G.I. JOE’S ADVENTURE TEAM

I’ll never forget when Furry Joe entered my life. Although the exact date escapes me, I’m pretty sure it was a sunny Saturday morning in September of 1970. I was watching the usual cartoon fare (Scooby Doo or Aquaman or some such stuff), when a commercial came on for G.I. Joe. Only this was no G.I. Joe that I had ever seen before. He wasn’t all clean shaven with a smooth, short hairdo, looking like all the dads in my neighborhood. He had bristly real hair AND A BEARD. Whoa! He looked like those cool guys that hung out at the head shop my brother frequented for black light posters and incense. Instead of boring dog tags, he sported a big, round medallion around his neck with the letters “A” and “T” formed into something that looked vaguely like a peace sign. I soon learned that this stood for “Adventure Team” and this mod looking Joe was the Land Adventurer. You could tell he was the Land Adventurer because he was running through overgrown grass that resembled a jungle and fighting with a rubber gorilla.

I can’t truly express in words how much this new G.I. Joe image captured my imagination. As much as I loved the original G.I. Joe, there was something about the armed services that I knew I would never quite grasp. They had lots of rules and a hierarchy that I couldn’t fathom at six years old. And from the way my dad talked about his Army days, it didn’t seem like all that much fun. But now we had the “Adventure Team,” a vaguely defined organization made up of Land Adventurers, Sea Adventurers, and Air Adventurers. They could go anywhere and do anything. They didn’t fight in wars; they flew to the tops of burning buildings to save people, searched for sunken treasure, and battled wild animals in far off jungles. He could do anything and be anyone I wanted him to be. I had to possess this new G.I. Joe.

That afternoon, my friends and I played with our old G.I. Joes while breathlessly talking about this new G. I. Joe we saw on t.v. We were all determined to pester the hell out of our parents so that we would have Furry Joes on Christmas Day. Not all my friends were lucky. One friend, Dave, got a Land Adventurer, but I got the Big Kahuna: Talking Adventure Team Commander. I didn’t even know he existed, but my parents had found him. Although I was put off by the circle of bullet holes in his chest, I was more than compensated by the utterances that emitted from the holes when I pulled the string in the back of his neck. Statements like, “Geronimo!” and “I’ve got a tough assignment for you!” sent waves of excitement through my little body.

Although I had the superior Joe, Dave had the coveted “Secret Mission to Spy Island” set, complete with the black outfit, inflatable raft, detonator, and cool looking grease gun. My parents eventually broke down and got me that set, but only after I had fantasized a million ways of stealing Dave’s beautiful set away from him. By the time I got my own, the excitement had died off.

The following Christmas, I got The Search for the Stolen Idol playset, complete with the big yellow helicopter, a rubber cobra, and golden idol. I also received some other costume sets. Furry Joe and the Adventure Team remained a favorite for several years, but there were new men of action waiting in the wings to dethrone my hero.

G.I. JOE – THE WAR YEARS

As I mentioned in the previous entry, G.I. Joe and I were born in the same year. Consequently, I have no memory of Joe as the hot new toy. He just always seemed to be there. Even in my earliest memories I already owned two or three Joes with various costumes and accessories. Accessories such as canteens, hand grenades, ammo belts, and the like peppered our basement floor. I recall the clunky, wooden footlocker with the diagram stuck inside to show which compartment each accessory was supposed to go into. Of course, I never bothered with that, choosing instead to simply cram the stuff in and force the metal latch shut before my mother screamed for the third time to come to dinner.

I had the basic Army outfit with requisite Colt .45 and M-1 rifle, along with the dress Marine uniform with that funny white rifle. Specialty outfits like the scuba suit, deep sea diving suit, and the Air Force flight suit came along later. There was even a German G.I. Joe with a German uniform. My friends and I tortured that doll mercilessly, punching holes in its chest and smacking it across the room like we were trying to force him to tell us the latest Nazi plans.

That was a strange phenomenon right there. Watching World War II movies and t.v. shows like The Rat Patrol and Combat, I think we kids had a sense that war was this great adventure which all young men would experience like a rite of passage. In my early brain, I thought that there was always a war going on so that young men could go fight in it. My dad was in the Army while there was a war in some place called Korea, and there was this Viet Nam war on the television every night. There had to be wars so the armed services could stay employed. I had no sense of danger, since only the bad guys died, and the U.S. was always the good guys. Such was the naiveté of youth.

No wonder parents groups were pushing the toy companies to get war toys off the market. Although the creation of G.I. Joe was motivated primarily by the success of Barbie, I see G.I. Joe as an interim step toward de-militarizing boys' toys. My brother played with toy guns and rifles, some of which fired real ammo in the form of plastic or rubber bullets. There was no doubt that these toys were making the connection that shooting other humans could be a form of recreation. G.I. Joe took the concept to a slightly more abstract level: action figures killing other action figures. Kids were no longer aiming weapons at each other; one kid’s G.I. Joe aimed a rifle or pistol at another kid’s G.I. Joe. Still, as resistance to the Viet Nam War increased and Americans saw Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinated in their living rooms, war toys were no longer desirable. Hasbro saw the writing on the wall and drastically changed G.I. Joe’s image. This revamp of the G.I. Joe image gave me my first brush with being bowled over by a media blitz for next hot toy.

INTRODUCTION

I was born in 1964, the same year that the original G.I. Joe action figure appeared in toy stores. I take that as a sign. I was definitely part of the action figure generation. While my older, baby-boomer brother was playing with an arsenal of exotic weaponry (Secret Sam, Johnny Seven, Monkey Division, etc.), early Gen-Xers like myself were exposed to the kinder, gentler world of playing with dolls…er, action figures.

I was obsessed with action figures as a child. I tried to own every action figure on the market, but my parents would only indulge my passion so far. All things considered, I think I did pretty well, and I have fond memories of every figure I owned. That’s the reason for creating this blog.

Numerous sites exist which chronicle the history of action figures during the 60s and 70s, and I will reference these sites whenever appropriate. However, I wanted to share my recollections and perceptions of the action figures from my childhood and how these memories shaped my later life. I also want to delve into the art of customizing action figures to create one-of-a-kind figures the toy makers didn’t think of or never got around to making. I am, by no means, a great artist and have to use every ounce of skill and imagination I possess to construct even the most rudimentary of custom figure, but I’ve accumulated quite a bit of knowledge over the past several years and hope to pass along a few tips that others may find useful. By sharing my experiences with customizing action figures, I hope that others might say, “Heck, if this bozo can do it, maybe I can too.”

For example, here is a picture of a current work in progress: The Justice Society of America. Later, I'll provide more specifics about how I created these figures and the new members to be added.

Having grown up with the original, 1/6^th scale G.I. Joe, my natural preference is for action figures that stand about 11 ½ to 12 inches tall. Not only was that the standard size from my early youth, figures of this larger size allow for more detailed costumes and accessories. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some beautifully customized figures using the eight-inch Mego figures (check out The Mego Museum), but my stubby fingers aren’t dexterous enough to work in that scale. (Actually, I did one, but that will come in a later post.)

At any rate, I’m getting ahead of myself. I think it’s best to start at the beginning and discuss the action figures that influenced my early sense of fun and excitement. I’ll begin the next entry in this blog series with the granddaddy of all action figures, G. I. Joe.