On it's own merits, as a product of the new expression of the GI Joe property, the logo is pretty good. It's compact and looks to a lay person (i.e. children) like something from the military/espionage world without being too over the top. The eagle keeps it somewhat rooted in Amercian symbology so it isn't totally abandoning its roots, but not so much as to alientate the rest of the world market.
If the movie is a success and kids get behind it, this will become as iconinc as the ARAH logo whether old school fans like it or not. As much as I personally love the old the block letters with red, white, & blue, this logo is much more fitting with the high tech international spec-ops feel of the film (that started with Sigma 6). You slap the vintage logo on something today and it screams "80's jingoistic Reagan era cheese" to a lot of people. I'm not saying it IS that, but to a lot of people who don't live, eat, breath and sleep with Joes, the old logo carries baggage the new products don't need. This new logo also fits in better with the Rainbow 6, Splinter Cell, Halo, video game generation - which is a fine direction for Joe to go if it's going to work for kids today. And despite what armchair QB internet collectors think, GI Joe is primarily meant to be for kids
As far as the strange similarity to the Postal Service and UPS logos go... having worked in design and illustration for more than 15 years, I'd say the similarities are awfully close to have gone unnoticed. When designing something like this, a lot of sources are referenced and explored, and the output is usually judged by a lot of logo-savvy people before it goes into the market. I can believe that the eagle was chosen without the Postal reference in mind - it's a common symbol to draw on for this kind of genre, but the UPS similarity is striking. The US military has used black and gold in their advertising (the idea of medals and prestige etc.), but this seems too close to UPS to have been an accident. That's the kind of thing designers are specifically paid to notice and adapt. I'd almost guarantee at some point in the process, someone made the connection. Don't know where it happened (could have been the designers intentionally using it as a base or someone catching it later and saying "oh well, it still looks cools and works for UPS", but it WAS noticed and passed someone's muster. Maybe theyll even try some corss marketting with UPS... It wouldn't be the first time companies tried to tie product placement with a toyline/movie.
