G.I. Joe: 40 years and still fighting

By Richard Chin
Knight Ridder News Service

The original prototype G.I. Joe was designed for Hasbro in 1964. Associated Press library photo

G.I. Joe, the father of all action figures, pioneered a new play pattern for boys. He grew into a multigenerational icon that rivals Barbie. He has been a reflection of America's shifting feelings surrounding military conflict, the role of the armed services and the meaning of manly heroism.

"You really can see it as an almost concentrated, isolated indicator of what we can perceive as the American dream as perceived by an 8-year-old boy," said Robert Thompson, a popular-culture scholar at Syracuse University.

In other words, it's a whole lot of cultural baggage for a 12-inch piece of plastic.

But it's not every day that a toy survives long enough to be described as middle-aged. Barbie, Slinky, Etch A Sketch and Hot Wheels are about the same age, but not many other toys are, according to toy consultant Chris Byrne.

"Forty is very old for a toy, especially in contemporary culture," he said.

G.I. Joe was a hit from the start.

After being well received in previews at the annual toy fair in February 1964, G.I. Joe sold out on the first day he reached retailer shelves in New York that June, said Heidi Schreiber, commanding officer of the Minnesota G.I. Joe Collectors Club.

Inspired by the success of Mattel's Barbie, Hasbro thought it could do the same thing for boys: a one-sixth-scale figure with an endless line of accessories, weapons, vehicles and outfits, according to "The Collectible G.I. Joe" by Derryl DePriest (Courage Books, 1999).

But essentially it was a dress-up doll for boys, according to Schreiber, although "at Hasbro, they really didn't want to say the d-word."

Instead, the first G.I. Joes — a soldier, sailor, Marine and pilot — were called "America's moveable fighting man."

A host of articulated joints meant "he could move in ways Ken never could," Schreiber said.

His trademark scar on the right cheek was supposed to be a defense against knock-offs. He was christened by a Hasbro exec who got the idea from a World War II movie, "The Story of G.I. Joe," starring Robert Mitchum.

And at first, G.I. Joe unabashedly celebrated martial virtues.

"G.I. Joe's success in the 1960s was based on the parent-pleasing re-enactment of the adult male world of heroic action aided by realistic military equipment and gadgetry," according to "The Cute and the Cool" by Penn State history professor Gary Cross (Oxford University Press, March 2004), an upcoming book about the role of toys in culture.

"G.I. Joe taught boys to identify with the experiences of fathers (mostly World War II veterans) and their older brothers or uncles (regularly drafted or enlisted into the U.S. armed services)."

Schreiber, 45, of the collectors club in Minnesota, came from a family that didn't believe in gender specific toys and had a military background — her father was a World War II and Korean War veteran, and her older brother was being sent to Vietnam.

According to Cross, G.I. Joe created a new play pattern for boys. Instead of being armchair generals of toy soldiers — anonymous miniature cannon fodder — G.I. Joe was a sort of alter ego and a role model.

During G.I. Joe's early years, opposition to the Vietnam War hadn't yet caused parents to be ambivalent about war toys. Besides, the first G.I. Joes were more identified with "the good war." They were armed with M-1 Garands, World War II era rifles, not M-16s.

Like cowboy toys, G.I. Joe was a nostalgic tribute to American manly values. G.I. Joe was the everyman. Your dad or Uncle Phil or your older brother might have been G.I. Joe, the average grunt, at one time in their lives.

But by the end of the decade, G.I. Joe's fortunes would shift. Growing opposition to the Vietnam War hurt sales of war toys.

In response, Hasbro morphed G.I. Joe from a military man into an adventurer who battles sharks, hunts white tigers, captures pygmy gorillas, goes deep-sea diving and digs for Egyptian artifacts. He was Indiana Jones before there was an Indiana Jones.

This new generation of Action Team G.I. Joes of the 1970s had fuzzy flocked hair and beards and borrowed a few ideas from TV: kung fu grip and "atomic" limbs a la the "Six Million Dollar Man."

Over time, G.I. Joe departed even further from reality. One version was a sort of superhero called Bulletman. Other G.I. Joes were given alien cavemen as adversaries.

"It just got kind of bizarre," Schreiber said.

The Action Team revitalized sales, but another geopolitical development rocked G.I. Joe by the end of the 1970s. Oil embargoes led to an increase in plastic prices. Hasbro first shrank G.I. Joe to 8 inches, then took him out of domestic production entirely in 1978.

In 1982, he was resurrected in a 3 fl-inch format, a similar size to the hit Star Wars action figures. The smaller G.I. Joes — with new missions such as battling drug dealers and environmental threats—were a smash.

But G.I. Joe started to come back to his roots in the era of two Gulf Wars and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Hasbro started to release 12-inch G.I. Joes again and re-embraced a military theme with figures that depicted real-life characters, such as D-Day troops, Medal of Honor winners, Navajo code talkers and a PT-109 skipper John F. Kennedy.

As patriotic feelings surged and soldiers and firefighters were celebrated as heroes, these new versions of G.I. Joe were less like an Arnold Schwarzenegger superhero and more like the actual guys in the trenches.

"Any time that our country is at war and we know people in active combat, G.I. Joe takes a different meaning," said Kate Roberts, developer of an action figure exhibit now on display at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, Minn.

The collectors market makes up to 40 to 60 percent of action figure sales, according to Byrne, the toy consultant. Hasbro has tapped into that with commemorative reissues of the original 1960s era versions of G.I. Joe, flocked hair 1970s era G.I. Joe and even 1980s era 3 fl-inch G.I. Joe.

Thanks to eBay, there are thousands of baby boomers who have lovingly assembled their own private armies of vintage G.I. Joes. "It's definitely a baby boomer (phenomenon)," said Byrne, the toy consultant.