G.I. Joe Classified Beamish-Style Weekend Vehicle Poll - #10 - Ninja Force Battle Ax

Akatsuki said:
Thanks! It’s silly, but I used to daydream during long car rides in the forests of the Sierra Nevada about the Cobra Battle Ax cutting down all the trees as we drove by, but then the GI Joe Ninja Force vehicle would be following immediately behind and some how would be picking up and repairing/healing the trees right behind, so the forest would be saved.


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It's definitely silly, but I love it anyway. Or because it's silly?

Vehicles like this one are really the only big disconnect between kid-me and adult-me. I still like a lot of the crazy, weird stuff. But some of the crazy weird stuff just doesn't work for me anymore. This thing when I was 10? BADASS. This thing at 40+? Just don't need it.
-That being said-, let Hasbro make it and we'll see how well my theory about what is too silly for me now holds up.
 
Spongyblue said:
Yes, because we've never had an evil AWE striker.
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Sure, but you know.. that would be entirely different from this piece of insanity, so it's not really relevant.

For my part, I'm actually not a big fan of the color-swap "now it's a bad guy" thing. In fact, it feels off somehow for Joes and Cobra to be using the same vehicles in different colors. I've never needed an 'evil' AWE in the same way I don't need a 'good' Trouble Bubble or Firebat. I like that both factions use very different things.
 
True, I guess that's part of why any Python or Tiger vehicles I got still went to the faction the original was used by. The Rattler is one I guess I could see the Joes using though, but usually the Cobra vehicles tended to be less real-world-military-y and leaned more into fantastic. Even something like the HAVOC... it's dumb, and has some sci-fi stuff, and maybe it's just my trained brain, but I can't imagine if they'd originally released it in black or crimson or something with some kinda viper that it would have felt very Cobra-y.
 
To clarify; I do think there are exceptions. It's just that I don't need a 1:1 every Joe vehicle gets a Cobra repaint kind of situation. I tend to think of the stuff that's very real-world to be more Joe-oriented, with the weirder stuff being very Cobra, and there's a little crossover in the middle.

Like, I don't ever want to see Cobra using regular-looking tanks. That just doesn't work for me.
 
Damien said:
To clarify; I do think there are exceptions. It's just that I don't need a 1:1 every Joe vehicle gets a Cobra repaint kind of situation. I tend to think of the stuff that's very real-world to be more Joe-oriented, with the weirder stuff being very Cobra, and there's a little crossover in the middle.

Like, I don't ever want to see Cobra using regular-looking tanks. That just doesn't work for me.
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I was thinking about that... Was the Crimson Attack Tank just a repaint of the MOBAT? Come on, they have the HISS! Or something ridiculous like the Demon or Razorback.
 
To be fair, the Iron Grenadiers had the DEMON and the Razorback. The Crimson Attack Tank did look a bit normal for them, but the evil colors helped. Then again the Joes had the HAVOC driven by a secessionist so 🤷‍♂️
 
The HAVOC sucks. But I think it's fair to say that's an outlier - particularly in pre-90s ARAH. VERY generally, I would say the Joes tended towards the more 'real' stuff while Cobra tended toward the crazier stuff. And definitely while I am a huge '90s Joe fan, it's actually the earliest vehicles that seem to have settled into my mind as 'what is each faction.' Joes had the Mobat, APC, Skystriker, and the Dragonfly. Cobra had the crazy one-man death machine FANG, the hyper-stylized HISS, the SNAKE armor... that's where my mind goes when I'm thinking about whether a vehicle fits in with a certain faction's general style. Even if the waters get a lot muddier as the years rolled on.


That being said, I do think Cobra is more likely to repaint and repurpose a Joe vehicle than the other way around. That makes more sense to me than the Joes being like 'what if we painted this canon on a pogo stick drab green?'
 
I feel like the Havoc was either a senator’s pet pork project, or else an attempt to get Cross Country KIA.

Yeah, the only repaints from Cobra to Joe that make sense are like how Tiger Force has a Cobra ATV or… the phone had a repainted rattler, yeah?
 
The Sky Patrol Night Raven isn't crazy either. I just wouldn't see Night Force riding around in Cobra's answer to the HAVOC, the Stun. Hey, we can get our driver killed too! In fact, anything hiding him from ground troop fire will just split and move right out of the way.
 
docsilence said:
Yeah, the only repaints from Cobra to Joe that make sense are like how Tiger Force has a Cobra ATV or… the phone had a repainted rattler, yeah?
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Yeah, the Tiger Rat (Joe Rattler) is, in my opinion, one of the only good Cobra-to-Joe repaints. Probably in part because it's one of Cobra's most realistic vehicles.
 
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