Exploring GI Joe’s 1986 Season: A Deep Dive into Episode 19, “My Favorite Things”
Story by Mitchell Smith
Welcome to The Outpost. Today I’m taking a look into the 1986 season of GI Joe with a deeper look into episode 19, “My Favorite Things”. This is an interesting episode as Serpentor goes on a quest to collect artifacts from the individuals Cobra collected DNA from to create Serpentor in the first place. The artifacts will give Serpentor extraordinary strength and solidify him as the pure leader of the Cobra organization. Many characters like Lifeline, Mainframe, Dial-Tone, and Hawk are Highlighted in the episode but the main story revolves around Leatherneck and Wet-Suit’s pursuit of who is in the better branch of the military. Their banter mostly brags about Wet-Suit’s Navy Seals and Leatherneck’s beloved Marine Corp.
Wet-Suit who is not wearing his wetsuit at all actually has normal every day Navy wear which is a bit interesting, and made me think of doing some sort of custom figure with an extra shipwreck I picked up on clearance. The really interesting thing about this episode is the history lesson about past ruthless leaders such as the opening scene where a BAT is stealing a picture of Rasputin, the statue of Genghis Khan, and the battle axe from the viking Eric the Batterer, which Leatherneck ends up with after the axe blade is split in half by a guillotine. I know there was not much history there but what I find interesting is the several different face changes Serpentor has in the episode ultimately ending up with a snake like face. These would have made a really cool had swap for modern Serpentor or even with the Classified Figure.
I think it would be really cool if they just produced a Classified set with a few different head sculpts and a few of the artifacts he was after. I was trying to think of how to do something custom 25th style and tried out a custom Train head I painted years ago, which made me wonder why they didn’t make the Classified figure have a removable helmet. Over all this was a great episode and I hope we at least get Classified figures of all the main characters in this episode. Make sure to check back next week for the next discussion at The Outpost.
