Matt Tracker from M.A.S.K. really a G.I. Joe?

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I came across an interesting tidbit.

Supposedly sometime around 2000, a G.I. Joe around the time of Sigma named Matt Tracker. His character profile states that he is a special G.I. Joe command operative that was assigned the task of tracking down Venom and eliminating. Venom was apparently related to Cobra in some way.

In the original M.A.S.K. series, we only really ever learned that Matt Tracker was a well off philanthropist of sorts who had heavy US Military ties.

Here's the link:
http://www.oafe.net/yo/gij25trakker.php

I'll reserve my comments till later, but I am interested what everyone else thinks.
 
M.A.S.K. being an offshoot of G.I. Joe would have been an awesome concept, but since the 80's show was made by DiC, and G.I. Joe was made by Sunbow/Hasbro, there was really no way to cross the two over.

However, since DiC made the post movie G.I. Joe series, that might have been a good place to do such a thing.
 
Also, the M.A.S.K. toys were made by Kenner, which long ago merged into Hasbro, makers of G.I. Joe and Transformers, so that an association might have formed is not that far-fetched.
 
You can also say the same thing for C.O.P.S. as well, even though it's set in the near future, and there have been some hints that some characters in that series are related to some of the Joes.
 
I guess I should have been more clear about this.

During the early 2000s, Hasbro released a line of G.I. Joes that were homages to popular figures in history. Matt Tracker was part of this release and his character card had the information that I brought up in the beginning of the thread.

Thats where this whole concept comes from, its most certainly not something I sat down and said "Gee, this would be a cool idea".

I'm kind of in the camp that sees Vor-Tech and A.T.O.M. as the attempts to remake the series, especially since each of the three series shares creative members.

Neither series managed to garner a steady US following, however, all three series are/were very popular in the UK. I don't think the average cartoon junkie remembers the series Vor-Tech let alone A.T.O.M.

I still really don't know how I feel about this "unraveled link" between G.I. Joe and M.A.S.K. It almost seems forced, but on the other hand it seems like a natural connection.

I guess my biggest stalling point on being able to really buy into this whole idea is a believable explination of how the other M.A.S.K. agents came into the fold.

Matt Tracker, Hondo MacLean and Buddy Hawk have a believable tie in if we were to assume the Matt Tracker to G.I. Joe link was workable. Hondo and Buddy's jobs really revolved around the masquerade of Boulder Hill and the maintence of the base there in. It's believable for me that Matt Tracker might be given Boulder Hill, a G.I. Joe strategic base as his base of operations.

When you build the network beyond that, its harder to believe that people like Bruce Sato, Alex Sector, Dusty Hayes, Gloria Baker and Brad Turner weren't closer to the G.I. Joe operations before becoming M.A.S.K. agents, ESPECIALLY when you take into account their 'day jobs'.

The other thing that still bothers me is the compound that Matt Tracker lives in. The whole place has that "Ambassadorial" feel to it. It almost feels like Matt Tracker was a respected, honest and good hearted Ambassador or Politician who worked towards making a difference through violence when all other methods dried up. The whole characterization around him just doesn't feel right to be a G.I. Joe but its also certainly not a vigilantly, Batman-esque type operation either.

I think in order for this to work, Matt Tracker would almost have to be an X-Military Agent with a small fortune who is directly involved with government sponors of G.I. Joe as a technological and/or policy consoltent.

There's defiantly room for the link between G.I. Joe. and M.A.S.K. IMHO, it would just take some more tweaking then the story laid out.
 
That . . . is probably the best use of corporate synergy I've seen ever. Merging the worlds of G.I. Joe and M.A.S.K., two brands made by two formerly competing companies (Hasbro and Kenner, respectively), actually works. Wonder why they didn't make a promotional push when the figures came out?

Makes a hell of a lot of sense compared to what the Transformers line did with Go-Bots (Leader-One was transformed into a Minicon while the Go-Bots name became the preschool-oriented Transformers line).
 
Actually the REAL Go-bots universe was added to the Transformers Multi-verse. At one point the Go-bots universe started to unravel due to some extradimensionnal disturbance. to save their universe the two faction of Go-bots united to send a team into that universe, disguising them as the same type of Mechanoids that existed in that universe.

Along the way they got punted to Axiom Nexus by accident and got involved into a whole mess of things.
 
I haven't been impressed with a lot of the G.I. Joe figures in recent years, but I should hunt Trakker down because that is one very cool-looking figure. Though man, he sure looks POed. :D (I still have my original Matt Trakker, Miles Mayhem, and Sly Rax figures, too.)
 
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