Choosies

Slightly after the Dawn of War...like, Midday of War. Or maybe Brunch of War.

Part 2, War on the Floor 1.

Tonight, on a very special Blossom: Six confronts her addiction to eyeliner. Blossom must decide between rhinoplasty and the last chocolate truffle. Joey decides to become a triple threat: bad actor, bad singer AND bad dancer. It is an episode you will never forget. Directed by Bill Bixby. Yes, the Incredible Hulk. THAT Bill Bixby. This episode of The War on the Floor, however, has none of the above. It's still pretty damn special. Our heroes, Hawk and Optimus Prime have, what people in the Afternoon School Special biz call, "choices." So off we go.

It's Team Joe versus Team Cybertron. G.I. Joe and Cobra take on Autobots and Deceptacons. The War on the Floor. A more amazing assemblage of awesome I cannot fathom.

Here are the ground rules:

1. This is G.I. Joe versus Transformers. Scale is WYSIWYG, so if Roadblock is twice as tall as Bumblebee, so be it.

2. No flying stuff. Look, this isn't an animation studio. It's just me, a camera and a floor. I'm not rigging Starscream and Cobra FANG helicopters to hang in the air for a picture. I'm just not. Sorry.

3. Former mortal enemies must try to reconcile their differences for the good of their team. What say you, Cobra Commander and Megatron?

4. Ten figures per side. G.I. Joe gets to pick five pieces of equipment/vehicles (on account of the Transformers are robots, fer crissakes, and G.I. Joes are just flesh and mustaches). Oh, that brings up another rule:

5. No more than two G.I. Joes with mustaches may be selected.

6. One team member per side may be kept secret until unleashed on the battlefield...er, battlefloor.

7. The team captains are: Optimus Prime for the Transformers and Hawk for G.I. Joe. And you can bet I'm going to kill off Hawk in the most grisly way possible. What a tool.

GI Joe: just flesh and mustaches.

Team Joe picks first. Hawk must be careful here. There are so many mustachioed Joes and Cobras to choose from, but only two may fill his roster. Only two? It's just not fair. "I select the fully armored version of Cobra Commander," Hawk intones with the proud vocal timbre of an overly patriotic dork. "He will lead a scout squad to harass the enem--" "Yeah, yeah. Where's my scotch?" says Cobra Commander. "Do you have a mustache?" Hawk asks as he peers into Cobra Commander's helmet. "Back off, freak." "No, but you see, um, I can only pick two soldiers with mustaches, and..." Bangbangbangbangbangbang. Cobra Commander empties his pistol in Hawk's face. Okay, we have a new team captain.

Optimus Prime selects Grimlock. Well chosen. I quickly impart a new rule: Only one Dinobot may be chosen. If all five Dinobots were let loose, I'm sure you will agree that there can be only one outcome. Gotta keep it fair, baby. One Dinobot. Eat it.

Cobra Commander picks Sgt. Slaughter. That's a solid pick. This guy picked up a creature the size of a tank in the G.I. Joe animated crapfest that pretended to be a movie (it starred Don Johnson, so that proves that it was pretending to be a movie) so he's got a fair chance against a Transformer mano a machine (see, that's a play on 'mano a mano.' Who's clever? Huh? Who's clever?).

Prime chooses Soundwave next. A walking cassette machine, Soundwave brings the unadulterated power of rock to the battlefloor.

The rest of the choosing process proceeded uneventfully. Cobra Commander tried to select Rock'n'Roll and Clutch as one single pick arguing that it was in truth only one giant mustache that covered both men...that, in fact, the mustache was a sentient creature and the Joes mere host organisms. This was hastily disallowed. Granted, they were poorly sculpted Joes and spent far too much time in the shower together, but the mustache was judged not to be an independently conscious being. It was a symbiote at best.

Team Joe (not pictured: Jeep).

Team Joe, now renamed the Democratic Republic of the Eminent Cobra Commander (abbreviated to the unfortunate acronym Team DRECC), selected the following:
1. Cobra Commander in battle armor (Yeah, uh, look, I know in the comic book it's Fred VII, a Crimson Guardsman impersonating Cobra Commander, but I need the real Cobra Commander here and my other two--the battle helmet one and the hooded one--are not exactly in one piece on account of the rubber loop that holds the torso and legs of these figures tends to deteriorate with age. Curse you frail rubber elastic band!!! You've cost me many an action figure!!!)
2. Sgt. Slaughter
3. Snake Eyes. Because ninjas can do ANYthing.
4. Uglyface (Editor's note: Uglyface is not the figure's actual codename. His real codename is much stupider.)
5. Snake Eyes 2. If one ninja can do anything, then two ninjas can do double anything.
6. Beach Head
7. Destro. I never understood why this arms dealer got so personally involved with the Cobra organization. I mean, sure, he had it bad for the Baroness, but c'mon! She was ten beers short of "hot."
8. Rock'n'Roll (the updated, less-bad version)
9. Crimson Guardsman. Most fashionable foot soldier since the British Redcoats.
10. Roadblock. Rhymin' and stealin'.
A. Tank (for tanking)
B. Cobra Jeep with missile launcher
C. Motorcycle. Because it's a two-wheeled, turbo-fueled machine of cool.
D. Ammo dump (assorted bombs and missiles that once belonged to some vehicle or other but whose connection to which has long been erased by time)
E. And one secret selection to be revealed in battle.

Team Cybertron. I don't get it. Optimus Prime is a truck. Huffer is a truck. They're pretty much the same truck, but one is five times bigger than the other. I don't know, it just bothers me.

Team Cybertron selected the following:
1. Optimus Prime
2. Grimlock
3. Soundwave. He's a robot who transforms into a ghetto blaster. That's mint.
4. Bumblebee. If he were invented today, he'd be a Mini-Cooper.
5. Huffer. Sometimes Hasbro didn't spend a lot of time on the names.
6. Jazz. One of the few art forms America can call its own, Jazz is also an Autobot.
7. Twin Twist. He is probably better known as Lame-bot. He came in a two-pack with his inbred cousin, Lametron. He would transform into a drilling vehicle by folding his legs over his head, so the drills came out of his butt. At least he didn't have a single drill. One long erect lubricated drill. Again, sometimes Hasbro didn't spend a lot of time on their concept sketches.
8. Mirage. Transformed into one of them F1 type cars. Euro-trash bastard.
9. Frenzy. He's one of those cassette tapes that fit inside Soundwave. I think this is Frenzy. But it could be Rumble, his identical twin robot brother. Frenzy? Rumble? I'll call him Frumble.
10. And one secret selection to be revealed in battle.

Satellite intel photo reveals much awesomeness.

Up next: When we rock, we rock. When we roll, we roll. When we engage in mortal combat on the battlefloor, we engage in mortal combat on the battlefloor. In part 3, The Battlefloor Erupts.
Or go back to the main War on the Floor page.