Okay,
so I need to write about GI Joe. And boy, do
I. We
finally recorded the GI Joe episode of Earth Station One last week
and in my eternal enthusiasm for all things Joe I ended up with
hosting duties. I hosted the 2012 Halloween episode
and of course have now hosted two NeedlessThings podcasts.
I’m not concerned about the hosting itself - I just want to make
sure I do justice to the material. So I needed to do some thinkin’.
And you get to watch. And listen because by the time I post this the
podcast will be live:
Side
Note: The third episode of the Needless Things podcast is coming
together and I am so excited about it but don’t want to say
anything yet. Episode 3 is the one that I had in mind before I
recorded episode 1 and before I had really decided that I was
definitely going to do my own podcast.
While
we won’t know for sure until March 28th
(which is a weird release date), I find it hard to believe that a
movie containing all of this:
Could
be anything less than awesomely entertaining. Will it be a classic?
Of course not. Don’t be stupid. It’s a $185 Million Hollywood movie
based on a line of toys from the 1980s. But I thoroughly enjoyed the
first live action Joe movie and I think this one looks even better.
Motorcycle
that turns into rockets.
And
now I have hosted an episode of the big show – Earth Station One –
and was able to talk all about it. So the movie’s delay worked out
for the best for me.
But
I’m actually not here this week to talk about the new movie. At
least, not specifically. I’m here to talk about what went before
and what it all means to me.
I
suppose the first toys I ever really collected were the World’s
Greatest Superheroes from Mego. My first toy memories involve those
awesome, cloth-clothed action figures and their little oven mitt
gloves. But those were on the way out as I was approaching the age
where the toy collecting bug sets in. And in the late 70s the
franchise that had captured the imagination of the world was Star
Wars. That line wasn’t going anywhere. At least, not until 1985
when the latest movie was two years old and the toy line was running
out of marketable ideas.
Despite
the fact that neither of my parents possessed anything remotely
resembling my nerd gene, they were happy to keep me up-to-date with
Star Wars toys during the line’s viable years. I had probably
ninety percent of the 3 ¾” scale figures and vehicles that were
released.
(Image
from YoJoe.com, which is possibly my favorite website ever. Go there
and spend HOURS looking at GI Joe toys.)
In
1982 a new thing caught my eye. I’ll never forget the first time I
saw GI Joe figures in a store. Me and my mom were in a Revco. There
was this wire spinner rack with action figures on it, and the bottom
two rows made me stop in my tracks. Hanging there were a colorful
bunch of blister cards (not that I knew that term at the time) with
soldiers in exciting poses with explosions behind them. The art on
those cards was bright, exciting, and new. I had been looking at Star
Wars cards for as long as I could remember and those were just
photographs of characters from the movies. Something about those
paintings of soldiers seemed much more exciting. Plus, my daddy was a
soldier and that made the idea even cooler.
At
that point, at that first glance, the figures themselves were
secondary. They were green guys stuck in a bubble. It was the dynamic
art on the packaging that caught my eye. I don’t know what sort of
six year old fast-talking I did to convince my mom to buy me my first
GI Joe figures that day, but I went home with Zap, Grunt, and Short-Fuze.
Side
Note: I am well aware of the distinction between “GI Joe” and “GI
Joe: A Real American Hero”, but I was not when I was a kid. To me,
“ARAH” was simply “GI Joe” in the same way that “Masters of
the Universe” was simply “He-Man” and “A New Hope”
was simply “Star Wars”. And not to get off on a whole
different thing, but it bugs the shit out of me when people act pissy
about Episode IV being referred to as A New Hope rather than
Star Wars. That movie has been Star Wars Episode IV: A New
Hope since the day it was released in 1977. This isn’t some
weird continuity thing that George Lucas did retroactively. It’s
always been that way. Just because we called it Star Wars when
we were kids and didn’t know any better doesn’t mean that the man
that created the damned thing should be beholden to our
colloquialism. So shut up about it. Out of all of the Star Wars
things available to complain about, this is not one.
While
the packaging is what sold me on GI Joe, the figures themselves are
what hooked me. By that time I already had gripes with Star Wars
figures. The five points of articulation had really been bothering
me. I was always very big into posing my figures and playing with
them in an active, dynamic way. And when their knees and elbows don’t
bend there’s only so much you can do. Those first GI Joe figures
changed all of that. Not only did their elbows and kneed bend, their
whole lower abdominal area was a wonderland of movement. The waist
could rotate and bend in any direction and the hips could do much the
same. These new-fangled army guys could actually straddle things like
tauntauns and dewbacks without requiring some sort of bizarre hatch.
GI Joe was the first real toy revolution I experienced. True, the
Megos from a few years before possessed even greater articulation,
but Megos could never hold poses. They also didn’t have any
meaningful selection of vehicles. But I’ll get to vehicles in a
minute.
(Also
from YoJoe.com. BEST SITE EVER.)
I
fell in love with those GI Joe figures. Over the next few months I
ended up with the rest of the original Joe team and for Christmas
that year Santa brought me a couple of vehicles – the RAM and the
VAMP. The vehicles were as much of an upgrade over Star Wars as the
figures had been. Where the typical Star Wars vehicle was a singular
color with some paper stickers to apply, these GI Joe vehicles tended
to utilize at least two colors of plastic – olive drab and black –
and included sturdier stickers printed on a clear background. They
also seemed to have tighter details.
That
same Christmas I also received what might be the true landmark (and
key to success) of GI
Joe: A Real American Hero
– some COBRA agents.
(Guess where? YoJoe.com.)
Before
I get into the genius of crating COBRA, I want to address my shift
from Star Wars to GI Joe. My parents – mostly Dad – tried to
maintain a “one toy line at a time” type of thing. There were
exceptions – I had a few He-Man figures, some Transformers, and the
odd Inhumanoid or Visionary here and there – but there was always
one line that was the central portion of my collection and where the
bulk of the toy budget went.
I
very specifically remember having a conversation with Dad about
switching from Star Wars to GI Joe. I was thinking it was in 1982,
but it must have been later because I ended up with a good bit of
Return
of the Jedi
stuff. Anyway, he asked me if I wanted to collect GI Joe instead of
Star Wars and I said that I did. As much as Dad had been great about
supporting my Star Wars collection, this GI Joe would earn a whole
new level of devotion from him. He was in the military and for the
first few years of the A Real American Hero line the toys were firmly
rooted in real-world US military weapons and vehicles. Dad was as
enthusiastic about buying these small replicas of equipment he
actually worked with as I was about playing with them. His excitement
over the motorized MOBAT tank and later the huge and incredibly
detailed Sky Striker is still clear in my mind. Actually, Dad was
very enthusiastic about the Rattler as well. He explained – as he
did with all of the things based in reality – that it was actually
a (plane). I couldn’t believe that VTOL (Vertical Take Off and
Landing) was a real thing. I thought he was messing with me.
We
never got into a real conversation about it, but I knew his
enthusiasm for GI Joe did not extend to COBRA. It seemed like a long
time before I had any of the COBRA figures for my GI Joes to fight. I
think I used some of the more militaristic Star Wars figures for a
while in their absence. But eventually I got some COBRA troops. The
first ones I got were Major Bludd (I never understood why his robot
arm didn’t bend at the elbow – still don’t) and a couple of
COBRA Infantry. I think I used the Rebel Transport from Star Wars to
move them around. If I had to guess, I’d say that Hasbro’s
description of COBRA as a terrorist organization probably put Dad
off. I might ask him about it next time we talk.
This
initial addiction to GI Joe happened without any media tie-in
whatsoever. The cartoon had not aired yet and while the commercials
for the toys were featuring issues of the Marvel comic book, I was
not yet the comic book collector that I would become. They were an
alien and unfamiliar thing to me. That toy line hooked me on its own
purely by virtue of strong design and good play value. And flashy
packaging.
When
I was a kid me and my friends would build massive command bases in
the backyard. I remember one that stretched from the sandbox
underneath my fort all the way up to another sandbox closer to the
house. We had dug trenches and erected walls and used sticks and
twigs to create roofs and landing areas. We pulled the garden hose
back there and dug a huge trench from one sandbox to the other and
lined it with something – I don’t remember what – to hold the
water so that we could have a river. This thing was big enough to
hold the Killer WHALE and deep enough that it went up to mid-calf on
us. We were determined to create a battle zone as good as the ones in
the commercials:
Years
later I found a Destro figure out there while I was mowing the back
area. He was in shockingly good shape.
Oh, and if you liked that commercial, go to YoJoe and check out their amazing collection of old-school Joe commercials!
There
was one year where we got an unusual amount of snow in Georgia. One
of my buddies came over to the house – probably Peyton – and we
brought all of the cold weather Joes outside. We were thrilled to
discover that we could get Snow Job to ski all the way down one of
the hills to the side of the house. My mom would only let us stay
outside for a certain amount of time due to the cold, but we were in
and out all day long. It was such a thrill to have more arctic
terrain than just the white rug upstairs in my playroom!
Thirty-one
years later I am still buying the line. As a matter of fact, just a
couple of years ago I had another outdoor snow adventure thanks to
some heavier-than-normal snowfall. You can check it out here.
Come
back tomorrow for a review of the Big Bad Toy Store Exclusive
Dreadnoks box set, then on Thursday the rest of my little story. On
Friday I’ll take a look at Slaughter’s Marauders!
-Phantom
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