By the way, you’ve got a good article there about the history of action figures. Glad to know I don’t need to write a similar article since you’ve got the bases pretty much covered.

I like your parallels with Barbies. I never quite thought of it that way, but you are very right. G.I. Joes did allow for a nice choice of job or characteristic to them. I’d say the same was somewhat true for Ninja Turtles as well in so much as there were tons of completely original jobs for the Turtles to be in, such as athletes, army personal, astronauts, or rock stars. Now they’re just “Ninja Squad” or “Jungle Team” or “Future Corps” or whatever. How have we let good toys slip so far away from us?

Everything about those 4-inch figures was awesome. Style, paint, articulation, accessories. Not to mention the Joe vehicles were killer too. That era of figures was just a complete package. I always wanted more…more Joes!

I also think that era of GI Joe did for us boys what Barbie did for girls – you could pick the character job you enjoyed. If you wanted to be a medic, you had Lifeline. Wanted to be a firefighter? Barbecue. How about a ninja? Storm shadow. Computer geek? Dial-tone. Wanted to be a girl? Scarlett. It was just all generic Army guys…they each had a strength and personality. Of course, the cartoon helped fuel all that.

Today’s GI Joe’s are just clunkly. Like many action figure lines, the characters appear all steroided up with little to know articulation. It’s more about their size it seems.

What really gets me in a pickle is the “classics” Hasbro is releasing that are throw-back Joes. They market them at us 30-somethings that remember the 80s Joes. They claim these are the original Joes but they are not. They’re not the same molds at all. They’re just cheap knock-offs that use similar coloring/paint. Not to mention it’s $10 for one figure. Please.

I have fond memories of my GI Joes. But these days I’ll stick with collecting Hot Wheels. They’ve barely changed in 40 years and still cost only a dollar.