COBRA Cares!

Requirements for Joining the 21st Infantry

Entry into the COBRA Cares 21st Infantry requires that you own a COBRA costume and enlist with the group.

1. One must have a high-grade, professional costume of a recognizable character from the television cartoon/comic. If one chooses to expand on their costuming hobby and make other costumes from the G.I. Joe universe, that is fine, with the understanding that some of the events that the group attends requires recognizable, main stream character costumes. Also, we are COBRA, not G.I. Joe. Costumes of named characters are special. Check below.

2. You must like to have fun and be willing to accept criticism positively. We have all "tried" something new that didn't work out with our costumes. Part of our support system is to make suggestions for improvements with costumes. This is meant as constructive criticism and should NEVER be taken personally.

3. You must be willing to be held to high standards when it comes to appearances. Profanity and lewd behavior are not permitted as it reflects on the group.

4. You must remember, at all times, that we are not representatives of Hasbro and never present ourselves as such. We are just fans expressing our love for the G.I. Joe Universe. As such, we do not charge for appearances.

5. You must be at least 18 years of age.

Captain Stratohead's Theory of Costume Design

0: HAVE FUN: Above all the crap you may read below... If you aren't having fun doing it, then don't do it.

1: BELIEVABILITY: I personally believe one should pick a costume they can convincingly pull off. I am 6'4" and weigh 175 lbs. While I would LOVE to do a Spandex Superhero Costume... I am built like a coat rack, and thus it would look doofy. Of course Costuming should be fun, and if you are 3 foot tall weigh 600 lbs, and you REALLY think it would be fun to dress up as Superman, then go for it! But I advise against it.

2: LEVELS of Costuming: What's the Costume For? An office Halloween Party? If that's the case, then your average Plastic Mask/ Polyester Pajamas kid suit is fine. But we built our Cobra Trooper Uniforms with DragonCon as our target audience. From past experience, we knew better than to show up at DragonCon in a half-assed, weak attempt at Costuming.
But I have (as my friends will eye rollingly tell you) HIGH standards... and a fair amount of pride.. .I didn't want to walk out on the floor next to an army of Stormtroopers, who have each spent over 6 months and $1k plus on their costumes in something I spent 2 hours and $20 on.

3: DETAIL DETAIL DETAIL: This goes hand in hand with #2. If you are going to be on display next to the "best" (if not the brightest) then it's going to take a fair amount of attention to the details. Some details don't translate from your favorite action figure into a 1:1 replica worth a crap... other things cannot be ignored. It's a tricky bit to figure out what MUST be on the outfit, what won't work, and what is just too costly, or time consuming to reproduce. That's why I highly recommend...

4: GOOD SOURCE MATERIAL(!): Find as many good images, pictures, figures, statuettes, mini-busts, napkin doodles, tile murals, bas-reliefs, wood etchings etc., etc. of the Character you are working on BEFORE you start to design your costume. Many of the costumes we will end up talking about here at Cobra Cares saw not much more light of day than a 3 3/4" action figure, and a lot of that stuff makes very little sense when figuring out how to fashion it out of fabric and what not. So it is key to do a good design study from as much source material as possible

5: FUNCTIONALITY: I designed our uniforms to be as real world functional as possible. I choose REAL world steel helmets. Our BDU pants are REAL pants...not some elastic banded piece of crap...the pockets even work. Of course, if you want to build say a Tele-Viper outfit...it would be costly, tricky, and downright dangerous to try and rig up a handheld Microwave transmitter. It's all about the tradeoffs.
But as we learned at DragonCon 2002 the following pieces of Costume Functionality are IMPORTANT to consider in Costume Design:

A) How easy is it to go to the bathroom with this thing on?
B) Can you SEE anything with that mask on?
C) It's probably going to be hot in that thing, can you get to your mouth so you can drink plenty of fluids?
D) You are going to be on your feet and doing plenty of walking, are your shoes comfortable?
E) Can you carry your wallet, ID, money, smokes, and/or chewing gum?