Mr. Weston passed away a couple weeks as per his obituary but any of us born after the late Fifties are very familiar with his most successful creation, GI Joe. With the runaway success of Barbie, all the toy companies (when there many) were looking for a male equivalent. In short, Mr. Weston came up with the hit that fit the bill. One major difference, you couldn’t call Joe a doll, he was an action figure. I always thought it was the knee-jerk reflex title my gender used because “dolls are for girls!” According to Stuff You Should Know, any retailer who called the toy a doll was dropped by Hasbro.
When I was old enough to have Joes in the Seventies, the militarism had been dropped due to the Vietnam War. My GI Joes were modern-day action heroes exploring tombs, fighting giant squids, hang-gliding, riding down zip lines and meeting new friends who were bionic (Atomic Man) or from outer space (Bullet Man). GI Joe of the Seventies didn’t really have a true nemesis until the end, these weird cavemen called the Intruders who sprouted from meteors hitting the earth.
Brian and I never followed the storyline our vehicles and Joes came with. Thanks to Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, they were the adults in the numerous space operas we imagined. We also determined our figures’ ages by height but anyone taller than the Joes, Steve Austin and Maskatron from the Six Million Dollar Man line, were robots. The Mego dudes were pre-teens.
The kids raised on the Eighties reincarnation to compete with Kenner’s Star Wars figures missed out. When Joe was big, the vehicles and accessories were incredible.
- Seawolf: the one-man sub could actually submerge and rise out of the water. We never really tested it. We had lost or broken the key parts before we got a pool. Instead, the sub was a space capsule.
- Skyhawk: the one-man hang glider which worked just like a kite for take off. About 90 percent of the time, when Joe got airborne and you could running, the glider flew. Yup, it flew and banked hard to the left or right and crashed. Mine didn’t last long. My old man accidentally broke it during our move to Springfield.
- The Base: I don’t remember the set’s real title. The highlight was an observation tower and for some reason Joe didn’t take the ladder down, he could hop on the zip line to descend. Pretty cool when it worked. Today, the toy resembles a terrorist training camp.
When the 3 3/4″ action figures debuted in the early Eighties, I was becoming too old for toys (as if there’s such a thing). Brian had a few. The coolest thing he received was their replica of an F-14 Tomcat. Joe also had a new narrative, to fight an international terrorist organization called Cobra. However, I could see through the jingoism and felt Joe had become too pro-Reagan, namely through the cartoons and comic book.
I remain a fan of the original, big version and thanks Mr. Weston for this major contribution to my childhood.