HEY JOE part 1
by Brandon Jerwa
A couple of years ago, I was asked to cover G.I. Joe for a “1980s week” on the Mediasharx website, which has now gone to that great website graveyard in the…uh…sky?
In any event, I’ve had many fans of G.I. Joe - and fans of the late, great 1980s as well - ask me if I could revisit the article…so I went back, dusted it off, made some revisions and updates… and here it is, presented in three parts. Enjoy!
 That I can recall my first exposure to G.I. Joe shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the clarity of the memory occasionally gives me pause. Was there a subliminal awareness of my own destiny that drew me to make that first purchase? I may never know the true answer to that question, but I can say for certain that G.I. Joe captured my imagination 24 years ago and has yet to relinquish its grip.
It was early summer 1982, and I was eight years old, eagerly awaiting our usual Sunday voyage to K-Mart in Manhattan, Kansas. My $5.00 weekly allowance was threatening to spontaneously combust in my pocket as we reached our destination. What would it be today? Statistically speaking, I should have left that K-Mart with two Star Wars figures, but this day was different in a way that I would not completely understand until I reached that blessed end-cap display.
While my mother looked on with vague curiosity, my father attempted to reconcile the bearded giants of his own childhood with this, the Second Coming of the soldier named Joe. This time around, however, no one character would carry the moniker of G.I. JOE; no, these figures represented a team of brave men (and one hot redheaded chick) who stood for freedom, patriotism and the kicking of ass in trouble spots around the world. This was the G.I. JOE of 1982: just less than 4” of green plastic, armed to the teeth and the very model of a Reagan Administration Voodoo doll...er, “action figure.”
My eyes and hands went to work, absorbing as much as I could about these new discoveries before rendering final judgment. The end-cap had obviously been freshly-stocked before our arrival, with 11 different carded figures and 7 boxed vehicles doing their best to gain my favor with their explosion-laden packaging.
 With such a wide selection of characters and accessories, I panicked momentarily before picking up the Laser Trooper code-named Flash and the JUMP Jet Pack unit. My parents assisted the purchase, but such a deal! The figure rang up at $2.99 and the Jet Pack unit a whopping $4.99. Pass the ammo and let the fight for freedom begin!
At this point in the article, you may be wondering if I’m telling you the history of G.I. Joe in the 1980s, or simply the tale of my own love affair with it. From my standpoint, this is the heart of the story: 8-year old walks into store with no frame of reference for what a “G.I. JOE” is; 8-year old makes the purchase; 8-year old comes back again and again, starving for better, faster, MORE!
Take that lone 8-year old in Manhattan, Kansas and imagine now that there are tens of thousands of him all around these United States, walking into K-Mart in the summer of 1982. Will he pass by the newest Luke Skywalker in favor of Short-Fuse, Zap or Stalker? Can the lure of a motorized MOBAT tank wrest those Hot Wheels from the hand of its intended demographic? He who held the answer also held the power of the all-important Boy’s Toys market…and Hasbro wanted that market.
 G.I. Joe –A Real American Hero! The package said it all, and we had our choice of several broadly-drawn archetypes. These were no faceless “green army men” - G.I. Joe figures had superior articulation, a vast array of accessories, and each character had his own personality profile and military specialty. Hawk was the slightly-overlooked commander of the team, leading the military’s best and brightest. If you wanted to blow something up, you’d call in Zap or the MOBAT with Steeler, but covert missions required the delicate touch of Stalker or Scarlett.
No hero is complete without an enemy, and Cobra Command would prove to be the deadliest threat the Joes would ever know! These faceless, vaguely-European-in-an-evil-way terrorists were fanatical in their hatred of people like us, with our striped shirts and peanut butter sandwiches. Their leader was the masked Cobra Commander, a villain so mysterious you could only buy him through the mail!
Nothing says “evil mastermind” like limited availability. We clipped our “Flag Points” and mailed away for the ruthless dictator, terrified that we might miss out. I think we may have been a little terrified by the flip-side as well: if I don’t order him, will he come looking for me?
 The first assortment of Joe figures also provided us with our first look at the character who would rise to be G.I. Joe’s franchise player: a masked man in black named Snake-Eyes. His past was shrouded in mystery…his real name a top-level secret…and he wasn’t even a bad guy!
Snake-Eyes and his lady-love Scarlett weren’t romantically linked at first, at least not according to the presumably-authentic military file card that accompanied each figure. Truly, the most prolific romance in the Joe-verse would not stand fully revealed until…
…G.I. JOE, the Marvel comic book! See, the whole idea of Joe’s rebirth began with
collaboration between Hasbro Toys (the architects of this Toy Soldier revolution) and Marvel Comics several months before my K-Mart trip. Marvel’s Larry Hama tried a couple of different approaches to the early concepts put forth by the suits, and eventually hit the nail on the head by integrating some ideas from an original story of his called “Fury Force.” You guessed it – that’s “Fury” as in “Nick Fury,” the most prolific secret agent in the Marvel Universe.
The end result would herald changes for both the toy and comic industries with its forward-looking approach and absolute onslaught of marketing power. As far as I’m aware, G.I. Joe was the first comic ever to be advertised on television, and hoo-boy, were those ads effective!
I don’t know about you, but no one ever told me to read a comic book; there was no magic fairy slipping into my room at night with a copy of Rom, Spaceknightunder his left wing insisting I open it and get cracking. Comic reading was (and remains) a very instinctive thing for kids, but this was something different entirely. The television pretty well insisted that I drop whatever I was doing immediately and get that comic book!
Just to show they weren’t playing around, Marvel Comics made the first issue of G.I. Joe a big thing in the truest sense of the word: the book itself was much larger than we were used to, dwarfing the size we now consider common for trade paperbacks! The standard spiral rack found in most convenience stores couldn’t hold this monster—I found mine with the coloring books at my local Alco, and snatched it up with glee. It must be special, I decided immediately, or they wouldn’t have made it so freakin’ big.
And so it began. Each year that followed found the G.I. Joe team growing vastly in size and scope, with Cobra doing their best to pick up the slack. By 1985, the line had over 80 figures and the vehicles could fill any bedroom in America. G.I. Joe was seemingly unstoppable, and the marketing was sheer genius. Tying the toys to the comic and forthcoming animated series all in one fell swoop was working and there was no end in sight. By the mid-80s, the official G.I. Joe Fan Club had more members than the state of Colorado had residents.
These first few years gave us more of the characters who would become true icons of the mythology. The Joes had their tough command figures Duke and Flint; the gourmet chef and heavy machine gunner Roadblock; Native American tracker Spirit; wild-card sailor Shipwreck and the gentle but deadly feminine wiles of Cover Girl and Lady Jaye.
Cobra, on the other hand, just kept getting weirder: enemy weapons supplier Destro concealed his face behind a mask of steel; Zartan could change color like a chameleon; Firefly and Major Bludd were ruthless mercenaries and the Ninja Storm Shadow had a mysterious connection to Snake-Eyes, our secretive mute hero. This would be the first of the “Snake-Eyes Connections”; a string of plot-lines tied directly to the man in black that many believe helped deteriorate the franchise in the late 80s.
We’ll talk about that a little bit later in the story…
Questions? Comments? Sacrificial offerings? Write ‘em all down and send immediately to brandonjerwa@gmail.com for immediate consumption… |
