The new GI Joe series aired in the fall of 1990 and it lasted 2 seasons with a total of 35 episodes. It was actually the continuation to GI Joe: Operation Dragon Fire which was a five part mini series and is a follow up to GI Joe the Movie. Although some of the old characters did return, a large majority of the original GI Joes were completely dropped and did not return in the new series as Hasbro and the show's producers wanted the show to mainly and primarily focus on new characters. Captain Grid Iron became the new GI Joe leader with General Hawk and Sgt Slaughter as field commanders. This new GI Joe Series would introduce an abundance of new characters and many new GI Joes were introduced such as Bulletproof, Sky Dive, Drop Zone, Airwave, Rampart, Ambush, Stretcher, Big Bear, Heavy Duty, Scoop, Sub Zero, Clean Sweep, Bullhorn, Ozone, Major Altitude and Pathfinder just to name a few. But the show would also reintroduce many returning GI Joes such as General Hawk, Duke, Flint, Lady Jaye, Rock N Roll, Low Light, Roadblock, Mercer, Sgt Mutt and his sidekick dog Junkyard, Grunt, Sci-Fi, Dusty, Wet Suit, Scarlett, Snake Eyes, Lt. Falcon and the all time favorite Sgt Slaughter. With Captain Grid Iron as their new leader the Joes continued to battle against Cobra. Flint became the leader of the new GI Joe Echo Warriors, while Duke remained absent for the entire first season and only made short guest and cameo appearances in only about 8 episodes during the second season--again this was due to the fact that Hasbro wanted to focus primarily on new characters. After Serpentor's defeat and mutation Cobra Commander would retake command of the Cobra organization. Among Cobra's returning characters were Destro, Major Bludd, The Baronness and Zaranna while the rest of the original Cobra characters were completely dropped in this new series. Cobra also introduced new characters such as Metalhead, Cesspool, a new dreadknock called Gnagahyde, Overkill and a new Cobra ninja master was introduced called Night Creeper Leader, who was actually Snake Eyes' second ninja nemesis after Storm Shadow. Night Creeper Leader was the leader of the Night Creeper cobra ninjas as Storm Shadow was now a GI Joe. The show had limited character development due to the fact that there were so many new characters in order to sell toys for Hasbro. Due to budgetary reasons and Hasbro's financial issues the show was produced by DIC Entertainment which was a much smaller production company compared to Sunbow which produced the original. This show's story lines were very much the same to the original as far as GI Joe's endless battle against Cobra but I think that the battle scenes were better and the military battle vehicles were more up to date. In my opinion this was probably the best GI Joe cartoon every made, the animation was great, the battle scenes were excellent and the show had a lot of humor and it even introduced a brand new GI Joe theme song titled "Got To Get Tough, Yo Joe !!" and the most important thing to remember is that this series stayed true to GI Joe's traditional military and patriotic roots just as the original did and although the story lines were very similar to the original and repetitive the show still managed to be very enjoyable. It's just disappointing that it never had a lasting memory among die hard GI Joe fans such as myself as a classic GI Joe Cartoon, however, it was a great addition to the GI Joe saga. I do hope that this show will be released on DVD.
