This email could be from me — if I’d gone to Middlebury and lived in Japan. But I should note that the best cartoon when it came to not observing the no-kill rule was Johnny Quest. I never really liked it much, but I was always amazed that the henchmen would catch some lead in their chests and die. That was cool. Good times, good times…oh right. The email:

When I was a sophomore at Middlebury (whom am I kidding…it continued through junior year) there were about five of us at my house that would catch a daily double billing of Transformers and GI Joe back to back. Personally, I went in more for Joe than Transformers except I couldn’t take the no-kill rule in Joe. If a Cobra plane was shot down they had to show two Cobra pilots safely gliding to earth in parachutes. We even instituted this awful practice of throwing a bucket of ice water on housemates in the shower. These attacks were known as “Cobra” attacks and were always accompanied by the battle cry “COBRAAAA!!”
Later, when living in Japan there was a group of us that would kill for any American television and that meant Knight Rider followed by the A-Team. A-Team was fantastic, but they had the same no kill rule as GI Joe. It made me long for the days of Magnum PI where he would kill someone at least once a month (I used to muse that Magnum must spend about 3/4’s of his off-camera time in the court room)