T-shirt #113: COBRA

Yes, I’m still having difficulty letting go of my childhood. If you don’t know what this Cobra symbol stands for, you never got a chance to enjoy the best back-to-back hour of cartoons ever (and no, it doesn’t mean I support terrorism). It really didn’t get better than G.I. Joe followed by Transformers…and knowing this was half the battle. Cobra were the “bad guys” who were determined to take over the world, even if it meant not killing ANYONE (if you’re not familiar with the cartoon, there were never any casualties!).

My brothers and I took care of this lack of bloodshed in what we called “having a battle”. We would put every toy and action figure we had in the middle of the floor and start picking. Although these were mostly Star Wars, G.I. Joe, and Cobra things, there were also the random Transformer or He-Man figures. The G.I. Joe H.A.V.O.C. (Heavy Articulated Vehicle Ordinance Carrier, see picture I found on google) was usually one of the first to go because it had the most missiles. After separating all of the troops and vehicles, we then set up our side for a winner-take-all fight to the death. During a turn, you could either move something (vehicle or person) or shoot something. If you were shooting a rocket, you had to take it off the vehicle and throw it across the room towards what you wanted to blow up (one brother or our cousin Matt played the role of “judge” as to the fairness of the throw and how much damage it inflicted. This, of course, led to many arguments as to what was hit, and statements like “There’s NO WAY he survived that!”. Moves and gunfire were exchanged until there was only one victor left standing, and one brother left upset. Sure, we had cartoons and they even made a G.I. Joe live action movie (which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be!), but neither of them compared to the excitement of these battles…

And Bruins-Sabres game 5 tonight....GO B's!!!!!