm battle grip was introduced in 1983, so all 1984 figures had it. This was an O-ring figure, meaning the figure was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside. That allowed him to move at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Looking at the sculpt design and color of Zartan, we can get to that color change feature. Zartan was sculpted by Bill Merkline. Bill shares a story about meeting children in Chinatown in New York and encountering a battle with Zartan. So I was down there on a shopping trip, and I was going down a side street, and there were a group of children playing, and I think the oldest would have been around eight or nine, and the youngest was probably about six. And they were playing war games with no particular props. They didn't have any toys to play with, but they were shooting with their fingers. You know, that's what we used in the old days. Okay, we used to use our fingers. And he turned around, and he looked at me walking down the street, and Sierra was this Caucasian guy with a beard and a mustache, and he looked up at me and held his hand out, like that, and went, Zartan, bang, bang, bang, bang. I clutched my chest automatically. I was deeply wounded, and I staggered past him. So I wanted him to know that he had created great injury, if not mortality, by his actions. And as I recovered from that, as I continued to walk down the block, I realized what he said that he called me Zartan. And I thought to myself, my God, that child doesn't know who he just killed. He just killed the guy who sculpted Zartan. Zartan's sister and brother, Zirana and Xandar, also have the color change feature. All of these figures with the color change plastic are glued together at the torso. That means you cannot remove the back screw and take the figure apart, like you would a normal GI Joe action figure. That creates a problem when you need to replace the o-ring. We're looking at Zartan without his accessories, and without the accessories, it really does look like he's missing something. The chest is totally bare, and he has slots in the legs for the thigh pads. Looking at the head, he has a maroon color soft plastic hood or cowl. He has Caucasian skin color, except with the sun-activated color change, and I will demonstrate that later. He has white pupil-less eyes, and he has black kiss-like makeup around the eyes. This is so unique. He's a master of disguise, but his basic look is so distinctive. The chest without the chest plate is totally bare, very little detail, some muscle form, but no nipples and no navel, so he may be an alien. The armor on the back is sculpted on and painted black. The chest plate connects to that. On his arms, he has black metal plate on the shoulders and upper arms. That armor does not connect to the chest piece, so it's not clear exactly how Zartan wears this. He has bare elbows and forearms in that color change plastic. He has black gloves with some details on the back of the hand and cut-ins at the wrist. That's a really cool design. The character artwork in the catalog did not have the shoulder armor, so that element must have been added later in the design process. These upper arm pieces with the armor plating were also used on Zarina and Xandar. The waist piece is in a maroon plastic color with a black belt. It has a black belt buckle and this circular black device on the right hip. Not a lot of detail, but it still looks pretty good. Looking at the legs, they are in that same maroon plastic color. There are slots in the thighs for the thigh pads. There are some cloth folds, but otherwise no details on the upper legs. Those thigh pads really provide all the detail on the upper legs. We finish up with some tall black boots with armor. There is a knife on the right boot. These are well detailed and they're pretty wicked looking goth boots. Overcast. There's no sun. I can't show the color change feature without sun. I need to go somewhere where there's sun. Everybody, I am on Blue Lagoon Island in the Bahamas. I came out here so I could demonstrate Zartan's color change feature. I had overcast skies at home. I just didn't have enough sunlight to show you the feature. So I came all the way out here just to show you Zartan. So let's take a look at Zartan in the sun. So you can see the color change feature. There is Zartan laid out in the sun. You can already see the color change. This skin color is changing to a darker blue. That's the color change plastic that changes color in sunlight. You should be able to really see the contrast by removing this chest plate. And you can see, yeah, see there? You can see the regular skin color. There we go. Zartan's skin color changing feature in the sunlight. All right, we got the shot of the Zartan thing. Let's go home. Chameleon, color change, camouflage, disguise, all are means of avoiding detection. Yet Zartan stands out. Zartan is such a unique design, but he also seems to have influences outside of G.I. Joe. Thanks again to Plaid Stallions for showing us some of those potential influences. This is Zartan, version two, The Master of Disguise from 1993. This figure was only available in 1993 and was part of the Ninja Force series. Ninja Force was first introduced in 1992, so this figure was part of the second year of Ninja Force. Ninja Force was a set of Ninja-themed G.I. Joe figures released in 1992 and 1993. They often didn't look very ninja-like. They were often very colorful. They all had action play features. Looking at the card art, this is pretty typical of 90s figures. We have a pink swirl in the background. We have the character in kind of a knees up, leaping forward pose. This card is actually a variant of my other card back. This one has a small parts warning here in the center and the advertisement for the action gimmick is over toward the side. On the other one, it does not have the small parts warning and the action gimmick is in the center. And on this one, I noticed that on the card art, the two knives that go on the leg are on the wrong side. The accessories came on this plastic tree and you were supposed to clip them out. Let's take a look at Zartan's accessories, starting with the most important one, the bow. This orange bow is a direct copy of the black compound bow that came with version two of Storm Shadow in 1988. And of course, it does look a lot better in black. Disregarding the color, this is actually a really nice bow. It fits very snugly in the figure's hand, so you can see it's kind of scratched up there where he grips it. It also has three arrows sculpted on. This is a very important accessory for Zartan. Again, despite the color, it makes perfect sense. In the comic book series, Zartan is portrayed as being a master archer. In fact, if you wanted to recreate some of the scenes in the comic book, you could give version one of Zartan, Storm Shadow's compound bow. His next accessory is this sword, and I believe this is the first time this sword was used. It was used later in the Street Fighter II series, and it was used for Nunchuck version two, but I think this is the first use of it. There's nothing especially remarkable about this sword. It will fit in the figure's hand, but it's kind of a tight fit. The next accessory is this sickle, and this is a reuse of the weapon that came with 1992 Dojo. Next, we have what is frequently called a machete. Even though it doesn't really look like a machete, it's kind of this short sword looking thing. And this is a reuse of the machete that came with 1988 spearhead. Next, he has two knives, and the knives actually have storage space on the figure. On the left leg, there are two slots where they can be sheathed. And lastly, we have the accessory that is always the best accessory on these 90s figures, the figure stand. 80s figures did not come with them, 90s figures did. If you pull them back and snap them forward, he will punch. They called this the Moroto chop. He has a huge orange mohawk. He still sort of has his face makeup, but it's bright orange on the version two figure, whereas it was black on version one. On his chest, he has what the file card calls a raw hide leather jacket. It's really a vest. It has a high collar in the back. It has an orange painted chain around his right arm, and it has some unpainted chains hanging over his left shoulder. His arms are mostly bare. His left arm is totally uncovered. On his right forearm, he has a black brace with a couple straps to go around his forearm. The file card calls this a sword blocking forearm guard, and he has a black glove. On the waist piece, he has a purple studded belt with a black belt buckle, and he has bright neon green trousers. On his left leg, he has two purple raised details with some thin purple straps that go around his thigh. And of course, this is where you can sheath those knives. He has tall purple shin guards over tall black boots. I'm focusing on the vintage versions of Zartan, rather than anything after the 1993 version. There are too many post-vintage Zartan action figures to cover in one video. Yojo.com lists 23 versions of Zartan, not counting figures in other scales. Nonetheless, I can take a brief look at some modern Zartan action figures. In 2008, there was version 14, which was in the modern action figure construction. It includes a down-sized chameleon swamp skier, which looks ridiculous at that size. It looks like the swamp water was cold, so there was some shrinkage. In the G.I. Joe classified series of six-inch action figures, there have been three releases of Zartan. The first was the Master of Disguise deluxe version. I don't have that one. It includes several masks and color-changing plastic, just like version one. There was also a standard retail release of classified Zartan, which I do have. It's a really good-looking figure, but it does not have the color-changing plastic. Finally, there was the retro Walmart exclusive classified Zartan, another figure I have, and it also does not have the color-change plastic. Zartan was a popular character in G.I. Joe, even outside the United States. Please welcome Fun School Rani, as he looks at a famous and somewhat notorious version of Zartan from India. Thank you, HCC. I am Rani Khosh, aka Fun School Rani from India, and I'm here to tell you everything you need to know about the Fun School Indian release of Zartan. Let's go. Five, four, three, two, one, jump! Fun School released the Zartan figure in India as part of its ninth wave in 2001. Let's have a look at the figure. As is mighty apparent, the Fun School Zartan comes sans his signature facial makeup, and just with his otherworldly eyes, I would say in fluorescent green and with black eyeliners. When I first saw this figure, it resembled less of the Zartan I knew from the cartoons and more like WWE's Kane. Moving on on his belt buckle and this round bed, we got nice gold paint tap. Also, the black paint tap on his belt overlaps the loops. His boots are highly detailed with paint tap, unlike the Hasbro version. It has silver accents as well as gold paint tap on the knife handle. One thing about the body armor paint tap on the back, Fun School somehow missed painting the borders, which left only flesh tones. A very distinguishing characteristic of this Fun School release is that it does not have the color changing plastic gimmick. So, you can open up this figure like you would any other figure. It is not glued. Let's take a look at his accessories and the apparent part is that Indian release of his cowl is not glued and is removable. It is made from hard brown plastic. His front body armor and his thigh pads are made of solid black plastic. Next, we have this face that we can wedge inside his cowl and a totally unrelated backpack. It's same as G.I. Joe Budo's except it's reddish brown, almost maroon. Lastly, we get Zartan's gun, which is molded in red, which is actually a surprise as Fun School chose to maintain the black-brown color scheme throughout the entirety of the figure except for his gun. The Fun School Zartan came as a standalone figure in a card with all his accessories in different compartments in the bubble. We can say with certainty that Fun School non-expertly tried to lift off Takara's card art of Zartan. Those of you who enjoy hunting variants, there is a very rare black elbow version of Zartan which were available in the first few matches of 2001. That will be all from me about the Fun School Zartan release in India and now for the rest of the review, it's back to HCC. Thank you, Ronnie. I love hearing about the Indian releases of these figures from him. There will be a link to Fun School Ronnie's channel in the description of this video. Please check it out. The File Card for Zartan is where the controversy lies. As you can see, I have two file cards here, which means there is a variant. This is the first one. This file card was written by Larry Hama, who is also the writer of the comic book series. He wrote all of the file cards for this era and nearly all of them for the entire run. It has his faction as GI Joe, which of course is not correct. He is a mercenary who mostly works for Cobra. It has a portrait of Zartan taken from the box art for the chameleon. He is the master of disguise codename Zartan. His file name is unknown. His aliases are too numerous to list and his birthplace is unknown. This first paragraph has some general information about Zartan. It says Zartan can alter his skin color at will to blend in with his environment. Larry Hama has confirmed that he is a mutant, adding a supervillain style science fiction element to GI Joe all the way back in 1984. It goes on to say he is also a master of makeup and disguise, a ventriloquist, a linguist in parentheses over 20 languages and dialects, an acrobatic contortionist, and a practitioner of several mystic martial arts. Very little is known about his background and origins, but most security agencies agree that he must have had European military academy training in parentheses probably Saint Cyr. Saint Cyr is a reference to École spécial militaire de Saint Cyr, a military academy established by Napoleon in 1802. It is located in Saint Cyr la École in the western suburbs of Paris, France. This implies that Zartan is French. His accent in the animated series is kind of vague, so he could be. About this reference, Larry Hama has said, aside from Saint Hearst, it was the only other European military school I could think of. A European military school is where you would get training to be a ventriloquist contortionist acrobat, to prepare them for Europe's ongoing war against carnies. If the file card had stopped there, there would be no controversy. And as you can see on the later file card release, that is the only text. But on the first release of the file card, it had this second paragraph, the psychological profile. Here it describes Zartan as extreme paranoid schizophrenic, grows into various multiple personalities to such an extent that the original personality becomes buried and forgotten. This text seems to conflate schizophrenia with multiple personalities, which it is not. For all the effort Larry Hama put into including accurate real-world references in these file cards, this one is inaccurate and turned out to be a costly mistake. It was the psychological profile that was the source of the controversy. The Mental Health Association of Indiana objected to the depiction of a mentally ill person as violent. They demanded that Hasbro recall the Zartan doll. Hasbro didn't recall the doll. They eliminated the psychological profile from later releases, thus the file card variant without it. Hasbro apologized and donated money for mental health research, which was seen as a positive move by the executive director of the Indiana Mental Health Association. In response to the controversy, Larry Hama is quoted as saying, A friend of mine who is a shrink said, What do you expect? They're paranoid. They have real reason not to like it. To discuss the psychological profile on Zartan's file card and what it really means, I have invited a friend of mine, Lindsey, who is a professional in mental health care, to discuss what it would really mean to have a diagnosis of extreme paranoid schizophrenics. So Lindsey, if you don't mind introducing yourself to the audience and telling us about your education and your background in mental health care. Sure. So my name is Lindsey VandeVenter. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. In other words, I'm a therapist. Trained in the discipline of clinical social work. I've been doing social work both clinically and non-clinically for over 20 years and clinical therapy for the last seven. I spent, I guess about eight or nine years doing inpatient work where folks would come in and we're dealing with significant mental health symptoms chronically usually and those that were underserved. I currently am in clinical practice primarily with individuals that live with complex PTSD or otherwise developmental trauma in addition to neurodivergence such as autism, ADHD and also folks with dissociative disorders. Commonly co-occurs with complex PTSD. So I've got experience in working with individuals with what we would consider serious mental illnesses like psychosis and other things and also neurodivergence and trauma. And that's kind of how we met, right, because you were working at a facility at the time that I was working with the public defender's office and so I was representing the patients in that facility. So yeah, that was a good old days. The good old days, yeah. So I mean we've seen some things related to, I mean what we're going to talk about today, both of us have. In the state of Oklahoma people go through civil commitment processes sometimes when they are experiencing a mental state that prevents them from being able to make decisions in their own best interest for their safety and well-being. Sometimes this happens when people are really struggling with high levels of mental health symptoms and Brian was a wonderful advocate for our patients there and so it was my job to basically run all the paperwork and explain to the judge and the attorneys what the hell was going on behind the scenes as far as the doctors and therapists were concerned. That's how we got involved in this particular area and it goes right into what we're going to talk about. That is Zartan's file card and the psychological profile which you have read. So let's talk about it. So the psychological profile says Zartan is extreme paranoid schizophrenic. Let's start with the schizophrenic part and we'll try to unpack some of this. So what exactly does it mean to have a diagnosis of schizophrenia and what kind of symptoms would someone with that diagnosis exhibit? Well there are different types of schizophrenia but specifically the one that is referenced in Zartan's file card is paranoid schizophrenia. Well extreme paranoid schizophrenia. Extreme. Which is not a clinical descriptor. That's not how we describe those things. But anyway this was in what 1984? 1984, yeah. Schizophrenia has long been thought of as sort of this like a disease of the brain right? It's been long thought of as sort of an organic mental health condition. The tide is kind of turning in that way interestingly though. We're starting to believe that it's possible that schizophrenia may actually just be a form of neurodivergence. So what does that mean? So neurodivergence is a difference in our neurological and nervous system wiring. So for instance one person has brown eyes, one person has hazel eyes and that is a physiological genetic difference that we see show up. The same is true with our neurodevelopmental systems. So neurodevelopmental differences i.e neurodivergence can take various forms and often it has to do in large part with a variety of systems in our body that affect our consciousness, our behavior, our thoughts, the way that we process sensations and the way that we process information. So people who live with schizophrenia might interpret information, sensations. The sensory processing system is different. So they may experience hallucinations for instance. That other people are not seeing or hearing. Tactile hallucinations, gust of story, like sense of smell. There's it's not just visual or auditory hallucinations that those are certainly the most commonly talked about. In people that have schizophrenia it's common to have these different sorts of symptoms that we think of as psychotic symptoms. In paranoid schizophrenia one would be potentially experiencing some of those more unusual sensory experiences while also having a perception of being persecuted or that someone is trying to hurt me or wants to is out to get me. Now I think in our like pop cultural memory there's some extreme as it were stigma around what that actually means. I think you know you and I could say that in the years that we worked with individuals in an inpatient setting that the majority of individuals that struggle with these conditions are not actually violent. I think one of the more common experiences that people have is that they might see they might see figures, shadowy figures, or people that aren't there visually. They might hear things that are not happening in the environment for other people. So for instance they may hear something that is not actually happening outside of their body where they might hear internal voices or sounds. Sometimes those voices might be telling them things that are distressing, things that are really scary. But sometimes the voices actually will say things that are funny or useful or helpful. You know they may believe that they themselves are Jesus Christ or the president or... I've met a few presidents and a few Jesus Christ. So yeah yeah. But also sometimes those delusions can be grandiose in nature or persecutory and that can cause some social conflict. For the person experiencing those it feels very real. Oh sure 100 real. Yeah it's not like you and me just kind of imagining another voice in our heads. It's something that feels real. As real as you sitting here next to me. What kind of treatments are available to someone with that diagnosis? One of the big ones that we hear about is medication. Pharmaceutical medications is something that a lot of people find benefit from. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention that many of those medications also come with extreme side effects that it can greatly diminish people's quality of life. And because of that it can be a real struggle for individuals to want to maintain those medication regimens because it comes at such a great cost to other aspects of their functioning and quality of life. Certainly complementary therapies as well are sometimes helpful for individuals. Things such as sensory related strategies like having noise canceling headphones or music to listen to can help distract from internal voices or sensory overwhelm in the environment with other forms of psychotic symptoms. Things like having access to a peer group a community of individuals that are recovering from significant mental health symptoms is helpful. Having family who supports you and is well educated is really helpful. Obviously psychotherapy is helpful. A peer recovery support services is really helpful meaning people with lived experience that might be in a more stable place that are able to help others that are working towards stability. There is one more thing that on the file car that I want to make sure to cover is this idea of multiple personalities as it's stated on the file card. And again this is 1984 and there was I guess a pop culture kind of idea of fascination. Yeah the movie Sibyl, the book Sibyl was popular but the file card seems to kind of equate this paranoid schizophrenic diagnosis with multiple personalities. Are they the same or even related? You know when I read that I didn't know whether to like chuckle with absurdity or whether to get mad about it. Obviously for 1984 it makes sense to me that that sort of conflation was happening but we really need to be very very clear that schizophrenia and dissociative disorders as we call them now are two different things. Multiple personality disorder is now referred to in the DSM and the ICD as dissociative identity disorder. There is another condition that is a dissociative disorder that's very similar called OSTD. What used to be called multiple personality disorder now understood to be OSTD or DID comes from it's an adaptation to extreme horrific ongoing inescapable trauma that often occurs for individuals within their early development in life. Infancy through their developmental growing up years and when we cannot escape the warfare as it were parallel in your upbringing or say a child that is being trafficked or a child that's been held captive is being harmed and abused greatly. Our minds have an incredible capacity an infinite capacity to be able to survive those conditions through trauma adaptations that sometimes occur through what we would call dissociation. So when the threat is ongoing and inescapable individuals in their early developmental life may then have a disintegrated sense of personality and identity development. So there are different aspects of that person within themselves that we're able to endure certain horrific things and survive it while other parts of self are the ones that go through daily life. Yeah at the time there was a lot of hype about multiple personality disorders. Sybil had come out I think in the late 70s. Sybil is not at all a reflection of what DID or multiple personality disorder is like. In fact some years later it was debunked that I think the film had originally been purporting that it was based upon actual events from this therapist that was seeing a client living with DID. But in fact that was debunked and it was largely fabricated and what's the word embellished. And so many of us that do live with dissociative experiences of life whether OSTD or DID really don't appreciate being described as anything like Sybil because that's often not how we present. So it was interesting to me that on the file card that those two things were conflated particularly because when you look at the information in the midsection on that card that was pretty showy enough. I don't think that we needed to actually include all the things about mental health stigma to make that character more interesting. Yes the character was colorful enough as it was. One more thing before we wrap up what would you say to the average GI Joe fan who's trying to understand all of this. I don't think anyone necessarily intended to be offensive. So when a mistake is made like this when misconception is perpetuated like this what would you say to someone who's trying to just understand what it really means and how they should approach this kind of material in pop culture in the future? I think that's a really great question and you know I think you might remember that when we were working in that inpatient hospital which was a state funded facility so in other words sort of the bottom of the barrel of mental health care was not a pleasant place for people to have to be and I think you might remember that the people that we served wanted to be treated with dignity and respect and they wanted to be treated like human beings. So I think when we're talking about issues of mental health and how we represent people with mental health conditions the primary objective needs to be about inclusion understanding education community care humanizing humans and showing up in a way that is supportive rather than detrimental to those that are already seriously oppressed by their own physiological neurodevelopmental or mental health conditions and so many that are dealing with these symptoms are also dealing with other forms of deeply oppressive experiences of life and so I think when I look at that file card to me it seems like it was done as more of a sensationalist sensationalist thing to just an extra thing to throw in there to make this character more interesting and I think that it might be more prudent for us to use whatever platform we have whether we're toy makers whether we're Hasbro whether we're your average person that works a nine to five job that has the ability to have some sphere of influence I think we need to think about how can we help increase representation in a way that is more accurate less stigmatizing and promotes inclusion and understanding tolerance is not enough tolerance says well I can just tolerate somebody that's different from me in my sphere we're not going for tolerance we're going for let's humanize people by doing a little extra labor to understand their experience even if it's different than ours and to honor their humanity and their dignity thank you Lindsay as thanks for joining us thanks for talking about this I know this can be a difficult topic for some people but I really appreciate your time and it's nice to see you again as well yeah thanks it's been interesting all right thank you despite the emphasis on Zartan's mental health on the file card it rarely if ever comes up it is not an important part of his personality in media it's never brought up in the comic book even though the comics were written by the same person who wrote the file card the animated series may have tried to integrate it into the depiction of Zartan in the episode countdown for Zartan which we will discuss later Zartan was introduced to the world through television commercials which had some amazing animation this may be some of my favorite G.I. Joe animation beyond the tv commercials Zartan appeared in both the comic book and the animated series and there are some common elements between the two in both he leads the dread knocks he lives in the swamp and he has a swamp cabin as a secret base there are some elements that are unique to the comic book Zartan was a master archer which would contribute to some major turning points in history for the animated series the animation models were created by artist Russ Heath if you first encountered Zartan in the animated series you may wonder is he wearing a hood or does he have long hair the Russ Heath models don't always make it clear so the animators sometimes drew his hood as hair Zartan was voiced by Zach Hoffman for the series his first appearance was in revenge of Cobra part one his first act was to disguise himself as Colonel Sharp and break Cobra commander out of prison he did so with the help of the Baroness another master of disguise in that episode his chest and thigh pads would glow red with a lightsaber sound he has an allergy to sunlight it drops me of my camouflage ability is the skin color change supposed to be the camouflage power or the opposite countdown for Zartan was the first Zartan focused episode of the regular series for some ridiculous reason the dread knocks were in charge of training Cobra troops storm shadow karate chopped a tank Zartan of the dread knocks were mercenaries only motivated by money Zartan disguised himself as a French doctor and infiltrated the worldwide defense center and set a bomb to destroy it for such a great master of disguise he gets nervous at the slightest sign of suspicion the joes captured Zartan and wouldn't let him leave the facility until he revealed where the bomb was gung ho set Zartan's countdown watch to two minutes ahead of the bomb timer which caused Zartan to give up the bomb location Zartan was depicted as cowardly was this the writer's attempt to include the paranoid personality described on the file card Zartan is most remembered for the episode cold slither that episode was written by Michael Charles Hill coincidentally Mr. Hill was at assembly required in Des Moines, Iowa at the same time I was I talked to Michael Charles Hill who was the writer of the cold slither episode of the animated series and I got an autograph also he wrote the file card for Claymore he was the creator of the character Claymore I asked him about how the animated series approached Zartan's character and whether they had any information about this psychological profile that was on the file card he said he doesn't exactly remember everything that was in their character profile for Zartan but to his knowledge they never had any direction about any mental illness in the information they were given from Hasbro about Zartan's character so it appears on the file card and yet it doesn't seem to appear anywhere else and the writers of the animated series they were not given that direction from Hasbro in that episode Cobra Commander was broke and all his troops were filing for unemployment benefits according to Tomax and Zemont Cobra Commander had 48 hours to get 200 million dollars Cobra Commander and Firefly put on ridiculous disguises aren't they already in disguise now to meet a weird weasley guy in a back room of a seedy bar to borrow money Cobra Commander gave the money to Zartan for his cooperation in Operation Cold Slyther Destro created a device to add subliminal messages to rock and roll music rather than start a satanic panic they wanted to take over people's minds Zartan and the Dreadlocks became the band Cold Slyther and performed the famous song they didn't actually perform they pulled a milly-vanilly and lip-synced the Dreadlocks are more punk than metal anyway despite this they put on a pretty good show the subliminal messages caused all kinds of chaos like causing kids to desert school the Joes were hypnotized and commanded to attend a concert subliminal stimuli do not turn people into zombies but they can subtly affect behavior for the short term G.I. Joe defeated Cobra with the use of earplugs rock and roll convinced the Joes to play a song for the concertgoers a slightly rocked-up version of the theme song I still think Metalhead's song is better Zartan was in many other episodes of the animated series but he did not make the transition to the Deke produced series his second action figure was released too late to be included in the later series his final animated appearance in the vintage era was in the 1987 animated movie in the comic book series published by Marvel Comics his first appearance was on the final page of issue number 24 coincidentally drawn by Russ Heath who also did the animation models a more significant appearance was in issue number 25 with the title Zartan in that issue Cobra Commander the Baroness and Destro meets Zartan at his swamp shack in the Florida Everglades the Dreadlocks are also present as in the animated series the interior of the shack uses holographic technology to disguise a high-tech base Zartan demonstrates his disguise ability by copying Firefly's camouflage pattern the chameleon was in this issue but otherwise rarely appeared even when Zartan was in the swamp issue number 26 which was part one of the origin of Snake Eyes starts with Destro stopping Zartan from shooting junkyard the dog his skin color is gray blue perhaps hinting at his color change feature although there was not a focus on the skin reactant color change in the comic book his disguise ability was featured in issue number 30 he used holographic technology to disguise himself as Colonel Hawk no need for a mask the hologram was apparently so convincing someone standing right next to him was fooled Zartan's holographic technology was applied to vehicles such as his motorcycle issue number 35 shows buzzer stealing Zartan's motorcycle and using the holographic projector to make it appear like other vehicles Zartan's disguise and shape-shifting was not all technology in issue number 48 when Zartan had been taken into G.I. Joe headquarters disguised as an injured ripcord Doc discovered inhuman chameleon-like properties in his blood Zartan has also seen changing his appearance without the benefit of technology snake eyes and storm shadow are two of the most important characters in the lore of G.I. Joe they were both members of the Arashakaga ninja clan storm shadows uncle the hardmaster was assassinated and it was long assumed that storm shadow was the assassin in issue number 45 the assassin is revealed to be Zartan he killed the hardmaster with an expert arrow shot but the hardmaster was not his target Zartan's expert archery came into play in issue number 76 when he ended the cobra civil war with an arrow that killed Serpentor why did Zartan murder the hardmaster he was actually trying to kill snake eyes in issue number 84 it's revealed that cobra commander hired Zartan to kill snake eyes because cobra commander's brother was killed in the same car accident that killed snake eyes's family cobra commander blamed snake eyes for his brother's death in issue number 85 Zartan commanded red ninjas in an attack on storm shadow in issue number 91 the red ninjas were revealed to be the last of the Arashakaga ninjas in the same issue Zartan murdered the blind master and took his place in issue number 98 cobra commander locked many of his internal enemies including Zartan in a landlocked freighter on cobra island and buried it under a volcano Zartan was one of the very few people to escape that death trap he took a break from the series for a while in issues number 116 through 118 he joined the good guys assisting the joes destro and the baroness against cobra commander in issue number 139 he appeared in his version 2 form his final appearance was in issue number 151 in which he used his disguise powers to assassinate the president of the fictional country of Borovia under the direction of cobra commander his loyalty was fickle he was just against cobra commander a few issues before this was an anticlimactic end to Zartan's influence in the series he went from one of the most important characters in the series to an afterthought Zartan appeared in live action movies gi joe rise of cobra was released in 2009 to moderate success Zartan was played by Arnold Voslu he was injected with nanomites that enabled him to change his appearance at the end of the movie Zartan was disguised as the u.s president gi joe retaliation was released in 2013 to about the same success as the first movie Arnold Voslu is still credited as Zartan but the character spends most of the movie disguised as the president played by Jonathan Price in the movie it's revealed that Zartan was the assassin of the hard master similar to the comic book storyline at the end of the movie Zartan is killed by storm shadow snake eyes gi joe origins was released in 2021 to no success it lost at least 40 million dollars there was no zartan in that movie but there was a similar character called mr augustine played by samuel benzie if the snake eyes movie had been successful we may have seen zartan in a sequel looking back on zartan the first action figure is unique and strange and pretty awesome the color change feature was special at the time the vehicle included with version one the chameleon swamp skier is pretty flimsy but it serves its purpose and it fits with zartan's character version two of zartan from 1993 ninja force is wild it is colorful it is crazy but it still feels like zartan to me he looks more like a dreadknock zartan's depiction in the animated series and the comic book series were both pretty good he had some excellent moments in both his character was developed more in the comic book series as strange as zartan is the file card is the strangest part about him it's filled with real world references and then out of the blue this claim that he is an extreme paranoid schizophrenic it's clear from the file card text that the writer did not know what schizophrenia is gi joe file cards are usually very maturely written and can even be used as educational tools as such it's important that they not miseducate the reaction to the controversy varies widely among hasbro larry hamma and gi joe fans then and now it's easy to dismiss these kinds of objections when somebody says they were offended by something we said or did it's natural to be defensive after all if we meant no harm yet someone is claiming some kind of harm the problem must be with them i've certainly reacted that way i'm sure everyone has there's long been a stigma and misconception about mental illness that has caused people to not seek the help they need what zartan's file card did was contribute to that stigma and misconception every time we become defensive when someone says they were offended by something we said or did we rob ourselves of the opportunity to learn and grow it's possible the offended person is just being too sensitive or misconstrued our words or action it's also possible that we did wrong and need to take responsibility this is especially touchy when dealing with mental illness because once a person is known to be mentally ill it's easy to write off any of their statements or offense as part of their mental illness the only way to really know if some claim of offense is justified is to set aside our feelings of defensiveness to listen in good faith to be humble and take accountability for our choices instead of being defensive about the controversy here's a different way to handle it on your screen are some resources for mental health where you can get help without judgment if you need the help or know someone who does please reach out thank you so much to my collaborators plaid stallion fun school ronnie linsey and the unexpected help i got at assembly required in demoin iowa from michael charles hill the writer of the cold slither episode of the animated series that was zartan i hope you enjoyed it i hope it was informative and most importantly i hope it helped you examine and maybe re-examine your thoughts about mental illness and the controversy surrounding this character if you like this video please give it a thumbs up subscribe to the youtube channel and share this video with your friends you can support the channel on patreon you can get some special perks there including getting your name in videos like the names you see scrolling on the screen right now i will be back soon with more vintage gi joe and until then remember only gi joe is gi joe