Duke, Snake-Eyes, Roadblock and the rest of the G.I. Joe forces have been fighting for freedom over land and air for three decades now. It's been thirty years since the full-fledged "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero" animated series debuted — and that's also about how long it's been since Cobra landed a solid victory.

Seriously, Cobra is the worst. The organization is loaded up with imbeciles from the bottom level all the way to the top. Colorful, crazy, incredibly amazing imbeciles, sure, but imbeciles all the same. How these people never managed to firmly get one over on the Joes, a rag-tag bunch of individuals themselves, is really beyond comprehension.

For example, here are nine times that Cobra absolutely should have been able to bring G.I. Joe to its knees, but couldn't fully pull it off:

The time they formed the greatest band in the entire world.

Well, second greatest band, I guess. Cold Slither, the heavy metal machine musical act alias of Zartan and his Dreadnoks, had the power to conquer the world with subliminal messages, but they were taken out by The Average Joe Band, the greatest rock and rollers in the land. Their only song was a cover of the G.I. Joe theme song. Pretty sad. In the iTunes age, they would not have stood a chance against Cold Slither. They not gonna play the game no more.

The time they could have made millions at the box office.

Cobra and G.I. Joe once waged war on a movie set, all of it caught on camera and providing the basis for the key action scene in "The G.I. Joe Story," directed by the great George Landsburg. Classic missed opportunity for Cobra, who should have used one of their various disguise masters to pose as a producer, buy up a share of the profits, and reap enough box office revenue to buy up the firepower they needed to put the Joes down for good — and also institute Cold Slither as the composers of the movie's OST.

The time they could have been the sexiest people in the world.

Forget the movies. In "Glamour Girls," Cobra gained the power to zap out someone's beauty and zap it onto someone else's face, which means they could have owned all the hotness in the world. Who would actively destroy the hottest people in the world? No one. They could have been invincible. So close.

The time they gave Shipwreck the perfect family.

Except it wasn't an actual family. It was a bunch of synthoids who were designed to draw upon all the things Shipwreck loves in life. Pretty clever stuff! If only the Cobra masterminds realized they had a huge moneymaker on their hands and went all in on designing perfect synthetic families for lonely rich people; they would've earned enough bucks to bury the Joes in that "There's No Place Like Springfield" scratch forever.

The time they almost created the world's most perfect evil ruler.

Serpentor, the jerk who takes over Cobra once Cobra gets sick of Cobra Commander, is a composite of various different historical military leaders, many of them utterly ruthless — folks like Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Rasputin, to name a few. He's also supposed to get some of that sweet Sun Tzu DNA in his system, but Sgt. Slaughter ruins that plan, so Cobra ends up using Slaughter's DNA in Sun Tzu's stead. Not exactly a 1:1, to the point that Serpentor basically emerges as incredibly annoying on top of being evil. If Slaughter hadn't got in the way, Serpentor and Cobra could have been unstoppable. Instead, they just both continued to suck.

The time they almost killed the world with spores.

A huge regime change happens in "G.I. Joe: The Movie," when Golobulous, Pythona and Nemesis Enforcer from the secret society Cobra-La turn Cobra Commander into a literal snake, knock Serpentor down a peg or two, and nearly wipe out the entire planet with mutating spores. It's the end-of-days wrecking crew, the trio of Cobra killers that should have been able to pull off this plan — or, at the very least, not be so weak that Lieutenant Falcon, the Hot Rod of "G.I. Joe," could take them down without relying on anyone outside of Slaughter and Jinx. Pathetic.

The time they stole your dog.

Or your rhino, or your lion, or your locusts, or whatever pet you own. Point is, Cobra once pulled off a plot so absurd that they controlled every single animal in the world, in the episode "Cobra's Creatures." There is actually no reason that G.I. Joe should have been able to stop any organization that controlled all of the world's animals, except for the fact that Cobra is just unbelievably, unbearably inept.

The time Cobra actually, thoroughly defeated G.I. Joe.

In the terrifically creepy two-part episode "Worlds Without End," we're invited to check out an alternate universe where Cobra crushed the Joes and conquered the world. It's basically the worst-case scenario, the disaster dimension, with monuments remodeled in Cobra Commander's image, and lord only knows what happened with Cobra health insurance policies. Their global domination should have been solid, but it was challenged internally by Baroness, so you just know it never worked out. Even when they achieve their ultimate goal, Cobra can't keep it together.

The time a window washer basically destroyed Cobra.

Honestly, this one's not really Cobra's fault. No one can stop the Viper.