Like earlier Supermarionation series, "Joe 90" features secret organisations, rescue missions, global security threats and advanced technology: the latter exemplified by the "Jet Air Car", a land-sea-air vehicle invented by Mac as the primary means of transport for him and Joe. Like the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP) in "Stingray", the World Intelligence Network (WIN) is a global organisation referred to by an acronym. In the fictional world of "Joe 90", the Cold War – significant when the series was first broadcast, due to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia – has ended and a world government has been formed. WIN is the successor to the Secret Intelligence Service, the Central Intelligence Agency and the KGB, which all merged to form the new global spy network. Although the first episode sees Joe hi-jack a prototype Russian fighter and bring it to England, this is revealed to be a fiction imagined by Weston to explain the types of espionage that the boy will perform as a WIN agent. This plot twist, which also reveals that Russia and the West are now allies, has been praised by media historian Nicholas J. Cull for its "progressiveness of spirit" and for demonstrating Gerry Anderson's wish to " an end to the Cold War as a given in his work". Cull states that Anderson was motivated by what he viewed as a "duty to the rising generation to avoid perpetuating Cold War stereotypes".