Marvel G.I. Joe
ANIMATED COMMERICALS[]
This is the complete run of the original cartoon commercial animations used for the G.I.Joe Marvel comic run. I haven't found these on youtube yet and I have always wanted to give back for all that I have taken. Here it is! Someone else recorded the video so I couldn't do anything there. A few episodes are incomplete but I included what was available. I know many people have been looking for these.
It is because of the initial cartoon commercials for the comics which created the demand for the daily series which was good but not as good as it could had been if it was produced along the same principles as these 30 second commercials. I fell in love with G.I.Joe with the help of these commercials. They were brilliant and still are after 25 years!
After waiting 25 years, I wish the new live action movie would live up to the exciting standards set by this groundbreaking series! Instead, the new G.I.Joe "Rise of Cobra" seems to be rewriting things as they go along. So much for progress. What I have on youtube is what I feel is G.I.Joe. I hope everyone will agree!
YO JOE!!!!
BACKGROUND INFO:[]
Hasbro used television advertising to publicize the series, and when the first one aired in 1982 featuring G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #1, it was the first time a commercial had ever been used to promote a comic book. Since the commercials were technically promoting the comic books rather than the toys, they allowed Hasbro to circumvent television regulations mandating that toy commercials could not contain more than ten seconds of animation. By not showcasing any characters and toys outside of the comic book context, they were able to include a full thirty seconds of animation. Marvel was paid $5 million by Hasbro to produce the commercials through its animation division Marvel Productions. Larry Hama relates the genesis of the commercials:
There were only a few seconds of animation you could have in a toy commercial, and you had to show the toy, so people wouldn’t get totally deluded. Somebody at Hasbro (who was actually sort of a genius) named Bob Pruprish, realized that a comic book was protected under the first amendment, and there couldn't be restrictions based on how you advertised for a publication.
Between the toy line, comic books, commercials and subsequent cartoon series, Hasbro's marketing plan was highly successful and eventually became an industry standard, an early example of a practice that would years later be described by Jenkins as a "transmedia narrative." Although the adolescent male demographic was the traditional comic book reader, an unintended result of the TV advertising tie-ins was that they attracted people who were not traditional comic book readers. In an interview, Hama stated:
I think [the commercials have] also opened it up to a very different type of audience. I get a lot of letters from girls. I get a lot of letters from young housewives who sort of started watching the cartoons with their kids and sort of started getting into the characters, and then somewhere along the line they picked up the comic book and they started following the stories and got caught up in the continuity.
The comic book's popularity with women has also been attributed to the strong female characters featured in the comic, such as Scarlett and Lady Jaye. Since very few of the G.I. Joe action figures were female, Hama tended to frequently use all of the female characters, including those that were created as recurring characters in the comics.
