A couple days ago the folks at the Transformers Collectors Club teamed up with Seibertron.com to reveal their upcoming G.I. Joe crossover set featuring a character called “Old Snake”. He’s an actual character from an actual Transformers cartoon. A very silly Transformers cartoon.
While the third season episode “Only Human” never specifically refers to him as Cobra Commander, there’s no mistaking the faceplate, the raspy voice and the choked-out battle cry the ancient terrorist leader lets out at the end of one of the stupidest evil plots ever hatched in a Transformers cartoon.
Completely memorable human villain Victor Drath, tired of the Transformers’ constant thwarting of his evil schemes, enlists the aid of a retired terrorist leader in building a machine that will swap the minds of Ultra Magnus, Spring, Arcess and Rodimus Prime into humans, after which he will destroy their robot bodies. Why not just destroy the robots with their minds intact? Because then we wouldn’t get to see colour-coded space jumpsuits.
It bears mentioning that this cartoon, released in 1986, depicts Earth in the year 2006. I am still incredibly disappointed that I don’t own one of these outfits. Where are my white space boots?
It’s an incredibly strange episode. Rodimus Prime goes through Matrix withdraw — I guess technically he’s just Hot Rod without it? The human Springer rides inside the robot body of Springer, as Old Snake convinced Drath to keep the bodies intact in order to commit crimes — lucky that. Also, no one talks about having to eat and poop, which was pretty disappointing to 13-year-old me.
In the end, Perceptor manages to reverse the process, placing the robot minds back in the robots and leaving the human bodies lifeless husks. Maybe some other humans ate them. I don’t know.
As for Old Snake, why he takes his distinctive voice (actor Chris Latta, also the voice of Starscream) and wanders off into the sunset
The Transformers Collectors Club set will come with “Old Snake” himself, as well as a pair of Transformers Prime Soundwave figures redecorated to resemble G.I. Joe‘s Battle Android Troopers (B.A.T.S.).
Head over to Seibertron.com for many more pictures of the amazing set. It should go nicely with TFCC’s other crossover set, starring the daughter of two of G.I. Joe‘s finest.
Comments
6 responses to “The Time Cobra Commander Guest-Starred On Transformers”
The TRansformers Vs GI JOE comic series that’s out atm is a great read. I recommend looking it up at your local comic shop for nostalgic flash backs
It is actually the third run of the series, I remember picking up a special edition #1 which had a holographic fold out and some spiffy art back in the day.
Had the tag line “Not your fathers transformers” or something to that effect on the top which made me want to read it more… which is funny because my father wasn’t at all into anything like Transformers.
Just moved house and moved my box of comics for the millionth time, have a bunch of GI Joe comics from the Marvel run near the end of the series (before IDW picked it back up recently that is) – all the transformers cross over issues were there. I remember thinking the new Megatron tank design they launched was bad ass when I was a kid. Was in a toy store with MY kid recently and saw they had re-issued the toy… then I saw the $100 price tag lol
That was a new toy but yeah, $70+ is hard to take. The original was more badass and you may be able to nab that for >$40 on ebay if lucky.
I found that episode amusing because it ran counter to the G.I. Joe animated movie, which had good old CC actually be a member of a hidden race of snake-people who is further mutated into an actually little cobra before dying trying to kill a rival.
Still, I loved the Transformers episode that featured him when I was a kid because it was a rare crossover.
I love the old cartoons especially since the VA for Starscream in G1 also voiced Cobra Commander.