News · 2026-09-12
43 Years of G.I. Joe Action: The M.A.S.S. Device Turned Five Nights Into Five Battlefields
The first thing G.I. Joe ever did, on the afternoon of September 12, 1983, was set fire to an airbase. The M.A.S.S. Device ran five nights that week, one part a night through September 16, every part written by Ron Friedman and supervised by Dan Thompson, and part one opens with Cobra jets coming in low over a runway of parked Skystrikers while the ground crews are still walking between them. [1] There is no roll call and no explanation of who anyone is, but nobody watching in 1983 seems to have needed one. There is a klaxon, a fireball, and pilots sprinting for aircraft that are already burning. What a way to open a toy commercial!
Forty-three years on, it still moves.
That cut is ours, assembled out of all five parts: the raid on the airbase, the artillery going up against the Cobra fortress, a flamethrower against armoured walkers in a cave, sea serpents working in the dark, and three helicopters hanging over an open volcano. [2] Five longer clips, one battle from each night, are linked at the bottom of this page.
Run them together and you can see that these are not five variations on the same fight. Part one is fought in the air. Part two finishes underground, in a cave where Joes climb onto white armoured walkers that stand a head taller than they do. Part three goes underwater and gives the fight to a nest of sea serpents that take divers apart at depth. Part four hovers a flight of helicopters over an active volcano and lowers a capsule into it on cables. Part five is a ground war, with artillery crews digging in on open rock and a Cobra fortress cut into the cliff above them firing back.
There is a reason the scenery changes every night, and it sits in the plot. Wikipedia describes the plot as “G.I. Joe and Cobra’s race around the world to acquire the three catalytic elements which power the machine”, and a race around the world is a structure that hands a writer a fresh environment every night whether he wants one or not. [3] What it hands a toy department is better again: a night on which the jet is the only answer to the problem, then a night for the submarine, then a night for the helicopter. The catalytic elements themselves are a fetch quest, and what the running order actually does is give every vehicle in the toy line one night on which it is the only thing that will work.
Part one was not animated by one unit. Its closing credits list eight sequence directors working under Thompson, among them Gerry Chiniquy, Nelson Shin, John Gibbs and Arnie Wong. [4] Spreading the work that wide is how a five part show gets finished to a syndication schedule; it also explains why the cutting between one sequence and the next can feel abrupt. The overhead shot of the volcano in part four, the crater filled edge to edge with cracked orange crust and three helicopters ringed around the rim, holds for a few seconds and never comes back, and somebody painted it anyway!
Where the miniseries is thinner is the talking. Cobra Commander sets out his plan to Destro about once a night, Destro’s job is to look unconvinced (he is very good at it), and the dialogue in between mostly moves people from one location to the next. But no part of it ends on a conversation. Every one closes on a set piece, and the cliffhangers land on somebody falling, sinking or being shot at rather than on a revelation.
The M.A.S.S. Device was made to sell toys, and forty three years later its battles are still the part of G.I. Joe you hand to someone who has never watched it.
Cobra Commander has a throne in plastic again. The G.I. Joe Classified Series #221 Cobra Commander with Throne Set is open for pre-order at BigBadToyStore at $69.99, estimated to arrive in November 2026.
The five clips
One battle from each night, cut from the original episodes and running a little under three minutes each.
- Part 1, The Cobra Strikes: Cobra hits the naval airbase, and the Skystrikers get off the ground through the fire.
- Part 2, Slave of the Cobra Master: the cave fight against Cobra’s armoured walkers.
- Part 3, The Worms of Death: the dive, the serpents, and the Baroness watching from a pod.
- Part 4, Duel in the Devil’s Cauldron: the helicopter lift over the volcano.
- Part 5, A Stake in the Serpent’s Heart: the assault on the Cobra fortress.
[1] The air dates for the five parts are September 12 to September 16, 1983, one part a night, in first run syndication.
[2] The video is our own edit of the broadcast episodes. No footage has been generated or altered; it is cut, joined and topped and tailed with our own bumper.
[3] The same summary dates the series run as September 12, 1983 to November 20, 1986, which puts the anniversary of the first broadcast on today’s date.
[4] Read off the closing credit crawl of part one. The full sequence director credit reads Gerry Chiniquy, Nelson Shin, John Gibbs, Art Vitello, Sid Marcus, Sam Weiss, Tom Ray and Arnie Wong, with Dan Thompson as supervising director.
Sources
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (1983 TV series), Wikipedia, for the plot summary, the production credits and the series run dates.
- List of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero episodes, Wikipedia, for the five part titles, writer and air dates.
- G.I. Joe Classified Series #221 Cobra Commander with Throne Set, BigBadToyStore, read on September 12, 2026, for the price, the pre-order state and the arrival estimate.
- Video and stills: the 1983 Sunbow and Marvel Productions episodes, cut by the gijoe.army desk.
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