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How I lost the battle
for G.I. Joe

Forty years ago I was (ahem) years old and eagerly awaiting the release of what would be the coolest toy of its time. Every day, I'd go to the store and ask if G.I. Joe had come in yet. For weeks the answer was "not yet."

I focused on G.I. Joe's debut with the type of single-minded concentration normally reserved for the approach of Christmas or the severing of a limb. I gave my dad daily updates. "G.I. Joe's gonna be here soon!" He'd say, "Yeah, great" with the type of overwhelming indifference only parents can muster.

Finally, the day came, and G.I. Joe, about a foot high and wearing a green combat outfit and helmet, appeared in the store windows. I dragged my dad to the store. G.I. Joe was finally here! The old man took one look at the little soldier and said: "That's a doll. Dolls are for girls. You can't have that."

I would have told him that it was not a "doll," but an "action figure," except the term "action figure" had not been thought up yet. The best I could so was say: "It's not a doll, Dad. It's G.I. Joe. G.I. Joe. Fighting man from head to toe."

So, I never got my G.I. Joe. But millions of other boys did during the next 40 years, and they seemed to have turned out all right. At least there is no scientific research to show that G.I. Joe turned all those boys into sissies.

And as G.I. Joe celebrates his 40th anniversary, I can honestly say that I am almost completely over the trauma of not being able to get one. It doesn't help to go on eBay and see that my original 1964 G.I. Joe would be worth hundreds of dollars today. In fact, the 1963 prototype to G.I. Joe just sold for $200,000. I'm not bitter. Angry, sad, demoralized, yes. But not bitter.

LOOKING AT ONE of the original G.I. Joes now, I can see why my dad was a little worried. With his yellow, painted-on hair and combat fatigues, G.I. Joe does look a tad like one of the Village People. But G.I. Joe served this country during those tough pre-don't-ask-don't-tell years, and there has never been any hint that he had any designs on Ken. In fact, G.I. Joe seemed to be a Barbie man all along.

Since 1964 the G.I. Joe franchise exploded into platoons of action figures and associated paraphernalia.

Hawaii became part of G.I. Joe's world in 2001 when a special "Pearl Harbor" line of Joes was released to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the sneak attack.

The figures included a Wheeler Field Army Pilot and a Hickam Field Army Defender. The designers were sensitive enough not to give the figures a "What the hell is that!" kind of expression on their faces.

The toy maker did inexplicably include a Diamond Head Lookout Invasion Alert Figure complete with a two-way radio, microphone and headset over which he presumably was receiving the "All's clear over here" message from the Windward Invasion Alert Figure moments before Japanese Zeros came screaming out of the sky.

Not included in the Pearl Harbor G.I. Joe line was the "Hotel Street Comfort Woman Action Figure," which is too bad. Had such a figure been included in the original 1964 release, maybe Dad would have been a bit more supportive of my interests, if purely for educational reasons.

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