The Super Trooper, Rapid Fire, and the new school.

It was sometime, back in the day, I first bought Rapid Fire.  It was something bought my Grandparents, I think, when we were in a small town drug store.   Back in those days, even in a small town of a population of less than 2000, one could find GIJoe stuff in multiple locations in town, such as that very drug store, or the Ben Franklin, or one of the hardware stores.  I think even the grocery store had some at one point.  But that is neither then or now, just a random point of information.


Rapid Fire came with a video cassette.  At this time in my history, despite the DIC G.I.Joe cartoon still being broadcast, this was huge.   I had never really seen the DIC series, in fact, the only time I would see it was when I was visiting my Grandparents, and it was on early so I often would only catch the very last bit of the show by the time I got up.   And back home, even considering home was a nice sized metropolitan area (combined, well over 100,000 people), no stations were carrying the cartoon.   Revenge of the Pharaohs is my only really long term familiarity with that cartoon series.

And the tape quality was just as fuzzy as the open-air broadcast signal I would see at my Grandparents.

Rapid Fire is a guy who came with what would become one of my favorite GIJoe weapons, the Dial Tone (1986) sub-machine gun.  Despite the neon green, this weapon got passed around.

Rapid Fire was never really a major player in any play or disPlay adventures.  Maybe it was the armor that detracted from me using this figure, I remember wanting to remove it quite a bit.  Or perhaps it was the obvious "franken-joe" aspect that made the figure less appealing..., I mean, I had 1986 Wet-Suit and it was immediately obvious who's arms they were.  And they looked a little...goofy, in some ways.  Zandar's legs weren't as obvious to me, though, even though Zandar was a major player in my play days.

As the days, years, decades went on, Rapid Fire never became a stand-out character or figure.  When I was on a figure/ character kick a few years back, I was heavily considering hunting down the Super Trooper.  But it would have been essentially the same figure, only coloring would be different.  And if you know from reading here, I'm not a huge fan of "twin" figures unless they were meant to be twins.  (Wild card vs. Major Altitude, for example.)


One aspect of both Rapid Fire and Super Trooper that still has me intrigued is the possibility of "other" aspects of a large GIJoe universe.   And these aspects of these characters are totally contained in the file cards, despite each one being something that should be taken with a grain of salt, no doubt.

The "new school" mentioned as these guys origins is what helps launch my imagination.  Super Trooper comes from secret school with no name, a school with an extremely low profile and no chance for advancement.  And he's a West Point officer, as well.  Rapid Fire, while most likely just a re-edit to make a "new character," contains a very similar profile.   The edit makes the secret no-name school a "new school for fast attack maneuvers," however, along with Congressional Medal of Honor recipient requirement.  Of course, he ranks as an officer, too.

Overall I never really found a good fit for Rapid Fire when I had my larger character/ figure collection going on.

I still find the secret  "new school" aspect something that could make for some good fan-made fiction.  Could they be some sort of Rapid Deployment Force?

Perhaps an off-shoot of the Steel Brigade, of the Steel Brigade itself?

How does Super Trooper or Rapid Fire or both fit in your collection?




I'd like to give a shout out here to Joe A Day, too, without them I would have never had known Rapid Fire was available in 1993!