 Everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, and we are in Cobra Convergence 7, and I have one of our favorite Cobra Convergence presenters. Mike, would you introduce yourself and tell everybody who you are, what you do, and for whom you do it? Hi, I'm Mike Yerisari. I am the host and producer of What's On Joe Mind, the internet's number one longest lasting GI Joe podcast. We've been doing this for 12 years now in some way, shape, or form. We started out audio only, and now we do our news discussion program in a live stream format Tuesday nights right here on the YouTubes. And you can just, really it's a huge and daunting library. You can find us all that old stuff on Podbean. We still do update audio stuff on Podbean, or it's just the soundtrack for the Tuesday night stuff now. But yeah, it's at What's On Joe Mind here on YouTube. Be sure to check us out. Yes, and you're live now. You did start as an audio only podcast. That's when I found you. And you have some co-hosts. Can you tell us about your co-hosts? Yes, our longest lasting co-host at this point is the beautiful and talented co-hosts with the co-most is Joe Colton. She is on maternity leave at the moment on the congratulations again to her on the birth of baby mango habanero. And but she will be back with us before too much longer. I hope we haven't actually talked about it yet. I've kind of left her alone for a couple of weeks. She's busy, she's a little busy. You kick a kid out and maybe three weeks buffer time is plenty. Like it's just congratulations or hope you're feeling well. You know, when you're coming back to the show, that's not so much a thing. We also have the former head of marketing for the G.I. Joe brand at Hasbro. So the guy who used to run the brand in the late teens, Mark Weber on hand, and he is as sun bleached as always. And of course, in the fourth chair is my brother, the comics expert of the team, the one and only Raktime Rob. And I love watching you guys and I love all, I wanted to make sure we plugged the damn co-hosts. I didn't want to leave anybody out. So we- Absolutely, because one of them is sitting on the other side of the room and he would cut me. That's, well, and we don't want that. And I'm glad that, I like Rob on the show and I'm glad that you pointed out, comic book expert. There's no nephatism involved. He has a role to play. Right, right. Like I could say that, that, you know, oh, but honest to God, if it happened in DC or Marvel between now and the 1930s, he probably knows something about it. Like he's one of those guys. I'm kind of a comic book guy, right? And he's forgotten more about comic books than I've ever known. So that's just the fact that he's family just meant that he's very, very affordable. Yes, so thank you, thank you, Rob, for being a host on the show and also for not charging very much. Right. Your rates are perfect. But what's happened to Ominy, as you said, has been around for a long time. I discovered you guys before you moved to doing the live stuff on YouTube. The origins of What's On Joe Mind goes so far back, they predate your involvement in it. So how did you get hooked up with What's On Joe Mind and, you know, eventually become the host and producer? Well, Gary Gatso has been a good friend of mine for a number of years. And Gary is one of the three guys who started What's On Joe Mind. And I, basically it was a post on a message board complaining that there were no GI Joe podcasts and, you know, we needed to get together and do one. And these are the three guys that submitted for it. I actually would have been in on it then, but I had a job that prevented me from working or prevented me from doing that sort of thing at night. Same story, what goes around comes around. We'll just leave it at that. But, and so my involvement at the beginning was kind of there in that I was in Gary's ear the entire time as an old failed radio guy. You know, my friends doing radio programs was almost as good as me not doing radio programs. So I would talk to him about it a lot. And, you know, if you have any problems with the early production of What's On Joe Mind, those early episodes, I'm sorry. But when the opportunity came, I said, hey, I can't do every week, but you give me enough advanced notice I can sub in. And so the first opportunity to do that was on the third episode of the show. So I subbed for Chuck on that episode. And so, and then the next episode I subbed for Greg. So I was in early and kind of often. And then when Greg left to do other things, they said, well, the sub guy is free now. So why don't we just move him in and the rest is history? Yeah, you guys have been around so long that you have like multiple errors. So, and again, I discovered you in the podcast, the true podcast era, sometime around 2014, I found you guys, and you've had like a lot of amazing moments. From that earlier era, do you have any moments that stick out on your mind as great moments from What's On Joe Mind? Oh, I mean, any number of them. It's been fortunate enough to, when you do the show for this long with the talented people that you do it with, like we're not really broadcasting professionals, right? But we've been very lucky in that we've got folks who are, we've always had folks who are comfortable around microphones and willing to shoot from the hip a little bit and be silly and be funny. So there's any number of those. We have a running gag about being based entirely on running gags. And if you go back in the library, you will hear that that is exactly the case. But as far as things that we've done, we got to do a number of pods, live shows at Jo-Con, when Jo-Con was a thing. We got to travel, we were guests at Roll Out Roll Call a few times. The show was there in some form or another, I think five times or six times. I was there for three of them. We have had some amazing guests. We got to talk to John Chu in the aftermath of G.I. Joe Retaliation. I got to make fun of him because Retaliation got delayed. And so that's a moment, blacklisted by Hollywood, by the way. That's why, okay. Right out. I was wondering. And lots of voice talent, really the first, the next voice talent that is terrible to us will be the first. They are just by and large, just wonderful folks and great to talk to and more than willing to come on and share their stories. So it's really been, it's been a long ride, but it's been a very fun ride. Yeah. And I was privileged to be a listener through a lot of that, some really great moments. So for G.I. Joe fans who may be getting into it now, getting into it now, maybe you're coming into the fandom, you're revisiting G.I. Joe from your childhood. There is a rich source of material in the Watson-Joe-Mind back catalog. I will encourage everyone to check that out. Well, we are now in the live era or mostly live. You do, you have some special additions. Every so often. Yeah. When we can't make it work on a Tuesday or we've got somebody that maybe isn't as well versed in G.I. Joe news, you know, it's one thing if we're bringing you on board, we're bringing somebody like Phil Donnelly or Troy McKee on board, like those guys are plugged in. They're Joe fans, they collect the current product. They've been in the community for years and years and years, but sometimes our guests don't necessarily have that. So we will have a prerecorded, little bit more focused special edition or if they, God forbid, can't go on a Tuesday night for two hours, you know, that's a special edition time as well. So in this, in this new era, you've been hooked into the modern live era of internet broadcasting. And once again, there will be a link to what's on Joe mind in the description of this video. This video will go up at the same time as their Cobra Convergence seven presentation. So do please check out that link and check out all of the things that they've done in the past. But for those who are tuning in now in the live era of what's on Joe mind, what kind of stuff can they expect to get? What will they expect to see in here? Well, I mean, it's again, we've always been a news discussion program. So we're not necessarily out with, you know, live, late and breaking type stuff, but I like to think that we have the best and most even-handed round table discussion. In the business, right? And not to mention, how many times do you get to sit and talk G.I. Joe with a guy who used to run the G.I. Joe brand? So I feel that's certainly a very, that's a different wrinkle that our show brings that a lot of other shows who are in the same format don't have. I feel like that's a big part of what makes us different these days. Not to mention, I mean, I'm beautiful. Yeah, yeah, I've got that face for radio that they say, you've got the voice for television. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but congratulations. I mean, in the sense that I should be standing off behind a curtain somewhere and announcing for somebody else. Yeah, that's it. The Ed McMahon of the G.I. Joe community. Oh, man, he's on a couch. Like he's in front of the camera. That's true. You gotta stash me off to the side. I don't drink enough to be that fun. I feel like you could do it though. You just, every once in a while, somebody makes a joke, you sit back and go, ha, ha, ha, ha. I feel like you could do that. I have trust in your abilities. If there is a talk show host out there looking for a middle-aged, punchy sidekick, I'm your guy. Yes, yeah. Link in the description. Contact information. Absolutely. Shuffle off, Andy Richter. Awesome. So yeah, you guys do a lot more of the news. And I have to admit, even though I try to keep up with the news, you guys always are more on top of it than I am. And yeah, you have someone who was there, who worked with G.I. Joe. And that's pretty special. So, Cobra Convergence is, we are in it right now. And you guys are participating again. And thank you, thank you again for doing that. It means a lot to me. Since this show has meant a lot to me and meant a lot to the community, since you guys are in it, that means a lot to me. At the time this goes up, your presentation should also be up. So we want everyone to go check it out. So there's no spoilers, you can't spoil it here because it'll be there, it'll be up. Can you talk to us about what you're planning to do for Cobra Convergence 7? What do you, when people go over there and check that link, what can they look forward to? A lot more talking heads. And no, it'll be me and Mark and Raktime Rob. And we'll be doing something a little special that's a little outside of what we normally do. I don't want to give anything away. I have a feeling that a lot of the folks who are going to be watching this are not necessarily viewers over at our channel. So I don't want to ruin it for anybody who might be surprised but it'll be fun, you'll have a good time. Well, that's awesome. And I can't wait to see it. Now you're keeping me in suspenders. So I'll, I will check it out immediately and hopefully everyone else will too. So, but then we didn't want to go live, right? It's July 4th, you know, nine o'clock, right? Right around the time where the sun goes down on Eastern time in here in the dead of summer. So we didn't want to be going live and doing two hours, right? When fireworks are going off and families are out because I mean, we always say, hey, this isn't about doing it in front of a big audience but at the same time, we don't want to spend two hours live streaming for three people anymore. That's, you know, that's fair. You did choose the 4th of July to go up. So that's, I mean, that's an important day, at least in our country. Although you could add some realism by being live on the 4th of July, you could have the rockets red glare, you know, you could have the bombs bursting in air and whatnot. I'll have the window open back here and we can just see the stuff exploding in the skyline. Yeah, but that does spoil the audio. So I think that you've made the right decision. Right, and when, I mean, God forbid the building behind me catches on fire, which it's gonna do one of these days. Because, you know, this is central Indiana. So folks have been shooting fireworks off for about two and a half, three weeks now. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're in the Midwest, you know how this goes. Yeah, oh yeah. We will have fewer fingers in this state than we had on July 3rd. That's just an annual thing. But hey, if the building burns down, that's views, man. That's how you get the views on the internet. I guess, that's a different kind of news that I wanted to get into. Oh yeah, that's fair. Not quite in your format, I understand. I don't want to be covering stuff as I'm running for my life. Yeah, that's fair, fair. I mean, not everybody is going to risk their lives for views. I, however, absolutely will because I am shameless. G.I. Joe Toy News is a lot different than War Correspondents. I don't get it. It should be, I hope it is. Right, there's some days where mm, they're fine. So we are in Cobra Convergence. Now, I've already tried to get you to disclose the secrets of what you're planning to do and I've been shut down. That's right. But more generally, more broadly, I've been asking people who their favorite Cobra character is. Do you have a favorite? And if so, why does that particular Cobra character stand out to you? And why is it crystal ball? Explain yourself. Well, I mean, crystal ball, that hair, that is outstanding, right? That is, it's that, that's natural too. You know, he's not doing that. There's no product involved there. That's, no, for realsies, I mean, I hate to be basic on this one, but I'm a Cobra Commander guy, right? It doesn't matter if it's the comic where he is the ultimate cold calculating type, you know, just made a wrong turn. So, you know, he's got the roots that you can sympathize with, but just kind of made a wrong left turn somewhere along the way and sprouted into this evil bastard. Or it's the exceptionally funny Sunbow animated version who is like, I watch those reruns now. I've seen those shows probably five dozen times a piece. And there's still lines that I laugh at as that Chris lot of hissed through that microphone. And so he covers a lot of bases, right? I mean, plus he's evergreen. You can't have, he's probably the most important character in the entire franchise. You have to have a big bad guy or your enemy army to fall in line behind and your good guy army to fight. So, yeah, you can't be Cobra Commander. It's like you may have, your tastes may run differently, but that's the guy right there. That's the OG. If there is a character that's almost as recognizable as Snake Eyes, then I guess it's gotta be Cobra Commander, right? That's the one that if any character comes to mind, that's gonna be. Yeah. He's arguably number one and probably number two. But in terms of, I mean, just being the most important, you can do GI Joe without Snake Eyes. In fact, you can't do it without Cobra Commander. Yeah, I mean, in the IDW run, Snake Eyes in fact died and they've been sort of doing it without Snake Eyes. But yeah, but with Cobra Commander, it's hard to have conflict without some kind of enemy, some kind of antagonist. But you are also known for one of your favorite Joe's, or I guess your favorite Joe, which if you could tell the audience who that is. Well, I'm accumulating a pretty solid collection of beach heads here. And this will be live late and late breaking right here. This is beach head number 86. 86, exclusive. Yes, that is, since the last show went live, that has come in the mail. So Beach Party 86, my collection of 1986 beach heads now has 86 figures in it. Now that's a very nice symmetry. I like that, that's excellent. And I know that you've probably asked this every time, not just how many beach heads you have, but how many beach head crotches do you have? Mid to high 70s, most of them do. That's good, that's a pretty good record. He's got a reputation. Right, like I don't, when I'm buying these things, I try not to spend too much. I have a definite line that I don't cross on these. So anytime anybody's ever trying to gouge you on three and three quarter Joe's, just be patient. Some will come along that will sell it at an actual value. I saw one of these guys on eBay this morning, just like this, exactly like this, $125. And I have not wet my pants. Are you kidding me? I didn't pay 25% that much for this guy. And anyways, but what was the question again? How many crotches do you have? I think you've got that covered. But again, so I don't really buy junk. If I'm gonna put my hard-earned money down, I should say I'm not gonna spend a lot on junk. So I tend to buy unbroken ones. But that said, there are a few in there that have either been extremely affordable or they've been gifts. I've got a hookup in Louisiana, a fan of the show. Jonathan Robinson has hooked me up with several, less-than-mint examples. I got one that only has one arm. But so we've got, look, man, the one-armed guy, he has all of his stuff, right? He actually cost less than just some of the auctions that I've seen where you're just buying the stuff. So I figured, well, I'm getting something to put all that stuff on. So I'm like, for $9, I'll buy a broken one, no problem. So that's kind of the rule there. It's all by thumb. I've received many messages. Why are you driving the cost on these? It's like, no, I'm really not. There's over a million of these bad boys. Yeah, they made, these were mass produced. They made quite a lot of them. Having 86 of them is not going to corner the market. Right, I mean, they were selling Beachhead in the two years where they were probably selling more GI Joes than ever. So there's literally a million of that guy floating around out there. And so no, I'm not doing anything to the pricing. Nothing. No, no, he was a popular character in a popular era of the line. So I think it's okay. I think you're allowed to pick up a few of them. You're not gonna hurt anybody. Right, something to remember for the collecting fans. What drives prices upward is when you spend too much. Then people think they can get it again. So just be patient, be disciplined, and you will find what you want at a price that you wanna spend. I 100% agree, and that's the way I've tackled it. But since we talked about Beachhead and we talked about kind of how you got involved in Watson Joe Mind, I wanted to kind of roll back and talk about how you discovered GI Jo in the first place, way back when. When did you get started? When did you get involved? And what did it mean to you at the time? I'd say when we first saw those commercials for the comic books back in the day, we kind of chuckled at them. And this is we robbing myself. Rob is two years older than me. And so I was seven and he was nine. And we saw the name and we were not impressed by the name GI Joe, right? Like that just sounded hokey and dumb. And we were Star Wars kids and we had all those toys all the way up through what was Empire at the time. And then Rob went with our grandmother off to the local Woolworths and came home with a couple and we were sold, right? Like we were in. He's whispering over there. It was JC Penney. I don't care. Get the story right, Mike. I wasn't there. I don't care, right? It's not it's not my story to tell in detail. It's his story to tell. And when he produces his own, what's on Joe mind, then he can come on and be be the in the hooded Cobra commander spotlight. Do you remember which figures he brought home, though? Do you remember the first ones? Yeah, he got, he got Snake Eyes. He got Flash and he got a Cobra soldier. And those, they may not have all been all at once, but like those were the three that he had before I had anything. So that's how I remember it. That's a pretty good set. A lot of, I've discovered that a lot of collectors who were around at that time, a lot of them started with Flash. I had a hard time finding Snake Eyes back in 82. People were snatching those up. I had, I had a hard time getting that one. So he was a tough one for me to find. Yeah. Later, but yeah. And then so when the time came when, when I got out, and my purchase was at the local Wool Earths, I obviously I needed to get a bad guy. So I got a Cobra officer and I, like I was immediately taken by Flash. That was my, my favorite character for most of my collecting time when I was a kid. But I figured, well, Rob's already got him. So I'm not going to get him right away. I need to get somebody different. So my first Joe was actually stalker. That's another good choice, man. Yeah, absolutely. Like he was distinctive. He didn't just look like some, some generic green army dude. He was a green beret. He was badass. Yeah. We were all aboard stalker. And, and yeah. So that, that we had a good little, good little bunch to, to get started with. And the rest is history some 40 odd years later. Did you have any time when you stepped away from it? A lot of people did, not everybody did. I've talked to a few people who they just continued to collect, you know, all the way through. Did you have any time when you stepped away from it? Yeah. Yeah. Like I was pretty well done collecting them around 87. I may have, I was kind of keeping tabs on it afterwards, but I wasn't really buying anything. You got to, you get in the middle school and you just find other things to spend your money on and other interests. And I was still reading the comic books. I had, you know, we've got a younger brother who never really got into GI Joe the same way we did. He had some of them. So we, we saw, you know, we saw a lot of the 89 90 run come through the house and, and go back out again. Most of them sitting in plastic tubs on the other side of the room. Now, and then just, just after the comic was done, just kind of let it sit for a while. I got back in early though. I wasn't gone for very long. My first purchase on, on that weird eBay machine was a slugger and thunder, which we never had on your kids. And that was for $11. The prices have gone up a little bit. It's just a scotch, but $11 for a complete slugger and thunder in 1996. So we weren't even back into the, the Toys R Us line of 97. And here I was back in the saddle again. And then, then the, like those, those, those list serves things. I found some of these guys were willing to send you actual paper lists of GI Joe's that they were selling. And I made some just obnoxiously good deals that, that make me make my head spin a little bit when I think about them too hard today. Like they were, they were great deals in 1996. So forget about it in 2023. Like I got a dude sold me a, a Viper pilot, the guy on the glider that was expensive. Then he sold me two of them for five bucks a piece. Oh wow. I literally threw the couch over trying to find more change. Like it was. So life was really tough for you at the time I'm, I'm hearing. Look, I, I can't, I can't fix anything. I can't build anything. I cook okay, but, but man, can I shop? I'm a good shopper. If I learned anything from my, my mother and grandmother, that I can, I find a deal. Excellent. Yes. It sounds like it. That's fantastic. And, and a few deals on beach heads too. So we're still going strong. Right. Nine bucks, nine bucks is most of a slugger. Anyways, move on. I want to remind everybody that there will be a link in the description of this video. You should be able to check out what's on Joe Mines Cobra Convergence seven entry right now as you're seeing this. We've got a couple of minutes left. So I, what I'd like to do is just turn the floor over to you for any parting words that you would like to say to everyone watching us today. Oh, well, I mean, hey, we're, we're here. We're on Facebook. We're on Instagram. If Twitter still exists by the time this is shown, then we're there too. We'll probably pop up in whatever comes after Twitter. I don't, I don't know. That's a whole mess. That's a whole thing. But it's really, it's a lot of fun. When times get bad, I know from my end, it's always been a great comfort to have this show to go to. Like to have that and to be, have something to put my energies into. And I hope that that comes through to the folks who watch it at home. Like, we've been doing this for 12 years. We're not the biggest channel in the world, but chances are, if you're plugged into GI Joe at all, you know somebody who knows about us. We influenced a lot of folks out there. There's a lot of folks who do what we do and they do a just fine job. I don't want to make it sound like we're coming down on those guys at all. I mean, if that, if we inspired you to do something like what we do, then that's the best flattery you can give us, right? So we're not dissing that whatsoever. If watching our two-bit slime show made you go out and start your own two-bit slime show, yes, great. I mean, that mission accomplished on our end. So, but we love doing this sort of thing. We wouldn't get together every Tuesday night and do it if we didn't. We would hope that this half hour has been enough to get you to come on over and give us a try, give us a look. And we have a pretty good lead-in show. You should probably watch that one too. He's all right. Kind of an hack, but whatever. He's all right. He tries hard. Trying is what counts, right? That's right, exactly. It's the effort that counts. It's the effort. That's what we're all about. But we've been around a long time. We hope to be around for a long time longer. So again, we're at what's on JoeMind on YouTube. We are at WOJM podcast on the tweet page. We are at what's on JoeMind on Instagram. What's on JoeMind podcast on Facebook. And all parts, wherever you get your podcast, if you're an audio listener, you can find us on Apple podcasts, on Podbean. You can find us on Stitcher while there's still a Stitcher. You can find us on Spotify. And so we're out there, we're available. We are taking all commerce. So come on and join here on and find out what's on JoeMind. Thank you. And I will reiterate, your show has been important to the community for a long time. Your show introduced me to a lot of the creators, a lot of the voice actors. That was my first connection to a lot of those things. So I can't overstate the importance of what's on JoeMind and how much I appreciate you guys doing what you do and being here and participating in Cobra Convergence 7 again. So thank you very much. And to wrap it up, I just wanna remind everybody one more time, go check out the link right now, it's up. And now that we're done here, you can go watch it. So go watch it right now. It's mandatory. We won't let you back in unless you've seen that one. There will be a quiz next Tuesday. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, if you don't watch it, you get banned from the internet, I'm pretty sure. I don't know how that works, but the important thing is to go watch it. When you're around for 12 years, you make connections. That's right, yeah. You don't wanna cross these guys. Look, you don't wanna cross these guys. I had more fingers than I do now. I cross these guys. You don't wanna cross these guys, go watch the show. Thank you, Mike. Andrew, we'll see you in the funny papers. Absolutely, sir. Thank you so much for the vine and the time. It's always nice to be in a spot where I'm not hitting buttons. So, yeah, to everyone else, I'm available for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and all sorts of special occasions. But thank you, and I really appreciate it. Oh, thank you. And on that note, I will push the button. So thanks, everyone. Good evening, and see you again soon.