To honor it's popular action figures Hasbro and Sunbow Productions gave GI Joe their own cartoon called GI Joe A Real American Hero that debuted in 1985 and featured many of the GI Joe action figures as cartoon characters along with some interesting new characters exclusive to the cartoon going on many different adventures and solving mysteries along the way. GI Joe's cartoon was so popular with GI Joe fans and collectors that GI Joe The Movie was also released as well. You can still catch reruns of the GI Joe cartoon on Discovery Family Channel from time to time but this cartoon is still a favorite with cartoon fans. My cousin and I used to watch the GI Joe cartoon because it was so cool and very exciting too
Bestie

Did you have a GI Joe doll Bestie? I did. They are now collectible. I liked the cartoon, but the action figures were way cooler!
DTK

It premiered in 1983 actually with the 4 part Revenge of Cobra miniseries. The film was never released theatrically but direct to video, they had to go back and edit the film as they had originally planned to kill off Duke- but after seeing what happened when they killed optimus prime in transformers the movie- they altered it to Duke only being injured.