So I was intrigued by the Destro ancestor portrait and original mask designs in the Field Manual and was asking around what episode they came from. I was directed to Skeletons in the Closet and was really surprised by that episode. I'm realizing I've seen (or at least remember) way less of the toon than I thought.

Anyway, I certainly wasn't expecting the witchcraft origin to the Destro mask or the family, and was REALLY surprised when it turned out they had a VERY Lovecraftian pit monster they were sacrificing too. The episode ends with Destro's ancestral home destroyed, but the monster still lurking in the pit.

I LOVED the idea... I couldn't stop thinking about how fun it would be to mix the two Destro origins, and have the arms research and dealings be way the family was trying to prepare for the eventual emergence of whatever lurked in the pit. There would come a time when the sacrifices would no longer keep it at bay, and the only hope was to advance technology along until maybe it would be powerful enough to stop the Old Ones. Maybe it wasn't just a matter of profit for Destro's clan to be involved in multiple sides of a conflict, maybe they were actually pulling strings and manipulating wars to push along military technology to prepare the world for this coming horror.

I thought that was the end of it, the Sunbow cartoons seemed to rarely have any sort of continuity that lasted longer than a two-parter or mini-series before it was forgotten... so I was REALLY surprised when I randomly started up Sins of Our Fathers and saw it STARTS with Cobra Commander trying to communicate with whatever is at the bottom of the pit in the ruins of Destro's ancestral home. And it's a pretty solid episode for Sunbow... goofy in its detail, but a fairly intricate back and forth plot with some great COBRA moments (Scrap-Iron leading the land forces against the giant monster on the beach, Serpentor going head to head with it yelling "Face me if you dare!" or something equally insane).

I couldn't believe there WAS a follow up to Skeletons in the Closet and that I randomly came across it so quickly just skipping around in the series.

But the monster doesn't look the same. I think it probably had to do with the idea of animating an eyeball and tentacles as a giant mobile monster being too much of a headache, but the discrepancy bothered me... until I thought that maybe that WASN'T the eye-ball monster. Maybe that WASN'T what they were communicating with... it was just whatever henchmonster the Big Bad had laying around to send on this mission!

I dunno, I sometimes forget just how fun the toon can be some time, and how wild the writers were willing to get (Worlds Without End).

Had to gush over how much fun I thought these two episodes were, and how great it is to still be discovering or rediscovering parts of GI Joe after all this time.

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I never knew this existed. Is the Sunbow series on Netflix?

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Yes it is William.

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Yup, on Netflix they're under season 1, episode 63 and season 2, episode 28. They're not going to change anyone's mind who doesn't enjoy the cartoon, but I was impressed for what they were.

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the chant that Destro says at the end of the second episode, is a sentence that was played in reverse, but it was kind of a funny sentence, I just can't recall what it was at this time. Something like "why are you listening to this forward" or something goofy like that.

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I saw something years ago that stated that the form of the monster changed depending on the summoner (Cobra Commander vs. Destro's family).



It said that "anyone listening to this backwards for a subliminal message is a real dweeb".

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I like it. Very Ghostbusters/Form of the Destructor.

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This sounds cool, and never ever heard of this.

Skeletons in the Closet was one of the episodes I really remembered from my youth. There was a lot more to it when I saw it as an adult, including some great moments of animation. I love how the camera zooms in through Barbecue's mask to see his eyes when he finds the secret room.

It's a strange episode in the context of GI Joe as military fiction, but it really set the tone of GI Joe as military fantasy that the Sunbow series was great at.

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