Hasbro’s Lenny Panzica on Bringing Cobra-La to G.I. Joe Classified: “Snake People, Crab Armor, Let’s Go”

Behold, the Cobra-La Corpus — a comprehensive dissection of G.I. Joe's most insidious adversaries. Considered divisive upon their introduction in 1987's G.I. Joe: The Movie, the consensus around the secretive serpentine sect has evolved. From condemnation to celebration, let this unspooling body of work tell the tale.

I mean, Lenny Panzica — the co-creator and lead designer for G.I. Joe Classified — said it to me himself: "Cobra-La is a sore subject with G.I. Joe."

That's why the Cobra-La Corpus exists — or, rather, will exist in full by Jan. 1, 2026 — because I don't believe Cobra-La to be a sore subject with G.I. Joe fans. Not anymore. The tide has turned. A generational shift has occurred. I've felt it. The fans have felt it. And the people in charge of the G.I. Joe toys, comics, and brand — the toy line's torch-bearers — have felt it.

Nowhere is this more apparent than within Hasbro's G.I. Joe Classified series toy line. Launched in 2020, the franchise entered the world of 1:12 scale figures with a decidedly militaristic mindset. G.I. Joe's more sci-fi/fantasy edges (which have always been part of the brand) were sanded down a bit. The idea that this frounded iteration of Joe would ever reach the neon '90s, let alone Cold Slither and Cobra-La, felt improbable.

Not so. Over the last five years, the Classified Series line has gone on many different missions, venturing deeper into G.I. Joe lore than previously thought possible. And with every new wave, the line strikes new chords within the fandom. The most recent example: Cobra-La. Below, my chat with Lenny Panzica about the journey to Cobra-La — and beyond.

This interview has been edited for clarity

Brett White: The biggest surprise to me is the fact that the G.I. Joe Classified line is at this moment in time where we are getting the Cobra-La characters. It started with Serpentor, then Nemesis Immortal, "Once a Man" Cobra Commander, and now Pythona — and the Royal Guard is coming in 2026. When the Classified line started in 2020, it was very grounded. What has the journey been like to this point, to our glorious Pythona and all of her clam-based weapons?

Lenny Panzica: It's true, she does have a lot of clam-based weapons! It was grounded. We wanted to start Classified out as a new kind of mission for G.I. Joe, and that's where you saw some of the more sci-fi weapons. But the intent was to always get to every version of every character. With every iteration of G.I. Joe, you got a new version of the character, right? From Real American Hero to Sigma 6 to Renegades, so forth and so on. So with Classified, it made sense to do a new version of the characters, but we wanted to ground them a little bit in Real American Hero, because we all know that Real American Hero is the jam.

I always wanted to get to Pythona. I think I drew her the first year of the line. I did the input for her because I wanted to make her. But we saw it as the first initial mission was G.I. Joe taking on a new kind of sci-fi threat with Destro, as you saw in the first promo images. And then we were going to get into the other versions of the characters' costumes, as you saw with the retro cardback [figures]. We've done other versions, Tiger Force Duke and all that sort of thing. G.I. Joe is always going on a mission, so there's so many opportunities to do different versions of every character.

But we did see it slowly getting crazier, kind of like accepting more. I would just say, like, stay tuned for how far we can push it while still staying in the DNA or the essence within the brand. That is really the goal. So it's kind of in phases, essentially. Now Cobra-La is the new threat, and I think you've probably seen in the comic, which is incredible.

Yeah, I wanted to ask about the Skybound of it all, especially after the reveal of the render of the Royal Guard figure. We never saw a Royal Guard unmasked in the 1987 movie, but now we have in Void Rivals. How much do you work with Skybound and Robert Kirkman when you're coming up with these action figures?

We're on different timelines than them. To make a comic book is quicker than it is to make a figure. Figures are around 16 months or so, depending on what you're working on. We talk to them, though, so we're aware of what each other are doing. When we can, we try to cross streams as best as we can, because it is hard to unify it all at the end of the day. But I talk with Josh [Williamson] a lot, actually, the writer for the [G.I. Joe] comic, who's incredible. We kind of are simpatico a little bit with our view of how to take Joe.

But I think in the case of the Royal Guard, specifically, I think we were both looking at the same references. If you remember in the movie, they showed denizens of Cobra-La in the background, they're blue-skinned.

Cobra Commander as a nobleman, yeah.

Yes, 100%. It's a biotech society, so they're an offshoot of Homo sapiens, if you remember, too. So they're not quite human, but they're human cousins. So we wanted to play into that. And then playing into that, and then looking into what was in the cartoon as the root of the lore, I think, is essentially where Josh and I netted out of what they would look like unmasked. So it's kind of like a divergent evolution, one in toy and one in comic.

That's what I love about Classified, the detail and thought that you put into the figures — specifically with Pythona. She has everything she had in the movie, and then she also has those additional new chakram weapons.

I was like, "What are those?" I looked them up, and, oh, those are ancient weapons from the Indian subcontinent, which is where the Himalayas are, which is where Cobra-La is. How do you get to that? That's wild.

Kind of that way. So essentially, we start with the root of whatever the source material is, whatever it is in Classified or on retro cardback, and then we try to dive in deeper to where the original design was and how far we could take it. I love details. I loved them as a kid. I was the kind of kid who would draw a dinosaur, but I add spikes on the back of the head, and I'll draw the scales on there. I always feel like it adds a visual interest, because I always found myself lost in the details of an action figure. And I want to do the same for consumers today, whether they're eight or 80. An action figure, from a sculpture standpoint, should be visually intriguing. There's times you can go overboard, but the happy mix is getting it to work right for everybody, so that you take the viewer, whether you know the character or not, on a visual story, and you can infer who they are and what they do. So that's where the details really come from, because that's how you're breathing life into this piece of plastic

In the case of Pythona, you kind of nailed it. We looked at where they came from. Also, my thought was that Cobra-La has influenced a lot without people knowing. So, like a lot of technologies and weaponry probably came from Cobra-La, but us dumb ape people didn't know how to make it out of the crystals that they made their weapons out of, or the bio-mechanical gear.

Those original Joe figures are packed with so many details, from Ron Rudat's designs to Larry Hama's file cards. They did exactly what you're saying. But Pythona and Big Lob, the other A-list Joe character who never got an action figure in the '80s, they don't have those designs or file cards. They are kind of blank slates. What thought goes into creating Pythona and Big Lob versus another Duke or Cobra Commander, characters with so much more established lore?

I think you have to look at where its source material is. Big Lob and Pythona are from the movie, so that was the source material, but they needed to fit into Classified. So in the case of Pythona, an outfit with bubbles all over didn't really make sense for how intense we were making the details in a 1:12, scale. So when looking at her, I felt like the whole idea of Cobra-La is to do this bio- organic tech, kind of [H.R.] Giger design. And I think people miss that it's Giger inspired because of the colors, but imagine all that stuff in black.

That's what Buzz Dixon said about Cobra-La when I interviewed him. [Interview coming soon to Pop Heist]

Really? That's awesome. I never knew that. That's incredible. So we're probably on the same wave-length, right? So basically, it's like, how would Giger handle a femme fatale ninja from Cobra-La? But then at the same time, how do you not over design her where she doesn't look like Pythona anymore, right? We could have added, like, spinal cords and like all sorts of stuff coming out and going super Giger with it, but it wouldn't have been her cat suit.

So I kept it more to like a membrane, and the membrane protects her, makes her impervious to blades and bullets and that sort of thing, maybe enhances her abilities, helps her jump better and that kind of thing. So it's kind of taking a little bit of what the beauty that was done in the past by all those amazing creatives, and enhancing it with what we've learned today, and then seeing all the other creatives along the way and being inspired by that,

Are there things that you learned from the Serpentor figure and the Nemesis immortal figure that — like, I noticed Pythona's packaging matches the Nemesis Immortal packaging, except Pythona's has that really cool iridescent shimmer. What else have you learned about Classified's take on Cobra-La?

In the case of the packaging, when you have all your Cobra-La packages together, whether they're out of sequence or not number-wise. But like, you know it's a Cobra-La figure.

I try to make it as if I'm doing production design for a movie, and if G.I. Joe was going to be in a movie, what should they look like? So like, if a character had a bright orange, I will burn the orange a little bit, because how would it look screen ready is what I like. I also think about the photographers who shoot a lot of our product. If it's an iridescent or bright orange, it's not going to shoot well, right? But then at the same time, there's so much fidelity on cameras, you've got to get the sculpt, the detail on there right. And then you got to look up, like, if somebody's got a grenade on them, what does a grenade look like today, not from 1982? But in retro cardback, you got to look at what a grenade looked like in 1982.

What has the response been to Pythona?

Very positive. It was one of those figures where we're going out on a limb. Well, Cobra-La in general, right? Because, as you know, I think we're of similar age, Cobra-La is a sore subject with G.I. Joe.

So I was born in '84, and so I first saw the movie when I was four or five.

Me too.

I feel like that was the right age. If you were a little bit older, you'd already accepted G.I. Joe was strictly military. But if you're younger and you don't have that crystallized idea, then you're like, "Oh, snake people! Great!"

That's the beauty of the line. I saw the movie at the same age and this movie blew my mind. I was like, this is the coolest thing in the world. Snake people, crab armor, let's go, right? But then the same time, all the military gear and all the stuff, all the details, all the weapons, like the binoculars on Duke, right? The line has always been epic, whether it's 40 years ago technology, or today's technology, we're trying to maintain that epic aspect of it. But with Cobra-La, I think being able to maintain that epic aspect of it and then ground it a little bit by burning the colors a little bit, really pushing the details to like, if somebody's got chiton armor on, make it intense chiton armor. Like, what would Giger do, right? We're getting positive reaction, and I think we've unified it into the Classified aesthetic, which I think makes it digestible for those who weren't so into it when they were a little older than us when we saw the cartoon, right? So it kind of makes it real. I always think about Classified as like action movie tropes. If it was a badass action movie, how would it look in G.I. Joe Classified is really the goal.

I mean, being my age, you're headed towards a Classified version of my Zartan, which was Ninja Force Zartan, so —

Some things, some things, are golden forever.

This is a very nerdy question, but where are Pythona's long, sharp fingernails? She does have every other accessory from the movie.

She has them on the burning hand and then the acid hand. So there are some stipulations in which we're not allowed to do, so we got to work within. So I worked them into those. But I know what you're talking about, when she cuts through [the door]. After Emily [Bader, Hasbro MarComms & Events for G.I. Joe] saw the movie, she was like, "When are you making that character?" I'm like, "I have inputs for it already. It's just a matter of when you want to put it in the line."

That is so fascinating. I love to know that she was part of the line in year one and we're finally getting to this place.

I remember drawing her right at around the time my daughter was born. I was just drawing in the backyard and I was like, "Pythona would be an awesome Classified figure."

So there's one more character in the Cobra-La pantheon who also has an accessory that we've never seen as a toy. It's Mr. Burgess Meredith's Golobulus. Any chance of seeing him?

Oh, I can't speak to future figures or product, but I mean, like, he was incredible. What a cool character.

I could just talk about G.I. Joe, especially the movie, all day, every day.

It was my entry point as a kid, just G.I. Joe: The Movie. And then from there I saw the mini series. And I just remember watching — and then I think we probably watched it in syndication. It was probably in reruns by the time I was able to understand and remember it. But DIC is when it really came out for me. But I knew as a kid, I was like, "This one's not so good."

What else is in store for us in 2026? If you had to boil G.I. Joe Classified in 2026 down to a word, what word would that be?

I would say, "push." We're pushing it a little bit more. Because you got to. When you start looking at the line, like the '86 line to '89, you can see they pushed it more. But then for me, I caution myself not to go too bright — but not to be afraid to go too bright when it's necessary for the character. Like in the case of Sci-Fi, that acid green color. We took it down a notch, right? Because it really wouldn't work so good on a Classified figure, but that sort of thing. We're going to try to get the characters that people are wanting, We're paying attention. And then how do you iterate them in Classified so it's cohesive with the line, but still fun at the same time, you know what I mean? You don't want to take the fun out of something, right? It's a toy.

It is fun. It's supposed to be fun. And seeing, you know, Ninja Zartan in the pipeline, it makes my heart sing.

It's funny, like, I always say it's gotta be badass, gotta be metal — but metal is also fun. It has dark themes, but like, bands like Gwar, Iron Maiden, there's a gamut. Not everything has to be drab green, right? So how do you mix all that together? The beauty of GI Joe is it's so eclectic. That's what we're trying to do, essentially — leverage the eclectic nature of the line, but keep it cohesive.

The Cobra-La Corpus

• I: Hasbro’s Lenny Panzica on Bringing Cobra-La to G.I. Joe Classified: “Snake People, Crab Armor, Let’s Go”
• II: "Can I Have Pythona?" — How One Email Changed Skybound's Energon Universe
• III: From Cringe to Canon: ‘G.I. Joe’ Writer Buzz Dixon Is Finally at Peace With That Movie
• IV: Super7's Brian Flynn is Creating the G.I. Joes You Always Wanted: "Cobra-La Is Really Important for Us"
• V: "Oh, They DO Hate Cobra-La" — How Tim Seeley Gave G.I. Joe's Devils Their Due
• VI: CLASSIFIED
• VII: The Complete History of Cobra-La (G.I. Joe Day: Feb. 1, 2026)

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