Stop Me If You've Heard This One...
A Covert Operator, a Warrant Officer, and an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Specialist walk into a bar...
After Action Report!
So there I was in Dallas, attending a major tourist activity taking place—
What’s that, you ask—the World Cup?
Oh, no. No, no, no—something far more important.
(Well, to me at least.)
Of course I mean the 2026 Dallas/Forth Worth G.I. Joe and Action Figure Show!
And I loved it.
What did I love specifically about it?
cracks knuckles
Let’s get into things, shall we?
1. Drinking with the Joes
Part of my weekend ticket (the “Commander’s Package”1) got me into the Friday Night Celebrity Meet and Greet. Several of the designers, artists, and voice actors would be there… but to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect or how to approach them.
Turns out, they did the job for me.
I grabbed a drink with a fellow random attendee, and before we knew it, Lady Jaye herself was at our table.
Mary McDonald-Lewis was the voice actor for Lady Jaye (Covert Operations) during the 80’s cartoon series. Now, I’ve worked my share of conventions at Wizards of the Coast, most of the time doing my dead level best to avoid as many interactions as possible (an introvert working the show floor is a tough nut). I had way more fun exploring Gen Con as an anonymous guest, counting down the hours until I could sneak off with the rest of the staff to reconvene at Indianapolis’ Slippery Noodle blues bar.2
Unlike me, Mary seemed in her element at a convention—making the rounds to talk to every table at the bar, telling us stories of working on the cartoon. For one, she told us about how she already knew Bill Ratner, the voice of Flint (Warrant Officer), even before the show and how they unintentionally ended up auditioning together. It was endearing to see them still together as old friends—and listening to them was listening to Flint and Lady Jaye!
Fun Fact! Here in West Seattle, there’s a bar called Lady Jaye. Named after… that Lady Jaye! The co-owner is a huge fan of G.I. Joe as well.
2. Live Cartoon Read
The next day, I hustled back3 for a live reading by the voice actors of a brand-new G.I. Joe cartoon script, written special for the show by Michael Charles Hill, one of the writers for the cartoon (including the Cold Slither episode).
The voice actors in attendance—Mary McDonald-Lewis, Bill Ratner, as well as Lisa Raggio (Zartana) and Zack Hoffman (Zartan)—performed it. The rest of us in the audience even got to participate as background voices, for the crowd scenes and reading the Cobra Pledge of Allegiance.
3. Behind-the-Design Panel
Former Hasbro R&D were on hand for the next panel: Neon, Ninjas & New Ideas: Reinventing G.I. Joe in the ’90s.
Now, I always preferred the military realism of the first wave (1982) up through the more distinct, but still grounded characters of the following waves (1983-84). However, what I took away from this panel was how the much later waves of more outlandish figures were often in response to the absolute explosion of action figures from the late 80s on.
It might seem obvious in hindsight, but many of the G.I. Joe sub-lines were designed to compete not just against Cobra, but against rival figure lines. And suddenly (in part thanks to G.I. Joe) there were a lot of rival lines.
1991: Eco-Warriors. Was this meant to follow the trend of environmentalism? Sure, maybe. Eco-terrorists certainly made for understandable bad guys. But really, these figures also came about to compete with Captain Planet.4
As noted in the panel, some of the Eco-Warrior figures were originally meant to squirt ooze instead of water, until that didn’t pass existing toy regulations (ironic, for Eco-Warriors). The designers then also considered some type of dissolvable armor for the figures, which might’ve been fun to melt away… but could only be done just the once.
1992: Ninja Force. While ninjas burst onto the 80s behind a flurry of smoke bombs, the G.I. Joe line later increased their use to the point where seemingly everyone took on the title of “ninja”. In this case, it wasn’t so much to capture the earlier allure of ninjas, as to now compete against the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
1993: Dino Hunters. You guessed it. To compete against Jurassic Park, when everything afterward was dinosaurs (cue Peppa Pig’s little brother, George. Rawr!).
1993: Mega Marines. Aliens.5
1993 (man, they tried a lot of things this year): Star Brigade. Not stated at the seminar, but supposedly in reaction to the upcoming return of Star Wars figures in their (oddly all barrel-chested) Power of the Force line.
4. Support Your Local Artist
I sure tried to! My favorite figure in the G.I. Joe line has always been Firefly. I can’t entirely explain why—in part, maybe because he was a classic “mysterious stranger,” but with enough of a face and voice to have expression and character. The balaclava made him look enough like a ninja (see above; but hey, as a child of the 80s, I fell hard for ninjas too). And as a saboteur, the idea of him sneaking around bases and setting time bombs felt like a ready-made story right there in his specialty.
Never mind that in his original packaging art, his toolkit is left open. To display his tools to us, of course. Only later on did it occur to me how this seemed an absentminded, clumsy way to walk around with his toolkit swinging wide open. Like his fly was down.
Thankfully, someone must have thought the same and corrected it on later packaging.
In any case, Ron Rudat was signing at the show. Ron was Hasbro’s R&D figure designer, responsible for creating the first 120+ figures of the Real American Hero line (according to the outstanding biography and background material at 3djoes.com).
Among them was Firefly.
So how cool to buy a print of Firefly from Ron Rudat himself!
Well, down the lane there was also Larry Hama! I was able to grab a picture with him last year at JoeFest, but now I could buy a print from the man himself as well.
For folks not familiar with his work, Larry created the Joe characters/biographies behind the figures, and also wrote the Marvel comic series in part based on an earlier pitch for a S.H.I.E.L.D. spin-off.
Eventually, these characters included Tunnel Rat (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) based off himself!
And, as things come full circle, Fury Force was recently announced as a figure line coming to Big Bad Workshop, with an early look shown at this year’s JoeFest!
5. Shopping
Of course, who isn’t going to a toy fest and buying a ton of shit? Good shit. Too much good shit.
Anyway… my favorite purchase?
Christmas of ‘85. The Bears had made the playoffs, headed to the Super Bowl. Ditka. Sweetness. The Fridge. A dumb song we somehow convinced ourselves was good. Snow on the ground. And that year, I received them both—the G.I. Joe W.H.A.L.E. (a hovercraft) and Cobra Moray (a hydrofoil… Miami Vice was also big this year).
A W.H.A.L.E. I bought for myself a few years back.
This year, an early birthday present for myself, I scored a great deal on a Moray:
God, I love collecting.
And if you think Cobra Commander has a shiny helmet, you should see his package.
Confession Time: Attending Bill Slavicsek’s 4th Edition D&D seminar (as one of his employees, no less), I stood in the back and accidentally bumped into the room’s light switch panel—leaving the lights to dim and flicker distractingly for the rest of his seminar. It wasn’t sabotage (as much as I love Firefly). I was simply too afraid of making things worse by trying to fix it, so I just left them to flicker. Sorry Bill!
It turns out, Dallas is big. And spread out. Everywhere was a 30-min Uber ride away.
I never watched more than an episode or two, but apparently the cartoon was popular enough to run from 1990-96. And speaking of voice talent, not only was Frank Welker involved (of course), but so was LeVar Burton, Whoopi Goldberg, Margot Kidder, Meg Ryan, Jeff Goldblum, and Sting. Tom Cruise was also meant to be Captain Planet originally, before dropping out.
While the movie came out in 1986, the toys waited until 1992. They mostly come out six years later… mostly.
I was watching this week’s Conan podcast on YT, and heard some news that made me think of you. Danny McBride was the guest, and he said he’s writing a G.I. Joe movie. Not a comedy—straight-up action. Apparently he’s a big fan too.