GI JOE: ADVENTURE TEAM Undone, concept art and details from the animated series emerge

In 2010, Night Shining came out and launched a new GI Joe animated series titled GI Joe: Adventure Team for children. They hired Evan Gauntt to create the artwork for the camp in hopes of convincing Hasbro to produce their project, which would put a new spin on these GI Joe characters.

Concept art and details from this unrealized series have now appeared online. Night Shining, the company that licensed the GI Joe franchise, shared the details with Seibertron.com and explained:

“An internal proposal made to Hasbro in the mid-2010s. With brand direction issues, the current Night Shining team (working for official licensee GIJoe) made this proposal. It brought together the GI Adventure Team of the 2010s ’70s Joe with the 80s ARAH concept. This concept was presented as a mix of audience appeal from Rescue Bots and Transformers Prime. Basically, what were cartoons like in the 80s!”

This series would have deemphasized armed conflict and targeted children aged 5 to 11. Here are some details on the story and characters that the series would have featured:

The Adventure Team is a group of former military and civilian personnel trained in a multitude of survival tactics for a wide variety of extreme climates. Thanks to experience with numerous environments, they each have their own areas of expertise: land, sea and air. They use these abilities both to explore and discover the secrets remaining in their domains, and to work to conserve, protect, and improve each environment and the world together.

The Adventure Team is led by the Commander and contains agents such as Land Adventurer, Sea Adventurer, Air Adventurer, and The Adventurer. They come from areas all over the world, a truly international force. Other agents like Man of Action, Man of the Sea, Arctic Adventerur, Urban Adventurer, Man of Asia, Foreign Adventerur, Dr. Mike Power, etc. They can be added to strengthen rank and add action figures to product offerings.

The series would have centered on a young Cobra Commander, Destro and Baroness with the future G.I. Joe set to make weekly appearances. It was imagined as a sort of prelude to the 1980s GI Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon. We would also see a young Snake Eyes in action.

The show wouldn’t feature the heroes fighting terrorists, but they would embark on adventures to protect natural wonders. MARS (the company Destro owned) would remain a threat as it sought to “profit and make money by whatever means it sees fit. They have their hands in the oil. deforestation, precious jewels, open-pit mining and occasionally poaching.” The heroes of the story find all this scary, so their mission is to stop them.

It is explained that the head of operations on MARS is a former member of their team, The Lost Adventurer also known as the Man of Evil.

It’s definitely different from the GI Joe cartoon series we grew up with! With My Parents, the slideshow says, “Parents in today’s world who grew up with G.I. Joe but are also concerned about current events may find this new concept refreshing because while the Joes no longer fight terrorists week after week, they I’m still GI Joe at heart.

I mean, I’m the dad who tried to show the original series to my kids (all girls) but obviously it didn’t work. Regardless, parents have the option to show the original series to their kids if they want, but I wouldn’t be opposed to my kids watching it GI Joe: Adventure Team series. Not that they’d be interested now that they’re grown up.

I have my own ideas for a GI Joe reboot, but it’s very different than what it is! Check out the slideshow below and let us know what you think!