Yo Joe! Catching Up with Hasbro’s G.I. Joe Team on Dragonfly Success, New Reveals, and the Future of the Brand

Calling all veterans and new recruits in the war against Cobra!

It’s an exciting time in the world of G.I. Joe as Hasbro closes out its annual Yo Joe! June celebration with new reveals, planning for Comic-Con International: San Diego (SDCC), and another successful HasLab campaign.

The G.I. Joe Classified Series is expanding, and this week, The Pop Insider caught up with G.I. Joe Product Design Director Lenny Panzica and Brand Manager Emily Bader to de-classify the latest intel from the frontlines.

The Pop Insider: With the back-to-back-to-back HasLab crowdfunding successes of the G.I. Joe Skystriker, Classified Series Cobra H.I.S.S. Tank, and Classified Series G.I. Joe Assault Copter Dragonfly (XH-1), what are some key learnings that you’ve gained to apply to the brand?

Emily Bader: I think that there are a lot of things to unpack. We’ve done three HasLab projects in pretty rapid succession, and I think that we owe all of our HasLab success to both the incredibly dedicated development team here that has been working so hard on these projects and to all of the amazing G.I. Joe fans that are backing and supporting these endeavors. It’s cyclical — like a cat chasing its tail. The design team is really motivated by how excited they know that all the fans are going to be. 

A lot of what motivates us is storytelling. [We ask] how can we continue to contribute to the story and the lore of G.I. Joe through establishing these HasLab projects, and how do the characters that we’re choosing and the way that we’re developing the storylines around the campaign fit in with the overall G.I. Joe story? I think that’s something that fans have been responding really well to. 

Lenny Panzica: I think a lot of it is the upfront research that we’re doing on the total package. We learned a lot from the Skystriker and then we implemented a lot of that on the H.I.S.S. Tank. Then, from the H.I.S.S. Tank, we learned some things about the [crowdfunding] unlocks and what people responded to. We really pay attention to what people are responding to because we want to make them happy. 

[With the Dragonfly] a lot of the unlocks are figures. That was a learning — the total package that you see out of the gate. We tried to make it a total vehicle without hiding anything behind a locked tier. It’s like figuring out how to sweeten and incentivize the deal [for fans], and I think that plays into it a lot from an upfront development standpoint. 

A lot of the stuff you guys are seeing, like the painted models, we usually don’t do that until nine months into development on a traditional product, so we’re really far ahead. We’re learning how to truncate all of that to show the fan community and the consumer a total finished product before we even start the product. And, because we want to keep it as true as possible to what the final product will be, we aim to show a really, really good digital model to get people excited so that we have a successful campaign. We want these things to fund, and we want to get all the unlocks because they’re super fun and we want to make ’em. The fact that Ripcord got unlocked so quickly … I get to make all that flight gear, and I’m so excited about it. 

Bader: We’re on a 16-18 month cycle for HasLab projects. Our cadence is that we do everything digitally, and then usually about two weeks before campaign kickoff, our gray model arrives, so then we get to really see what this thing looks like in real life. For the G.I. Joe campaigns — and we can’t speak for necessarily the other [brand] HasLab campaigns — it’s really important to us that we launch with those full-color digital renders, which, and we always caveat with ‘it’s this or something better’ because we do need to make updates [to the product] as we go, but minimal updates. So we have those full-color digital renders, and then we have that physical gray model so that you can actually imagine how big it will be in your space and how impactful that is. That picture of Lenny looking at the Dragonfly, it’s enormous!

Panzica: But same time, you don’t want to make [a toy] so wide that it won’t fit on a shelf. So part of the learning there too is we have to pick an item that is going to fit in most people’s displays, or on the top of a bookshelf. If we did a bigger vehicle, like a wider one, we would try to design something in there where it would fit on most shelves or fit through the use of a stand or something like that. A lot of stuff has to be considered very early with HasLab projects compared to a normal toy launch.

Like the gray model, a lot of times for a regular vehicle on any toy line, we see a gray model and then we make adjustments to that, and then we go back to the CAD and then we adjust that and we make sure that everything is right. With HasLab, we’re on a a truncated schedule and we need to get it to people. We’re doing it on the fly and while people are watching us. The stakes are high, but we kind of thrive under the pressure — you could say that we make diamonds.

PI: How is the recent buzz around G.I. Joe x Transformers in film and comics impacting the G.I. Joe brand and plans for the future? We’ve seen the G.I. Joe teaser at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and the 3.25-inch scale G.I. Joe x Transformers collaborations have been really well received. — could a 6-inch, Classified Series collab be on the way?

Bader: Great news — we can’t comment on that! But we’re excited about what may or may not happen in the future. We have seen the movie and would love to do something, but we can’t speak to the future products.

During our discussion, the G.I. Joe team clarified that 3.75-inch O-ring action figures are currently “resting” (toy industry speak for: on hold/not happening any time soon). The move comes following a previous announcement that Hasbro was planning to move ahead with additional offerings in the classic scale and form factor inspired by the 1980s G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero line. The change in focus was prompted by behind-the-scenes challenges and factors outside of the team’s control.

However, fans of that scale can look forward to O-ring figures of Zartan and Zarana that will come in the latest Transformers Collaborative set: G.I. Joe x Transformers Soundwave Dreadnok Thunder Machine. The $99.99 set is available for preorder via Hasbro Pulse, Amazon, Entertainment Earth, and select specialty toy retailers with an expected delivery date of Jan. 1, 2024.

Hasbro went BIG for Yo Joe! June with a raft of Classified Series preorders including three new 6-inch scale figures that went live today: Ralph “Nunchuck” Badducci (specialty retailers); Crimson Viper (mass retailers); and Firefly (mass retailers). The news follows nearly a dozen additional Classified Series products, including action figures and vehicles, that went live for preorder earlier this month.

Check out the roster:

Fans backing the Dragonfly should note that Airborne will not be an unlockable figure for the HasLab campaign. The fan-favorite character will appear in the 2024 G.I. Joe Classified Series mainline and was in development more than a year ahead of the Dragonfly project. Backers of the H.I.S.S. Tank will want to be on the lookout for a special 788 Fire Team 3-pack that will be offered as a Hasbro Pulse exclusive to accompany the release of the HasLab vehicle this fall. Additionally, the ripple effect of the pandemic era supply chain issues is still being felt to an extent at retail (see our sister publication, The Toy Book, for more on that) and caused a shift in availability for some products into next year.

The G.I. Joe team is currently working on products for 2025 and teased some big things to come for the brand as a whole. While the team was tight-lipped on specifics, a G.I. Joe panel is planned for next month’s SDCC where additional details could surface, including how G.I. Joe fits into Hasbro’s 100th anniversary celebration.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

Want more G.I. Joe declassified intel? Check out our previous features here, here, and here at The Pop Insider!