YO JOE! AWOL
He never gives up; he’ll stay till the fight’s won…
When the Real American Hero could no longer be counted on to protect human freedom against evil, two new groups of heroes would arise.
First, the similarly scaled Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles appeared in 1995. These guys were 4.5″ figures similar in style to the ARAH line, and they returned to a more traditional, grittier military feel. A World War II-era soldier alive today thanks to super science, Sgt. Savage joined G.I. Joe before leaving the unit with his own team of Howling Comm… Screaming Eagles. Savage was an old-school soldier, blasting out that hot shit, that rock shit that wouldn’t bounce in the mosh pit. And oh yeah, he had super strength.
The designs of the toys were pretty fantastic, and a great throw back to the origins of G.I. Joe, but the show never got picked up, and the simple fact is that after years of getting to know and collect the characters of ARAH, Savage just seemed like too much of his own thing. Not to mention, boring and unrelatable. I’m sure being an out-of-touch septuagenarian didn’t help his case.
Then, a year later, came G.I. Joe Extreme, which carried over the Sgt. Savage character but changed everything else. Two seasons of the show and a handful of roided out, barely poseable figures later, and Extreme was gone almost as quickly as the band of the same name. It was 1997, and the Joes, it would seem, had disappeared from toy aisles for good.
