G.I. Joe Makes Doll History

I know I haven't posted in a while. The reason is, I've been preparing a major, lengthy post on G.I. Joe. To prepare your palate, I thought I'd start you off with an appetizer. A little history here to those of you who don't know the story of G.I. Joe inside and out (and can't be troubled to head over to Wikipedia):

G.I. Joe was invented not out of some ideological drive to teach kids to love soldiers but mainly to give boys a dolly that their dads would tolerate.  Girls had Barbie dolls they could dress up; boys now had do- I mean ACTION FIGURES.  And yeah, the action figures come with different outfits which the boy can accessorize, but at least there were guns and grenades as part of the ensemble.

After 5 years of tremendous popularity, in 1969 they ran into a problem: Vietnam.  Soldier toys weren't as popular due to the anti-draft movement and that bastard Walter Cronkite.  Young American lads were growing disheartened when they'd come home from school to find their G.I. Joe figures covered in spittle from Hippie Barbie, who was flipping them the bird and shrieking that they were "Betsy-Wetsy-killers".

Hoping to salvage their toy line, Hasbro decided to turn America's fighting man into a vague adventurer.  Instead of fighting the enemies of the USA, he'd contend with serious threats such as avalanches and jungle rot.  Fine, manly adventures, sure.  What it had to do with being a G.I. is a good question, but it still wasn't sissy stuff.  This era is actually the most well-known to the public for several reasons:

1. The debut of the "kung-fu grip."
2. A new technique for flocking hair, leading to the well-known image of G.I. Joe as having curly hair and a thick beard.
3. Talking G.I. Joe.

After a good six-year run, this G.I. Joe line petered out.  For antagonists, the Joe "team" was fighting aliens from outer space.

Then Hasbro tried "Super Joe", a smaller toy line of superpowered G.I. Joe figures.  This was obviously followed by G.I. Joe being a dead product for several years.

G.I. Joe was reinvented in 1982 as "G.I. Joe, a Real American Hero", with the singular being quite inappopriate in that there wasn't a person by that name anymore.  Now G.I. Joe was an American special missions team which fought the terrorist organization known as Cobra.  The team was headed up by Duke (who never used the monicker "G.I. Joe" but is for all intents and purposes the main character) and is a diverse team of men and women with special training and weapons.  For instance, the Sheena Easton-looking chick over there, Lady Jaye (otherwise known as Lady J, or sometimes Lady Ray, or occasionally as Lady Ray Jay but never as Ms. Johnson), had special javelins that she threw...at, you know, tanks and robots.

This has been the G.I. Joe toy line as we have known it for the past quarter century.  The toy figures were Star Wars-sized, allowing for vehicles and playsets. The toy line was boosted with a robust animated series (including several full-length mini-series and an animated movie) and a very long-lived comic book by military-trained writer Larry Hama, who created backstories for all of the characters and gave them a depth usually lacking in the average toy.  Both the animated series and the comic books have been revived in recent years due to the 1980s nostalgia that also brought back He-Man, Transformers, Battlestar Galactica, Night Rider, Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, etc...

As for the toy line, they began issuing anniversary 12" reproductions of the classic G.I. Joe and Adventure Team characters.  The G.I. Joe name was even used for a series honoring real life heroes such as Ernie Pyle (the roving journalist who coined the term, whose own life was told in the movie "The Story of  G.I. Joe") and platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige, one of the greatest heroes of Guadalcanal.

That's all for now.  Next, the history of the media Joe, and then my major article.