You can’t go wrong with G.I. Joe. No, not the little 4-inch crappy ones with dumb names. The 12-inch mac daddy of toys. The guy who makes Barbie swoon and Ken pee his pants. The guy who wouldn’t bother to fight Cobra Commander because of the latter’s lameness. G.I. Joe ruled when I was a kid.
GI Joe has been around the block. When I was younger, G.I. Joe was going through some great changes: better hair, eagle eyes, and, of course, kung-fu grip. And yes, I was a card-carrying member of the Adventure Team. The Adventure Team moved G.I. Joe away from the military role and more into a cool adventurer, getting into trouble with gorillas, sharks, etc.
G.I. Joe started my fascination with grappling hooks. One of Joe’s accessories was the Life Line Catapult (scroll down that page a bit), with a spring action grappling hook. It was my favorite. Man, just looking at the sets on this page takes me back: I had the Adventure Team Training Tower, Sharks Surprise, the Devil of the Deep set (with a cool Hammerhead shark/stingray), Mike Power’s Secret Mountain Outpost, and, yes, the Skyhawk (basically a kite with room for G.I. Joe: oh man, that was great. Well, until he fell out.
Yes, there were some clunkers. The aforementioned Mike Power was a lame bionic character, to cash in on the Steve Austin craze. And Bulletman was even worse. But the Adventure Team was still one of the greatest toy sets ever. Did I mention the kung-fu grip?
One of the reasons I have such fondness for G.I. Joe is that he was quite involved in the first kiss I ever got from a girl (who wasn’t related to me). In first grade, I brought my G.I. Joe with Arctic Snow Gear (mentally, I always think of it with capital letters) and was quietly minding my own business, having Joe ski down a mound of dirt. Suddenly, one of the girls from my class grabbed Joe and ran off. I was really freaked out and chased her. She was joined by a half-dozen other girls, including a certain Angelina Phillips. Confronting them, I learned their nefarious plan. To get Joe back, I would have to do something that first-grade boys should NEVER have to do: I would have to kiss a girl. In fact, I would have to kiss Angelina Phillips.
I considered my options. I could have informed a teacher, but Angelina’s henchgirl was threatening some severe bodily harm on Joe. I could have attempted to fight, but the odds were against me (and the henchgirl was pretty tall). I could have walked away, leaving Joe to his grizzly fate. Finally, I decided that the only way for me to not lose Joe was to *gulp* pucker up. And so, to regain possession of my beloved G.I. Joe, I kissed Angelina Phillips.
That, my friends, is how much I loved my G.I. Joe.
More G.I. Joe Links
- G.I. Joe Adventure Team
- Adventure Team Headquarters
- Wikipedia’s G.I. Joe page
- A Virtual Walkthrough of the G.I. Joe Adventure Team Headquarters.
- G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club
Other Toys I Wish I Still Had
- #10: SSP Racers
- #9: Hot Wheels and Sizzlers
- #8: Microvision
- #7: The Six Million Dollar Man
- #6: The Star Trek Tracer Gun
- #5: Silver Knight/Gold Knight
- #4: Space: 1999 Eagle Transporter
- #3: Major Matt Mason
This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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February 24th, 2006 at 8:29 pm |