There is one thing I think that would help, a cartoon done like it was in the 80's. Exact same style, same corny jokes, some voice actors (for those that are alive and willing to work). Give it a 8:30 am time slot on a network everyone has on Saturday morning and maybe then it would make a come back. The recent cartoons have tried to make G.I.Joe too serious and feel more like we, the adult collectors were the target audience.
Sounds good on principle, but there is a problem:
There's already just such a cartoon--the original Sunbow stuff.
Its re-run in many time-slots over many different channels......and I understand its not all that well-rated.
The kid audience today can view it anytime they want, but that is the problem- they aren't watching it in the numbers the producers want.
New episodes cost 10+ times the cost of just re-running old episodes......there's no financial reason to do new material of the same stroke if it will not gain an audience any better than the old stuff it would parrot.
That is why they make new cartoons with very different themes--they want them to be their own animals, and to be very different from the originals.
The interest in re-hashing the original material just isn't there. Hasbro has taken similar stabs at this, with the same idea before. Valour vs Venom was very lighthearted in approach, and much of the repartee between characters in Sigma Six and Renegades was also similar.
The unfortunate thing about the Sunbow material is that its very dated now. It really does come across as trite, even hokey. The cartoon that everyone seemed to applaud was Resolute, but Hasbro balked at the mature theme it had because that is not what they see GIJOE as being aimed at. THAT is the crux of the property: its got a multiple identity disorder. There's the interpretation from the toys, then the cartoons, then the comics, then the movie(s)--and they are all somewhat different.
Because the audience is so fickle and the interest SO niche-level, they continue to play ALL of those interpretations to make sales........and hope they don't work to cross-purposes against each other. GIJOE sells enough/ has JUST enough interest to keep it going......but not enough interest to make it as profitable as Hasbro would like for one of its house brands. That's the eternal frustration in this. Hasbro expects more from it, the fans expect more from it, but the demographic base that MAKES it more isn't there, and frankly isn't all that interested in it.
The old argument remains; a light-saber is just waaaay more engaging than a SCAR rifle, and always will be.
