G.I.Joe ‘Eco Warriors’ Story By Mitchell Smith!
The Eco Warriors are a G.I. Joe sub group created in 1991. I believe the idea was about the battle against bio hazard sludge dumped by factories, which was portrayed by the main Villain Cesspool, who was inadvertently knocked into his own vat of sludge that he intended to use for good, but he was mildly deformed and turned to evil. Flint was the Eco leader and Ozone and Clean Sweep were two original characters created for the 91 lineup. I like the concept and design for these 3 characters.
The backpacks and weapons were cool and the color schemes were pretty good I thought, Flint with his neon green to represent the toxic green sludge, Clean Sweep with his yellow representing a hazmat clean up, and Ozone’s blue suit to represent the water and air we are polluting, at least that is how I see them. Then in 92 they had a Barbecue and a Deep Six which BBQ I get being a fireman and dealing with hazmat, not sure about Deep Six that one seemed out of place to me, I think if they were going to go for a diver they would have went with Wet-Suit and had a removable helmet or even Torpedo because Deep Six already had an upgrade with the removable helmet in 1989, but I can’t figure out why Airtight wasn’t an Eco Warrior. This is what he does, but maybe that’s why he didn’t get an upgraded figure with a removable helmet, and one of the cool sludge back packs, or maybe they completely screwed that one up.
Outside of Cesspool there were 3 evil characters, the Sludge Viper, Toxo-Viper, and the Toxo-Zombie. There were 2 vehicles the Septic Tank and the Eco Striker and a pretty cool looking play set in the Toxo-Lab. Out of all the Joe sub groups I think that this is one that could have been expanded a lot further. I liked the new characters and this was a period where GI Joe went through a number of sub groups, most likely to keep the franchise fresh and popular. There was a 1993 version of Hawk and Deep Six that had the color scheme for the Eco Warrior line, but I don’t think they were actually named to the sub group. I never had any of the Eco Warriors as a kid, but that lab looks pretty interesting. This is definitely one sub group that I would have loved to see more Joes and Cobras.
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