>>7591363Hasbro is a corporation that desires to please investors. Investors are looking for growth, and the international markets provide lots of that. Having a large pool of characters with different backgrounds helps a toy brand to survive internationally because kids want characters that they could relate to and that resemble them.
G.I. Joe, for a long time, was strongly associated as an American brand. The issue comes when the international popularity of America takes a nosedive (ex. war, economic policies, etc.), that also takes the G.I. Joe brand with it. Hasbro has no desire for the success of their toy brand to be dictated by the actions made by the US government (a factor that they can't control), so they have been trying to distance G.I. Joe from America.
This is nothing new. G.I. Joe has been branded as Action Man in the UK since the 1960s, and during the 1970s, G.I. Joe was rebranded as a group of non-militaristic kung-fu-fighting explorers due to the stigma surrounding the US military after Vietnam.
Anon, you are a fucking idiot. This is capitalism at play here, not a SJW conspiracy theory. Hasbro is casting a net as wide as possible in order to get more market share, profit, and growth.
