Lara Croft’s G.I. Joe Collaboration Brings Together 50 Years of Pop Culture Tradition
Lara Croft’s G.I. Joe Collaboration Brings Together 50 Years of Pop Culture Tradition
Yet she doesn’t look a day over 29!
One of the more interesting video game-related developments to come out of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con was the unexpected collaboration between Tomb Raider and G.I. Joe. In addition to Lara Croft putting in an appearance in the ongoing G.I. Joe comic series, she’s also putting in an appearance as an action figure in Hasbro’s premium 1/12-scale G.I. Joe Classified line. (No word yet on whether or not whether that collaboration goes both ways—can we expect a Lady Jaye or Baroness skin for Lara in one of her upcoming games?)
While these two properties seem an unlikely pairing, even in our modern crossover-obsessed pop culture world, there’s plenty of precedent for it. Lara has been putting in appearances as a comics star and action figure mainstay since the 1990s—and while those have never included G.I. Joe connections, that’s could be simply because Hasbro and Marvel put the G.I. Joe toy line and comics into retirement shortly before the original Tomb Raider debuted.
The classic Lara look with all her Survival Trilogy tools, tying all the lore together at last.
But right up until that point, the G.I. Joe line had dabbled in plenty of crossovers. Marvel’s G.I. Joe vs. The Transformers was one of the most popular comic miniseries of the 1980s, and helped pave the way for Skybound’s current Energon Universe publications. The Joes crossed over with video games, too: The entire cast of Street Fighter II’s World Warriors—all 12 of them!—shipped as part of the 1993 “Street Fighter 2” G.I. Joe figure spin-off. Then Hasbro went and played both sides of the console wars the following year by licensing Mortal Kombat and launching a figure line of MK characters based on G.I. Joe figure bucks and components. So honestly, there’s no reason to think that Tomb Raider wouldn’t have been next on the crossover list if G.I. Joe had actually been around in 1996, when Lara made her digital debut.
And while it may seem a little strange to team up a doggedly independent explorer and adventurer like Lara with a centralized, hierarchical international military force like G.I. Joe, that has precedent, too. Hasbro launched G.I. Joe as a 1/6-scale army toy in 1964... but by the time the 1970s arrived, popular sentiment toward the military in the U.S. had turned sour. America’s post-WWII entanglements in Korea and Vietnam cost taxpayers enormous amounts of money, sent young men into terrible danger, and offered few benefits to the average American, and anything army-themed fell into disfavor for a decade. So Hasbro let Joe retire from the service and retooled his squad as the Adventure Team, where they ventured into exotic environments, faced threats both nature and supernatural, and sought lost treasures of antiquity. Sound familiar?
Jacqueline Natla figure not included. Source: afact.com
As for the figure? It looks pretty great! As usual for the Classified series, Lara features a great sculpt, plenty of articulation, and a load of alternate accessories. Yes, she comes with a pair of Desert Eagles and gun-grip hands so that you can display her with pistols akimbo, just like in the original game... the version that this figure so excellently depicts. Along with our exclusive physical release of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for Switch 2, it adds up to a nice little commemoration of Lara’s 30th anniversary this October.