I like the Dread Pirate Roberts Idea for Joes as well as the Age less or slow aging. The offspring is a bit of a stretch but could fill some upgrades to characters.

For the core 80's guys i prefer a sliding scale, but if Hasbro were to move forward with new characters I wouldn't mind a new group fighting Cobra or some other threat as long as we get little doses of the classics from time to time. I've always liked the idea of Kamakura becoming the new Snake-Eyes in some future time line, but overall i don't like too many code names repeated, it gets confusing.

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Another idea is related names - my four-yr old couldn't remember Airtight's name and kept calling him "Air-tank",so what the heck, the orig. can be Airtight and the new sculpt can be his new trainee "Airtank" It doesn't directly address the issue at hand, but it helps with version control when you have too many of the same character spanning generations.

Sounds like most of us like to live in that world where they never age, like how Bart Simpson is perpetually stuck in grade school. Although Baroneess at 60 still trying to wear a skin-tight leather suit could be funny