G.I. Joe Classified One-A-Day Beamish-Style Figure Poll - #158 - Cesspool (RAH)

True story: Cesspool was my default 'ultra bad guy Cobra Leader' character for whenever my play stories resulted in CC being dead or missing. He just had 100% 'the main villain of the story' energy.
 
Legit.
Cesspool (and also Headman) was definitely on an “I work *with* you not *for* you” basis with Cobra Commander in my head. And also Cesspool had *money* and tons of resources that Cobra *needed*. Between Cesspool and Headman, Cobra was suddenly in with *really* bad people, not just cynical mercenaries and eccentric science weirdos. Like the 90s villains were actual monsters. This may have had something to do with me being a tween/teen by this time and my inner stories getting darker, but the bad guys from the “very special episode” 90s subsets just came off extra-evil to me.
 
Yeah, it was a really weird switch in some ways that once we were in the '90s Joe was adding a literal drug cartel leader and a big business 'destroy the environment' guy. Granted, those were two BIG concerns in the '90s. But that's the problem; they almost felt too real for the comic book insanity of creating a weather controlling machine and having a secret base that is an actual complete United States town.
 
Like, I remember 1983 and Cobra felt . . . kinda real? Not the cartoon, nooooope, but the actual *toys*? Like as a 5 year old grabbing Return of the Jedi toys who also sometimes saw the evening news and was kiiiiiiinda hip to an idea of what was going on in the world, “an evil terrorist organization determined to rule the world” hit a lot harder than, like, Gargamel. Spooky masked behind-the-Iron-Curtain-coded guys code-named “THE ENEMY!” My mom didn’t want to buy the “war toys”. But then obviously it super-quickly pivoted and we were getting Dreadnoks at the same time we were getting Firefly and then by 1986 Cobra was off to the motherfucking races with a mad scientist and a murderbot and a history-thesis clone and then, well, then came 1987. Which was fucking peak experience time for a nine year old but I can’t even imagine how someone who was even slightly older was taking Crocodile Bondage Guy, Purple Wrench Trooper, Fuck You I’m a Bird, Snorkel Silver Thigh Highs Commander, etc. Cobra was never remotely “grounded” again, mostly because war was ever-less “cool” as we rolled into the 90s. Buuuuuuut the not-Cobra stuff . . . I mean it’s clear there was a social mandate to jump on the social-consciousness movement that was very hot at the time (oh man I remember my school celebrating the first Earth Day sooooo hard), so while they also went Ninja Force they did get at least a little “real” with Eco-Warriors and maybe even moreso with DEF . . . and it felt like they wanted to go harder but then at the same time the lens on real-world violence in “kids” media was SOOOO strong at that time that everything HAD TO be neon-colored. I remember the time before orange tips on Han Solo’s blaster and when that kind of thing changed it changed HARD. Those bright colors and sparking-missle-firing gigantic unrealistic guns and spring-action features were a desperate gasp for relevancy between censorship, anti-war sentiment, and Ninja Turtles/Batman. Then Spider-man and X-Men hit and . . . shit. No amount of neon or real-world relevance was gonna save them.
But I swear to Grodd, there really was some cool Joe shit going on in those weird last years, and Cesspool is maybe the coolest individual example of that. Even his “action features” were non-intrusive: the backpack/sludge-blaster was totally cool with or without being full of water and totally worked as a “regular” accessory, and the color-change stuff was just fun and incidental. Actually pretty much all the Eco-Warriors had “functional” acton-feature accessories and I legitimately loved the giant underslung sludge-tank weapons the Toxo- and Sludge-Vipers came with.
Damn. 1991. I was 13. It was soooooo uncool to be into action figures. And yet.
 
AceofKnaves said:
But I swear to Grodd, there really was some cool Joe shit going on in those weird last years,
Click to expand...
I don't want to go too off-topic so I won't belabor this too much, but dude 1994 was the last regular year for ARAH and it had:

Ice Cream Soldier, PREDACON!, and Cobra Commander in psychotic space outfit. Those three figures alone go hard. '93, the penultimate year for ARAH had so many amazing figures that I'd probably get yelled at for taking up too much space in the thread if I named them all. But I'm fuckin' gonna:

Black and yellow Alley Viper with that SICK ASS snake-head helmet and Cobra logo shield, a second shot at the amazing Barricade figure with all that gold armor and cool helmet, BLACK suit Cobra Commander, another shot at the best version of the EEL (but without the awesome shark), the awesome-looking CG Commander, the coolest version of Duke, the coolest version of Firefly, the Rambo version of Gung-Ho, HEADHUNTER STORMTROOPERS, the version of Law that looks like a '90s DC Comics villain, NIGHT CREEPER LEADER, CYBER VIPERS (evil Robocops!), a crazy armored-up sci-fi version of Gung-Ho, the BEST sub-line ever with the entire second line-up of NINJA FUCKING FORCE MOTHERUCKERS, Star Brigade Astro Viper and Ozone, Fucking STREET FIGHTER as a complete sub-line (the Vega and Guile figures fucking rocked).

1993 was the absolute shit and I'll hear no argument.
 
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