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10-24-2007, 03:51 PM | #1 |
I just want foam gliders.
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Tooele (two-willa), Utah
Posts: 18,727
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Way back in 1982 my mom bought me a little action figure toy called GI Joe. I can remember her coming home from work and handing me a carded Joe. Grunt. I remember his little M-16, his helmet and his tiny backpack.
I can also remember that he was a lot different than my Star Wars figures. He felt loose. I had never had a figure with an O-ring and with that much articulation. (This was before swivel arm battle grip and ball socket heads, haha) The cooler thing was on the back there were tiny pictures of more figures. Over the next few weeks I got more... Scarlett, Snake-Eyes, Breaker, Rock N' Roll and Zap... ah Zap... my first run in with breaking the thumb off a figure's hand. I remember putting his bazooka in his hand and having his thumb break off. I thought that was a dumb thing to have a figure do. My first vehicle was the RAM motorcycle. Again, my mom got it for me. Then for Christmas I got the FLAK, MMS and the Mobat from my grandparents. Holy cow I was in GI Joe heaven. A year later in another state, (we moved a lot) my mom came home from work with three comics... GI Joe #28, Transformers #1 and Machine Man #2. I had no idea they made GI Joe comics (Was I under a rock?) And I had never heard of Transformers, Go-bots yes, but not Transformers. I walked a mile to the local store and found GI Joe issue #27. From that point on, 11 years, I never missed an issue. I had 27-155, and over the years getting the back issues. Special Missions were hard to get, most places didn't stock two Joe titles and I usually only could get one comic at a time with my meager allowance. I can remember the Yearbooks being really hard to get because they were so darned expensive... ($1.50!!! haha) First Joe: 82' Grunt First vehicle: RAM First Joe comic: Marvel #28 Fun times...
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10-24-2007, 03:56 PM | #2 |
Banned
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 529
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I posted this before on another ARAH board, but this is in case you haven't seen it yet.
I'm part of the Star Wars generation. Practically cut my teeth on the '77 figures. And the first Joes I ever saw were from the '82 TV commercial preview for the comic. I was at my friend Paul Perry's house. I was stunned. I had to scrape my jaw off the floor. It was a modern day good vs. evil story that was even more plausible than Star Wars' claim of "this could all be happening. . .right now." Then the commercial for the figures hit shortly thereafter. Wow. They all had names and abilities that our veteran uncles and grandfathers never talked about (there was a time when that was taboo in some circles). My friend Paul got his Joes first, which were Flash and Snake-Eyes. No, they didn't look very realistic, but Paul was a little older than me and kept selling me on it. He'd read the filecards like Orson Welles or a TV announcer. "A Commando is a guy who goes out at night by hisself on covert missions to sabotage stuff! I'll be him! He's wearing black so he won't be detected. You can be Flash, he knows everything about electronics and lasers!" Yeah, I liked lasers and I didn't complain. Paul was the leader of our club and a total military enthusiast; he knew what Uzis and M-16s were. That was a huge deal for a post-Vietnam generation that hadn't heard of The A-Team yet. I thought, "Okay, I don't know much now, but I could learn to play war really well if I lissen to him and read all the filecards." Paul, James, Jeff, myself. . .we didn't want to just play Army. Any idiot could do that with a stick and a bucket on their head. We wanted to know Army so we could play it better. Tell better stories. The filecards were kept safely with the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Mork and Mindy bubblegum cards. That shoebox was CLASSIFIED!!! What was "Project Gamma"?!?? What the hell was an "M-1911A1"?? It sounded HUGE! We didn't have Grunt yet, so we imagined that the more letters and numbers, the bigger the gun) What was a "Ka-Bar", an "or-di-nance", an "artillery azimuth". . .and why was it all important? Then we got issue #2 and #3 of the comic. Tons of info there for the impressionable youngster! I was convinced that this is how it really is! We didn't have a VCR yet, so the comics and files were just as good, if not better than a TV show or movie. That's the wave we rode at the time. And every day we'd watch the toy and comic commercials; praying for a Saturday morning Joe toon that was just like the comic. (well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad). The first 2 Cobra figures hadn't been released in my town yet, and getting enough flag points for the mail-order CC was a ways off (we kept losing them). So the GIJoe team fought, "The Bad Guys" from the Sgt Rock line (still got one of 'em). Then I finally got my first Joe. It was Short Fuse. I didn't know what he did, I just thought the card art looked really complicated and technical. I wanted the most detailed, most unique Joe I could get to add to the realistic play environment with my other friends. Who remembers the "choosing up characters" ritual when they were a kid? We did that. I wanted my own Joe so I wouldn't get stuck with Snake Eyes, who didn't talk. If you were Snake Eyes, you couldn't talk. That was the rule. So I finally had Short Fuse, but I didn't even know what a Mortar was. So I asked my grandmother. She brightened up real quick and said my (step)grandpa Bud might know something about Short Fuse, "Go ask him." Grandpa Bud didn't talk to me much. He watched Price is Right, the soaps, and then he'd go play pool or work on his classic cars. But when I asked him about Short Fuse, that was the first day my grandfather actually talked and interacted with me. He served on a mortar team in WWII (my real grandpa was a sniper). But Grandpa Bud knew all about small field artillery, its assembly, the charts, and why artillery was so important. I was really impressed that I had the only Joe on the block that could shoot over hills and walls and stuff. There would only be a handful of other times my grandfather would talk to me like that before he died of colon cancer. One of those times was when he assembled my first Dragonfly copter. So yeah. To me, my Joes are very much "alive" in a sense (thanks Larry) and that's why I'm so personally attached to the old ARAH. Thanks for reading. -PJ |
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10-24-2007, 04:11 PM | #3 |
Crimson Guard
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Jackson, New Jersey
Posts: 1,012
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I'm going to keep this one short only because I have to go to work right now but my first GIJoe was Steeler with the MOBAT and Clutch with the vamp ZAP, Shortfuse, and Flash That was the best christmas ever.
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10-24-2007, 04:16 PM | #4 |
I just want foam gliders.
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Tooele (two-willa), Utah
Posts: 18,727
|
Great story PJ, were you banned from YoJoe?
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10-24-2007, 04:32 PM | #5 |
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 1,047
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my first figure was Grunt (i'm almost 99% sure) in 1982.
i culdn't believe the knees and elbows bent!! and the fact they had backpack's and helmets and cool army look!! man , those were the days. |
10-24-2007, 04:45 PM | #6 |
Cobra Soldier
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 3
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I got my first Joe in '82 when I was 4 for christmas.
My parents hooked me up with a MOBAT with Steeler. I still have a picture from that christmas with me posing with the box. I grew up with GI Joe and had a lot of the toys from the '82 to '85 lines. I kind of grew out of the toys eventually. Fast forward 25 years, now I have two boys, oldest turned 4 & youngest is 2, and the 25th anniversay line came out. Well, that just brought me back to the line like it was '82 again ! The artwork on the new packages are very close to the originals. The characters are so detailed (and also the same characters were released) and improved on since '82. The feeling came back. Time for me to raise a new generation of Joe fans. GI Joe and Transformers, two of my childhood icons. Now both are reincarnated. It is like I get to grow up again with my two boys, thank you Hasbro. |
10-24-2007, 04:50 PM | #7 |
Banned
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 529
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xerofall
Great story PJ,
Quote:
were you banned from YoJoe?
-PJ |
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10-24-2007, 04:55 PM | #8 |
I just want foam gliders.
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Tooele (two-willa), Utah
Posts: 18,727
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Obiwanjacoby
Thanks!
Yeah. My posts speak for themselves, let's just leave it at that. For me, I consider it a badge of honor. :cool: -PJ Me too... sorry, back on topic... Great stories.
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10-24-2007, 05:04 PM | #9 |
Sunsword = Fabulous!
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Portland, ME
Posts: 3,628
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I'm all about the nostalgia and the RAH storylines as portrayed in the comics. My first joe was an 82 Flash that came in an easter basket that my grandmother gave me. My brother got one with Zap in it and the battle began. It was one of the first things (besides star wars of course) that my older brother and I really agreed on and it sort of brought us closer together in a sense.
I joined the military at 20 and spent some time in Bosnia and there is no doubt in my mind that G.I.JOE had a big influence on my decision to join up. I knew after reading issue #155 of the marvel comic series that I would be a soldier one day. I follow the mythos of g.i.joe for many reasons. Mainly for the escapist entertainment of it all but also collecting the 25th figs. gives e the thrill of the hunt which I've been missing for along time. It's a great hobby and is a great way to blow all my hard earned cash!.......grumble, grumble |
10-24-2007, 05:16 PM | #10 |
Cobra Viper
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 160
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my first joe was short-fuze in 1982, now a decorated and revered veteran of many engagements in hardened environments such as the backyard sand box, the creek behind my old house, the red mud pits my brother and i dug and then filled with water from the house, etc etc.
my dad took me to k mart and they had all these new figures from this 'new' line...gi joes...zap, grunt, snake eyes, flash, breaker, all of them. i was shocked, stunned, overjoyed. i spent along time just looking at the pictures on the cards. action figures that weren't star wars? outrageous! i loved it. i remember debating (to myself) over short fuze, snake eyes, stalker, and breaker. i had absolutley no use for scarlett (then). breaker, yah, ha, but on some level of my 8 year old mind i knew talking to your troops was important but breaker was immediatley disqualified because he had no one to communicate with. i bombarded my dad with questions...what's an e-4, what's nato, what's a warsaw pact, where's the cobra officer? anyway short fuze won out, i think maybe because he had the biggest gun. breaker came second on a trip to lionel playworld a few weeks later. the veteran... 1st comi: giant sized gi joe #1 1st vehicle: the vamp
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Last edited by Knifewerk; 10-24-2007 at 05:27 PM.. |
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