Macho in Miniature
For nearly 40 years, G.I. Joe has been on America's front lines in toy boxes from coast to coast
- By Ed Leibowitz
- Smithsonian magazine, August 2002, Subscribe
Variations on a theme: G.I. Joe became both a kung fu warrior and a fully outfitted firefighter. Hasbro, Inc.
"Don’t you dare call G.I. Joe a doll!" Hasbro toy company president Merrill Hassenfeld charged his sales force at the 1964 Toy Fair, in New York. "If I overhear you talking to a customer about a doll, we’re not shipping any G.I. Joes to you."
G.I. Joe was a doll, of course, but Hassenfeld’s designers had done all they could to make him the toughest, most masculine doll ever produced. Ken, companion of the glamorous and by then already ubiquitous Barbie, sported Malibu shorts and a peaches-and-cream complexion. The inaugural 1964 G.I. Joe, as preserved in the Smithsonian’s social history collection at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), cuts a radically different figure. In his khaki uniform and combat boots, he stands an imposing 11 1/2 inches tall. A battle scar creases his right cheek, and an aluminum dog tag dangles from his neck. Hasbro would furnish him with M-1 rifles, machine guns, bayonets and flamethrowers—a far cry from Barbie’s purses and pearls.
While Barbie had little articulation in her limbs, G.I. Joe debuted as "America’s Moveable Fighting Man," with knees that bent and wrists that pivoted to take better aim at any enemy. "Barbie is pretty stiff, with her feet perpetually deformed into high-heeled shoes," says Barbara Clark Smith, a curator of social history at NMAH. "She’s essentially a model for viewing by others. She relates back to the historic restrictions of women’s physical movement—to corsets and long skirts. While Joe is active, Barbie is pretty inflexible, waiting to be asked to the prom."
G.I. Joe was the concept of Larry Reiner, an executive at the Ideal Toy Company, one of Hasbro’s competitors. But when Ideal balked at Reiner’s soldier-doll—as recounted in Vincent Santelmo’s Don Levine, overcame them. (As for Reiner, he never really cashed in on his idea. He signed for a flat fee, amounting to $35,000 from Hasbro, but neglected to negotiate a royalty agreement that could have earned him tens of millions.)
"When the country’s not at war," Levine told his colleagues, "military toys do very well." Ironically, G.I. Joe came out the same year—1964—that President Lyndon Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin incident to up the ante in Vietnam. Until that war tore the country asunder, G.I. Joe thrived. Sales reached $36.5 million in 1965. That was also the year that Joe gained some black comrades in arms, although the face of the African-American G.I. Joe doll was identical to that of his white counterpart, merely painted brown. Joe got a new mission and a new uniform. The original had been modeled after the infantrymen, sailors, marines and pilots of World War II and Korea—the war of dads and granddads. In 1966, Hasbro outfitted Joe for Vietnam, giving him a green beret, an M-16 and the rocket launcher of U.S. Army Special Forces.
But according to Santelmo, orders for Joe ground to a near halt in the summer of 1968 as the little guy found himself adrift in the same hostile home front as veterans returning from Vietnam. Some consumers even called G.I. Joe’s Americanism into question. Since 1964, G.I. Joe heads had been produced in Hong Kong, then shipped to Hasbro’s U.S. plants to be fastened atop American bodies. His uniforms came from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. One angry mom wrote to Hasbro to say that "the true American soldier is not outfitted with clothes made in Asia." Another, quoted in the New York Times magazine and from the other end of the political spectrum, asked, "If we’re going to have toys to teach our children about war,...why not have a G.I. Joe who bleeds when his body is punctured by shrapnel, or screams when any one of his 21 moveable parts are blown off?"
In 1967, Hasbro had introduced a talking G.I. Joe, and the doll predictably barked battle commands. In reality, however, he was not so resolute, and under continued cultural cross fire, he abandoned the battlefield entirely in 1969. Joe had begun his existence by closeting his identity as a doll; now, he would survive by stowing his uniform and becoming, in effect, the greatest draft dodger in U.S. toy history. Hasbro repackaged Joe as a freelance, civilian adventurer. As Joe drifted into the ’70s, the round "Adventure Team" medallion he wore was more peace sign than dog tag. He sprouted big fuzzy hair and a bushy beard that would never make it past a Marine barber. And he took on all sorts of trendy attributes, from a Bruce Lee-like kung fu grip to Six-Million-Dollar-Man-style bionic limbs.
On his far-flung travels away from battle zones, the AWOL soldier found new foes to fight. He did combat with giant clams, spy sharks, pygmy gorillas, massive spiders, white tigers, boa constrictors, mummies and abominable snowmen—anyone and anything, it seems, but actual U.S. military adversaries. Having conquered the natural and unnatural world, G.I. Joe found new opponents in outer space—"The Intruders," dumpy Neanderthal space aliens who looked like a race of squat Arnold Schwarzeneggers. Against them, Joe risked death by squeezing; a toggle on the Intruders’ back lifted beefy arms to ensnare the man of action in an extraterrestrial bear hug.
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Related topics: Child Entertainment Americana
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Comments (1)
I really liked this article because it took us through the evolution of G.I. Joe as the US took on different economic battles. I, myself, never played with G.I. Joes, but was ways fascinated by them. Very cool article
Posted by Sterling Clegg on September 18,2008 | 07:09 PM