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Box-Office Beauties... Almost.
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'It's all because of some robots...'
In terms of the Hasbro family's favorites in the 1980's, Transformers was the favorite
son, G.I.Joe was the other favorite son, and Jem was the little sister...
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So if G.I.Joe and Transformers both got
feature-length movies, why didn't Jem?
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Well, she was actually scheduled to get her
very own feature length, box office released, animated adventure to release right after
G.I. Joe: The Movie. Development of a JEM movie had gotten as far as a working outline
when Hasbro and Sunbow released their big TRANSFORMERS
animated movie and it flopped. It was such a failure that Hasbro and Marvel (another
partner who invested in the film) decided to cut their loses and G.I.
Joe - The Movie (which was originally intended to be released
theatrically) was released as a video and they scrapped the plans for Jem - The Movie). So G.I.Joe released
direct to video in 1987 and much to ever Jem fans heartache, Transformers instantly doomed
the JEM project and nothing further was done.
What It Probably Would Of Been...
The basic story Christy came up with was that a
male-female twins musical duo, Alexander and Alexandra, who called themselves 'The
Mongrels' and possess powerful musical-psychic abilities which they use to no good.
Basically, they'd mesmerize people with these hypnotic abilities and become popular. Team
Jem would find out, do the rockstar/heroes thing, and the day would be saved.
GI Joe - The Movie and Transformers
- The Movie both featured a dramatic cast change and revelations that
changes the course of their respected shows history. In Transformers,
Optimus Prime (the main hero of the series) dies along, the matrix is revealed (kind of
the resting place for Transformers sparks or 'souls'), and the old cast is pretty much
replaced with a new one for the rest of the series. In G.I.Joe,
the origin of COBRA is reveal (formed by mutants of a place called Cobra-La), COBRA
Commander's face and origin reveal, and Duke (the greatest Joe) goes down in action.
So that in mind, Hasbro probably would have
pushed for Jem's secret to be exposed to Rio (for instance, she gets mesmerized and says
it while around him) and the Holograms get completely changed (Kimber goes solo, Shana
goes pro as a designer, and Aja heads to Europe with Craig for good, Stormer leaves the
Misfits) leaving Jem, Raya, and Stormer (with a new 'Holograms' look for her to sell more
dolls). So the Holograms would get a couple of new girls and the Misfits would replace
Stormer with someone new.
Jem could have been longer and definitely
should have been revamped!!!
It should be noted that in that after their
movie releases, both the G.I.Joe and Transformers series were both extended to 100
episodes (both were originally 65 like Jem). Sunbow wanted to continue the Jem series but
Hasbro (who provided most of the money) decided to pull out. Had her movie been released,
Hasbro could have marketed Jem - The Movie dolls and would have teamed with Sunbow to slap
together another season so they could market the dolls and movie.
It should also be noted that both Transformers and G.I.
Joe were revamped in the early nineties. Transformers became Transformers: Beast
Wars/Machines and G.I.Joe became G.I.Joe Extreme. Jem could possibly been revamped as
well, but both revamps flopped (this was the Power Rangers / Ninja Turtles era).
Transformers: Beast Wars/Machines did not gain its popularity until almost two years later
and then ran for about 5 or 6 years. Currently, Transformers has been revamped once again
into Cartoon Network's Transformers Armada/Energon.
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