Robo-JOE Revisited
Ah, Robo-JOE. Is there any more lovable a loser to come out of the waning years of the Real American Hero era? Crazy idea, funky execution. Conceptually, I love it. The bright color and paint splatter is just a bonus. Maybe someday he’ll give Bulletman a run for his money in the annals of legendary GI Joe goofballs.
If you can’t stand the limited articulation of the Armor Tech figures, you know who to blame. This guy. The man who became Robo-JOE, Greg Scott, developed the bulky suits that some of the Joe wore in its space battles with Cobra. The story also goes that Destro raided his lab and made off with some of his plans. Now, I know that Destro isn’t the nicest guy on the planet, but doesn’t he have a kind of noble streak? I just can’t see him engaging in this sort of piracy.
I’m only disappointed that his story was never really told outside of the file card. As ridiculous as the premise is, the background of his creation sounds interesting at least. The fact that he’s got a beef with Destro could have made for a nice angle as well.
Maybe things just didn’t pan out for Robo-JOE because he was late for both of the big pop culture cyborg heroes’ glory days. Steve Austin ruled the airwaves two decades prior, and Alex Murphy’s star had burned out by the 90s. Or it could have been that the Armor Tech GI Joes were just, well, not all that great.
Alex Murphey was still popular enough to get a tv show in ’95 and another cartoon [Robocop:alpha commando] in 1998.
Speaking of Rbobocop. If you watch the Johnny Rehab in-film commercial in Rbobocop 3, you will notice that tank on display next to the Johnny Rehab vehicles is the bridgelayer with a BF2K turret.
With the Helmet he looks way too Cobra-ish
Looks like a battle corps heat viper.
I just got my own Robo-JOE recently, and have started trying to get his accessories. So far all I have is his helmet.
@Acer
I think star brigade Roadblock also came with the same gold weapons
LOL at the mechanical tendril up the nostril. Maybe it’s for autonomous picking of his nose without compromising all those itchy trigger fingers in the heat of battle. The paint splatters makes him seem assembled in a messy, dirty Earth-bound garage rather than some futuristic space station or moonbase cybernetics laboratory. It’s also an ugly/plain helmet compared to Heavy Duty’s eye-catching gladiator helmet.
I never had RoboJOE, but I did want to army build the BAAT (which was never available for me on the pegs, it seemed…).
I know I had Destro for sure, I remembering trying to figure out if the ’89 Snake Eyes Uzi was his or not in my mix of accessories. Other than that, I only had Armor Tech Duke and Rock n Roll, and I think I chose them because of their somewhat color coordinated suits. (Destro was mostly the red/ black Iron Grenadier look I wanted, I guess as well.)
I like the RoboJOE story, but the articulation diminished my desire on these Armor Tech figures, and the accessories didn’t help, and so I definitely prioritized other figures and vehicles over RoboJOE at the time.
If any Armor Tech figures deserved to have weapons for arms, it was RoboJOE. He’s a robot, a single point of articulated spring fired rocket would have worked well for him, unlike Duke or Destro.
Bad colors, terrific mold, but I love his carachter too!