Introducing the only member of the Joe team who knows how to save a PDF.
Mainframe did a stint in the antiseptic corridors of Silicon Valley making big bucks and fighting off boredom with a stick.
Lucky for him G.I. Joe were looking for recruits with just his qualifications.
That half-snippet of old filecard leaves out a few key details, namely that he didn't just randomly pick the GI Joe team, he already had military experience: he was Army Airborne, and after leaving the service went to MIT on the GI Bill; he then re-enlisted with the Marines, and that's where he got the Joes' attention. And all that was written specifically because Larry Hama had to make excuses for the way the toy was sculpted: it had the Marine Corps logo on the front of the helmet and an Army Combat Infantryman Badge and Airborne badge on (the wrong side of) the shirt, so putting Mainframe through two different services branches was the only way to justify that. To say nothing of the fact the CIB was only given to those who had been in combat with hostile forces, which is why Larry had to find a way to squeeze Vietnam into the service history, because that would have been the last time he could have earned it.
Mainframe's hook in the cartoon was flirting with Zarana - his first major appearance was in "Computer Complications," where she was infiltrating the Joe base, and the two of them hit it off. After that, their mutual attraction meant they would avoid harming one another if they met on the battlefield. D'awww! The figure is wearing his classic helmet, but it's a separate piece and can be removed to reveal his black hair beneath.
Of course, a removable helmet makes the wearer's head look larger than a molded-on helmet would, something that hits this figure
particularly hard because of the body: to show Mainframe's typical uniform of regular pants and a short-sleeved shirt, Hasbro has reused the Tunnel Rat molds, and that means Mainframe is equally short. Oh, he gets a new shirt with different 1986-inspired details, and a really cool webgear piece that combines sash, belt, and holsters all into one PVC piece that slips over the chest (and unfortunately keeps us from fully appreciating the new chest), but the arms and legs are Tunnel Rat's, and so now we've got a small body with a fairly large head. Like seeing George Clooney in person. The
Mainframe's colorscheme is anything but colorful: dark gray pants, a lighter gray shirt, and black for all the rest - boots, gloves, belts, helmet, etc. There are silver accents on his helmet and the clasp for his belts, as well as on the different pieces of wearable tech he's sculpted with,
like the thing on his chest or the display screen strapped around his left forearm. Reusing Tunnel Rat's kneepads makes more sense than it seems at first, since he's not justa prgrammer, he's an engineer: he wouldn't just be doing his work at a keyboard, he'd be crawling around installing wires and whatnot. Heck, if you look on the back of his belt, you'll see lengths of red and yellow wire, coiled up to be easily accessible when he needs it. His badges are painted silver, and the symbol on his left shoulder is red with a silver outline. For such a plain figure, the paint really is done quite well.
Having a new chest does not change any of the existing Tunnel Rat articulation: swivel/hinge ankles, swivel shins, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, hips that are a balljoint mounted on a hinge, balljointed waist, hinged chest, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows,
swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, balljointed neck, and a barbell head. The webgear is PVC, so it doesn't block the joints very much. Now, obviously you'll have some problems if you want to turn him all the way around at the waist or something, but as far as moving like a human being would move, he's fine. His stats are Computer Technology 4, Telecommunications Device 3, Electrical Engineering 1, and a Mastery level of 4 in... something. It's some symbol that doesn't appear in the list. It's got a circle around it, like the various "(location) Combat" ones do, and a crosshair like the "Marksman" Role, but there's some kind of generic starburst behind it. So what the hell is that supposed to be, Hasbro?
In 1986, Mainframe's accessories didn't include any weapons - he had a holstered gun sculpted on his chest and a knife on his leg, but no actual weapons to carry. The modern one gets both those things, but
they're separate pieces now and actually come out of the webgear and can be held. Unlike the Generation 3 figure, this one gets a backpack, which looks a lot like the original toy's... except everything is backwards. It's got a big fan, a vent, an antenna, two read-outs, but they're all flipped horizontally from where they were in the '80s. Very odd choice, and we wonder what prompted it? A hose connects the backpack to a handheld scanner, just like back in the day, but he's also got some kind of communication device that fits in a pocket on his leg. The backpack, scanner, radio, and the thing he wears on his wrist all have green text readouts printed on them, rather than being plain black plastic. They've even painted the pad on the rear of the backpack, the least-necessary paint app imaginable! While the vintage figure had a big, chunky computer terminal he carried around, the march of technology means this one has a rugged laptop that hinges open and features a pull-out second screen, both covered in red text and graphics. The laptop plugs into the backpack via the hinge,and the scanner fits into a notch on the side.
In addition to all that, the figure also includes an alternate head. This one seems to be more of a modernization of the theme than a
reference to anything: instead of his traditional helmet, this one just has a ballcap and a speaker headset - the cartoon often drew his helmet somewhat like this, but not fully, so all we can assume is that it's meant to offer fans some variety in how we want to portray the character, either "the 80s, but bigger" or "the 80s, but subtly updated." We can dig it. Since the actual Marine Corps logo is unusable right now, neither the helmet nor the hat have it - the symbol on the front is the new version Classified came up with. Three cheers for consistency?
Weirdly, the actual figure is the least appealing thing about this figure: Hasbro went all-out with the paint and the accessories and even the newly sculpted parts, but dropping them onto the Tunnel Rat body seems weird. Like, Tunnel Rat's whole thing is that he's the team's "small" guy, and while it's not like it's unbelievable that there would be other short kings on the Joe team, copying him exactly feels like a mistake. I realize I'm judging a figure based purely on "vibes," here, but it is what it is. If everything else about Classified Mainframe weren't so far above expectations, maybe we wouldn't have noticed this... well, I was going to say "shortcoming," but that seems like an intentional pun, when it's not. And expecting every character to be at least "average" is what leads to the size-creep we hate so much.
-- 03/13/26
Could Mainframe have fixed Zarana, or could she have made him worse? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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