I was out of GIJoe, I swear.  I have a whole giant bin full of them in my basement,  untouched.  I've gotten all of the guys I'd ever really expect I'd want, short RoboJOE, who's never happening again ever.  It's the only stuff I've ever bought where Maggie questions why the hell I care about these things.  She understands robots.  She understands superheroes.  She even  understands a few Marios and Luigis.  But these assorted little army guys and the chrome-headed dudes they fight, not so much.

And I don't think I could answer her satisfactorily until getting this Battle Platform Attack Kre-O set.  I think it does all the things I like about G.I.Joe better than the regular-sized figures.  A huge part of this is the smaller scale.  A giant collection of Joes and Cobras and their respective vehicles takes up a lot of real estate.  Especially vehicles.  But these little brick dudes and their equally-tiny helicopters and tanks?  These are manageable.  You can have an entire world on a shelf, rather than roughly about 10% of a world.

Another plus is that these guys are more play-friendly.  I don't gotta reinsert a rifle into someone's hand every thirty seconds as I hop him around.  Stuff stays together, even though everyone's made out of stuff you take apart.  It's all less fiddly.

The last piece in the satisfaction component is that it doesn't take itself seriously.  G.I.Joe has been trying to take itself super-seriously for years, and it turns me off.  But these Kre-O guys embrace all of the goofiness.  There are Trouble Bubbles and tiny little jails and everyone looks adorable and oh hey there's cans of JOE COLA in the refrigerator downstairs for reals.

(Anyone else thinks it's kind of weird that the Joe component of this set is armed up to shoot-to-kill while the Cobra component exists to take prisoners?   Mmmm, dissonance.)

I knew that the Joe RAM and the Cobra FANG and  Flight Pod were based on real 1980s Cobra vehicles, but I'd forgotten entirely the original Battle Platform that this Kre-O set is based on.   I thought it was just a fun Kre-O-style playset, but no, it's also all vintage-y.  Wacky.  I looked around to see if the Cobra prison thinger was based on anything, but came up empty.

The set comes with Cobra Commander, two Cobra Troopers (one's an airtrooper), Duke, and Roadblock.  Despite all these guys, plus the four blind-bagged guys I already owned, the playset still feels a little empty.  This is extremely clever of Hasbro, because dammit now I need more blindbagged guys.  My battles need to be a little busier.  Foiled again.

Hey, why does Cobra Commander's Kreon have flesh hands?  Shouldn't he have gloves?