 This episode of HCC 788 brought to you in part by the Dicast Enterprise. Join us each week as we discuss the sexual proclivities of Commander William T. Riker. The bravado comedy of Lieutenant War. And the adorable monkey shines up one Wesley the Sweater Crusher. Or maybe we'll just talk about the golden girls. Or hairstyles. Or cartoons. That's equally likely. We also like G.I. Joe. There, we tied that in nicely. Well done everyone on that. By all our play sets and toys. I've been very tough as soldiers. First in time. Then at least become the greatest, most powerful soldier ever to join the G.I. Joe team. Go Joe! Join the Sgt. and Supreme Eagles as they fight for G.I. Joe against the evil General Blitz and his iron army. Sgt. Savage. Sgt. Savage? No, Sgt. Savage. Why are you watching this? A guy at Jocon asked me to review it. So it's G.I. Joe? Sort of. Not exactly. Is Snake Eyes in it? No. Scarlet? No. Gesture? No. The Baroness? No, none of them are in it. No. Shipwreck? No. Lady J? No. Roblox? No. So it's not G.I. Joe? It came after G.I. Joe. But they tried to relate it to G.I. Joe and they kept the logo. Joc is in it. Cobra Commander too. That's how they tried to transition from the old toy line to Sgt. Savage. What's about? It's about a World War II super soldier who gets frozen and then reanimated in modern times. He fights Eagle using his old fashioned values. So it's Captain America? No, but they ripped off Captain America in a lot of ways. Is Buckingham in it? No. Black Widow? No. Iron Man? No. Okay, I am going to do literally anything else. Have fun. Thanks. G.I. Joe ruled of the 1980s, but in the 90s Joe faced a foe more deadly than Cobra. Ninja Turtles. Captain Savage was released the year following the demise of the real American hero toy line in 1994. Trends in toys had changed and kids were picking up Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers more than G.I. Joe. Instead of being smaller and more detailed, popular action figures were bigger and bolder. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles appealed to a younger demographic with its bigger, clunkier, less detailed action figures. G.I. Joe, with its smaller scale, more detail and pseudo realism, was not really aimed at the same audience. To make matters worse, older kids, G.I. Joe's natural fans, were gravitating more toward video games than traditional toys. Hasbro found itself behind the curve and tried to catch up by reworking the G.I. Joe brand. Drastic changes were made to the real American hero line in the 1990s. They introduced aliens and mutants. It was unrecognizable from the toy line that dominated playtime in the 1980s. So what did any of that have to do with G.I. Joe? Nothing. It had everything to do with Hasbro's fear of competitors. In 1995, G.I. Joe became Sergeant Savage, a G.I. Joe from the 1940s. The figures were bigger than vintage G.I. Joe. They were four inches tall, rather than the traditional three-and-three-quarter inches. The designs were simpler and more straightforward. Sergeant Savage's accessories drew from World War II-era weapons. He took more design cues from 1964 12-inch G.I. Joe than from 1980s G.I. Joe. Like the real American hero toys, Sergeant Savage would be promoted by a cartoon. This time, though, the cartoon would be packaged as a VHS cassette with a Sergeant Savage action figure. This attempt to revitalize G.I. Joe failed. The Sergeant Savage line did not survive past its first year. It was followed by another attempt to reinvent G.I. Joe, called G.I. Joe Extreme. That attempt also failed, and we will address that later. In this review, we will look at the toy line, the media, the marketing, and the ideas behind Sergeant Savage. We will look at the good, the bad, and everything in between. We will try to understand why it failed. What went wrong, and what does it mean for the future of G.I. Joe? The development of Sergeant Savage by Hasbro is chronicled in G. Wayne Miller's book, Toy Wars. The epic struggle between G.I. Joe, Barbie, and the companies that make them. I have the book on my phone. I admit it's less dramatic to show you my phone than to show you a print copy of the book. Print is dead. Thank you, Egon. Let's get started by looking at the packaging and art design. How do they try to catch the eye of kids in the toy store? Looking at the cards on which the action figures were packaged, they capped the old G.I. Joe logo, and they had die-cut bullet holes, and that's kind of cool. That's not a bad deal. We had the Sergeant Savage logo up here, and it's okay. It's not nearly as iconic as the old G.I. Joe logo, but it's not bad, and of course it has his screaming eagles. The artwork on Sergeant Savage packaging was done by Joe Kubbert, a comic book legend. The word legend is probably used too often, but it applies to Kubbert. He was a legend. Kubbert was famous for his work on Sergeant Rock, an influential war comic. I used to pick up copies of Sergeant Rock whenever I couldn't find G.I. Joe comics on the racks. I loved it. It really was beautifully done. Sometimes I wished G.I. Joe comics to be more like Sergeant Rock. I mean, how great would it have been to see Duke, Snake Eyes, and Stalker interpreted by Joe Kubbert? According to G. Wayne Miller's book, one of the reasons they got Joe Kubbert was because there was a rumor that there would be a Sergeant Rock movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mattel would get the license for the action figures. And of course I'm glad they got Joe Kubbert. It's always good to have a legend on your side. But unfortunately, this is another example of Hasbro chasing its competitors rather than really innovating. Sergeant Rock was a tough, larger-than-life hero of World War II. As illustrated by Kubbert, he was clad in a battle-worn army uniform with plenty of rough edges. The Sergeant Savage we see on the packaging is a tough, larger-than-life hero of World War II. As illustrated by Kubbert, he was clad in a battle-worn army uniform with plenty of rough edges. Let's face it, Sergeant Savage is Sergeant Rock. If you were to remove the labels, you would have a hard time telling the two apart. But what's wrong with that? Sergeant Rock was great, and Joe Kubbert was one of the all-time great comic book artists. Then we had the cartoon called Sergeant Savage and the Screaming Eagles, with the pilot episode titled Old Soldiers Never Die. The plot involves a World War II hero, Robert Steven Savage, who is captured by the treacherous Krieger. He becomes the subject of genetic experiments, which gives him superhuman strength. He is then cryogenically frozen, only to be awakened in modern times by Hawk, the leader of G.I. Joe. Unfortunately for Sergeant Savage, his old nemesis Krieger is still alive. Krieger is none other than General Blitz. He plans to launch a space platform that will disrupt the world's computers somehow. It's revealed that Blitz's iron army is affiliated with Cobra. It's implied that Blitz created Cobra, which would throw the G.I. Joe movie Cobra Law continuity out the window, which is exactly what I'd like to do with it. Savage is given the command of a squad of misfits. He whips them into shape. They update World War II vehicles and use them to fight the iron army. The animation is not bad for the time. I have to emphasize for the time. Like a lot of other 90s cartoons, the art is highly stylized. The figure drawing is stout, bulky, and angular. This was a plague that afflicted a lot of 1990s cartoons, and I'm not very fond of it. Comparing a Sergeant Savage action figure to a 1980s era G.I. Joe, the Savage figure is taller. He has fewer details, but his details are on point and sharply rendered. They are not O-ring figures, which makes them a little sturdier. There are no rubber rings to weaken and disintegrate over time. The Commando's Sergeant Savage figure came with a VHS cassette, and his weapons are reminiscent of the 1964 G.I. Joe action soldier. When fully geared up, you could think of him as a miniature action soldier. Looking at his accessories, he came with two rifles. He came with an ammunition box with minimal detail. He had a helmet, and this is actually a really nice helmet. It fits on the figure very well. He had a pistol, and this pistol was actually a copy, an exact copy of the one that came with the 1987 G.I. Joe figure shockwave. They didn't change the scale or anything, they just changed the color. He also came with two knives, a smaller knife, and a larger knife. Once again, they copied exactly the knife that came with shockwave. The only difference was the color. The sculpting is nice though. It's smooth and elegant with just enough detail to get the point across. This is Cryo Freeze Sergeant Savage. Yes, this is another version of the same character. This one has bolder colors than Commando Sergeant Savage. He has silver hand grenades and a silver ammunition belt. He has a white t-shirt with dog tags that are unpainted, unfortunately. He has bear arms, and he has a bandage on his forehead. For accessories, he had a cryo chamber, which was nothing more than clear blue plastic. He had a machine gun with a tripod, not bad at all. He had another excellent helmet, a nicely fitting helmet, and just looks really good. He had another ammunition box. He had another small knife. He had another copy of Shockwave's pistol, and he had a backpack with a gimmick. It could shoot water out of this nozzle here on the top. If this figure were given to GI Joe fans in the 3 ¾ inch scale, I think we would have been happy with it. Most likely it would have been a version of Duke, just give him blonde hair. Every hero needs a good villain, and Sergeant Savage had the Iron Army, led by General Blitz. This is the Jetpack General Blitz, which is just a repaint of the original General Blitz action figure. He looks kind of menacing with his scar and his dead eye and his Will Riker beard. He had some interesting accessories. Like Sergeant Savage, he had two rifles. He came with a potato masher-style grenade. Then he had the backpack, which was his jetpack. This had a spring-loaded feature. If you push the button, the wings would pop out. This backpack is actually on a peg that fits in the hole in his back. This is better than the clip backpacks that some of the other figures had. Unfortunately, it really does not fit in there very well. Then on the backpack, it has a working compass. This clip actually comes off, if I can get it off there. It has a working compass. This is kind of cool. I like this. This is one of Sergeant Savage's teammates. This is Urban Attack Dynamite. This is the second version of Dynamite, and it is just a repaint of the first version. Urban Attack Dynamite came with a black helmet similar to Sergeant Savage's. He had a rifle, which is just a recolored version of one of Sergeant Savage's rifles. He came with a small vehicle, this motorcycle, all in black. This is an extremely simple vehicle. All it is is basically just solid plastic, sonic welded at the seam with two rolling wheels and this pivoting gun. That is it. It doesn't have any paint on it. It doesn't have any stickers on it. It has no other moving parts on it at all. This is a very cheaply made vehicle. The figure itself like the other Sergeant Savage action figures is not bad. It has a nice sculpting on the head. It has a nice two tone camouflage pattern. The other sculpted details are in basic black. Simple but effective, not a bad figure. The best thing about Urban Attack Dynamite though is this. He came with a decoder ring, and this is great. This is a throwback to like Buck Rogers and Dick Tracy. I used to love this kind of thing as a kid. I know it's gimmicky, but I just really like this. It operates very simply. You just turn the knob to the number in the code and it gives you the corresponding letter. You can use this decoder ring to decode the messages that were on some of the card backs. I used this decoder ring to decode the message on the card for Jetpack General Blitz. This coded message says the letters I-R-O-N stand for International Robotic Operations Network. This really is kind of cool. This message does give you new information. It doesn't say anywhere else on the package what the iron in Iron Army stands for. So this really is kind of a secret message. I'm going to do something just for fun. At the end of this video I'm going to put up a secret coded message. And those of you who have a Sergeant Savage Decoder Ring will be able to read the message. And the message will have some secret information in it. So grab your decoder ring and crack the code. There were some excellent vehicles in the Sergeant Savage line. In particular, the P-40 Warhawk is coveted by collectors. I never had these toys as a kid. I was in my 20s when they came out. Handling them as an adult, I find them to be of good quality. They have enough articulation to play with. They are sturdy to survive plenty of battles. The accessories are good even if they are sometimes too numerous. These are good toys. The 1980s GI Joe toys were better, but these are still really good. So why did they fail? Why did it fail? For one thing, this is not the GI Joe of the future. Or even the GI Joe of the present. This is the GI Joe of the distant past. I'm not sure what demographic Hasbro was going for. Ten-year-old World War II veterans? There's an anecdote in Toy Wars about some market research they did for Sergeant Savage. And they asked some kids what war they thought this character was from. And the first idea they had was the Civil War. They asked, when did World War II happen? And they didn't have any idea who was in World War II. Maybe Japan. But they're kids. They hadn't even learned about this stuff in school yet. And yet Hasbro was trying to sell them this toy. The main appeal of which is the character is from this era that none of these kids knew about. I can appreciate the historical context just as I appreciated the historical context of the GI Joe file cards. However, for GI Joe, the historical context mostly centered around the Vietnam War. And for kids in the early 80s, that was contemporary. It was part of their parents' experience and it was frequently the subject of popular movies. Having a protagonist from World War II is probably reaching a bit too far back into history. Sergeant Savage didn't have the cool modern or futuristic weapons that GI Joe had. He had throwbacks that were outdated decades before these toys were released. As cool as that P-40 Warhawk was, it wasn't going to take down a modern fighter jet. Of course, the first defense for using a World War II character like this is to refer to another veteran of that war, Captain America. If it worked for Cap, why wouldn't it work for Sergeant Savage? But that raises another problem. Sergeant Savage lifts Captain America's origin wholesale. It isn't merely inspired by Captain America. It is Captain America. Even his name, Robert Steven Savage, sounds a little bit like Steve Rogers. Screaming eagles sounds a little bit like Howlin' Commandos. But Sergeant Savage doesn't look like Captain America, so he's not a total rip-off. No, he looks like Sergeant Rock. His look was created by the artist for Sergeant Rock. And as great as Kubrick was and as great as the artwork is, there isn't enough to distinguish Sergeant Savage visually from Sergeant Rock. The differences that they did throw in, I would maintain, are less significant than the similarities. Visually, Sergeant Savage is Sergeant Rock. Hasbro gave us Sergeant Robert Steven Steve Rogers Savage Rock and his Screaming Howlin' Eagle Commandos. It's very clear that a lot of effort went into every aspect of the design, packaging, and marketing. Yet despite all that effort, there is an alarming and embarrassing lack of creativity. But what about the toys? Aren't the toys good? And isn't that what's important? Yes, yes they are. The toys are good. When you look at individual toys, they are very well done. When you look at the whole toy line, though, you see serious problems. In a toy line with 16 figures in the 4-inch scale, there were no fewer than 6 versions of Sergeant Savage. You had Commando Sergeant Savage, Combat Sergeant Savage, Fighter Pilot Sergeant Savage, Cryo Freeze Sergeant Savage, Battle Command Sergeant Savage, and the MailAway Desert Camo Sergeant Savage. Most of those were just recolored versions of the same figure. You got very few of Sergeant Savage's Screaming Eagles. You got D-Day and you got Dynamite. And each of those had two versions in the toy line. And again, the second version for each of those was just recolored reissue of the first version. Oh, another thing 80s GI Joe was famous for was for its diversity. It had a lot of racial and sex diversity, more so than other toy lines of the time. But Sergeant Savage, not so much. We have a hero from a time period before the army was integrated. And what about the bad guys? The Iron Army was a poor substitute for Cobra. You had General Blitz, who was just a generic bad guy, and they had three versions of him. They gave him some minions to command, but no officers. There was no Destro-like character in the Iron Army, making it shallow and uninteresting. In a toy line that didn't have very many figures, most were just carbon copies with different colors. Why would kids buy six Sergeant Savage's in the same year? Well, they would have, and apparently they didn't. Where were his buddies? Was Sergeant Savage supposed to fight his enemies single-handed? Or were kids supposed to play with all their Sergeant Savage's at the same time and pretend that they're clones? That's not something I did as a kid, and I don't think kids in the 90s did either. I don't think any toy line could survive all of these flaws. I also don't think the flaws are only apparent in hindsight. I think they should have been obvious throughout the design process. I think if Hasbro had been thinking more like kids than like marketers, they would have easily seen the problem. As flawed as Sergeant Savage was, what came after was even worse. Before Sergeant Savage's corpse was even cold, we got the replacement. GI Joe Extreme. Hasbro had acquired its former competitor, Kenner. Kenner made Star Wars action figures, which were very popular in the late 70s and early 80s. Hasbro hoped to bring a fresh perspective and breathe new life into the brand by handing it over to their Kenner division. The result was the most offensive toy to ever bear the GI Joe label. And that's saying a lot. Sigma Six was pretty bad, but GI Joe Extreme takes the cake. They tried to transition from Sergeant Savage to GI Joe Extreme by including a couple Sergeant Savage figures in the line. But kids hadn't bought into Sergeant Savage, so did they really need that bridge to GI Joe Extreme? This is freight from GI Joe Extreme with strong arm blocking power. And let's take a look at the packaging for GI Joe Extreme. You can see that on the front of the card there is absolutely nothing unique about it. Nothing like card artwork for this individual character. This is exceptionally ugly packaging. Some GI Joe Extreme figures were better articulated than others. Freight was one of the worst. He moves at the waist, at the shoulders, at the head, and that's it. His legs are permanently frozen in a fighting stance. He has a few bulky accessories, a club, a knife, and a shield connects to his arm. And he has an action feature. If you push the button on his back, his right arm moves. This is not an action figure. This is an inaction figure. This is a slightly movable statue. This is a plastic paperweight. I hated this kind of figure as a kid. I despised them. I was pretty tolerant of different action figure types and scales, but they had to be at least moderately articulated. If you gave me a figure that was frozen in one pose, that I couldn't move to suit my play scenarios, you were dead to me. Was the disastrous GI Joe Extreme toyline an accident? Despite the fact that Hasbro owned Tenor, there was still a sense of competition between the two divisions. Was it a wise idea to hand one of Hasbro's most cherished brands over to people who just a few years before were bitter competitors? Was GI Joe's death an accident, or was it murder? So what do we make of all this? Sergeant Savage were good toys that nonetheless failed. GI Joe Extreme were terrible toys that also failed. The triple failure of the real American hero line, Sergeant Savage and GI Joe Extreme damaged the brand immeasurably. After an explosion of success in the 80s, mishandling of the brand left it with a legacy of failure in the 90s. These failures were not inevitable and could have been avoided. All that was needed was for someone to ask a few smart questions at any point during the development process. Questions like, will World War II soldiers appeal to kids in the 90s? Are we ripping off other brands? Shouldn't we make sure we can sell kids one Sergeant Savage before we try to sell him six? Is this cartoon cassette really going to inspire kids the way the Sunbow GI Joe cartoon series did? Should we transform GI Joe, a toy known from the very beginning, for its superior articulation into blocks of plastic with limited articulation? If these questions had been asked, we might not have Sergeant Savage or GI Joe Extreme. It does not follow that some other iteration of GI Joe would have succeeded where these failed. It's possible that the time just was not right for GI Joe in the mid 90s. Maybe the right thing to do would have been to put GI Joe on hiatus earlier. Maybe the real American hero line should have ended in 1991 or 1992. But how could not producing GI Joe toys be good for GI Joe? Well, for one thing, it would have preserved the brand. It would have avoided associating GI Joe with silliness, desperation, and failure. It would have maintained the legacy of success until, eventually, when the time was right, a new generation of GI Joe could arise. Naturally, Hasbro wanted to make money, but by chasing money, they killed one of their biggest money makers. Instead of leading, they were chasing their competitors. That was my review of Sergeant Savage. Do you have any memories of Sergeant Savage? What did you think of it when you saw it? If you liked this video and you'd like to see more, do a few things for me. Give this video a thumbs up on YouTube. Subscribe on YouTube. Like me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Support me on Patreon. And share this video. That's what helps this channel grow. You can find this video and many others on HCC788.com. So don't forget to check that out. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week. And until then, remember only GI Joe is GI Joe.