A Geek’s Word on ‘G.I. Joe’

When I was a younger I used to pretend I was a top-secret super soldier. I was probably six or seven, but I took my make-believe profession very seriously. At times, situations on the imaginary battlefield got pretty tense. I can vividly remember this one time when, right in my backyard, I was attacked by over a million ninjas. With only my machine gun (broom handle), and my broadsword (another broom handle), I somehow managed to overpower the ninja horde and send every last one of them scrambling for one-way tickets back to Japan. Once the battles ended, I would rest on the porch and wait for my next encounter, at least until dinner was ready.
 
I’m convinced that at least once in every man’s life, he wants to be a soldier and beat up some terrorists. “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”, coming out in the shiny new Ardmore theater on Friday, seems to be trying as hard as it can to appeal to this large demographic, and I can’t say I’m surprised. After all, G.I. Joe has been trying to appeal to the soldier in all of us for over forty years.
 
If you set your Way Back Machine to 1964, you could walk into nearly any general store and purchase the original G.I. Joe. It was created by Hasbro, the second largest toy company in the world, as a way to cash in on the popularity of Barbie, which is owned by their archrival Mattel. Their goal was to create a masculine doll that appealed to boys in the same way that Barbie dolls appealed to girls.

 It was a bold idea, and with a lot of brilliant marketing on Hasbro’s part they pulled it off. For example, it was the first toy to be marketed as an “action figure”, which is just a manlier word for “doll”. For geeks like me, this alone makes G.I. Joe noteworthy. Thanks to Hasbro I can tell my coworkers with pride that the miniature likeness of Batman on my desk is not a doll, it’s an action figure.

After a while, G.I. Joe became less popular and nearly disappeared from the public eye for a decade or two. Then all of a sudden, in 1982, Hasbro relaunched their creation with one of the largest advertising campaigns in history. They changed the scale of the toy to a miniscule 3.75 inches, the same size as the new and exciting “Star Wars” figures that were insanely popular at the time.

They also launched a well-received comic book series, enough TV and magazine ads to take down a thousand Cobra Commandos, and a Saturday morning cartoon that was ridiculously popular. I watched an episode on YouTube the other day, and while it wasn’t anywhere near the best cartoon I’ve ever watched (Batman: The Animated Series), it certainly wasn’t the worst (SpongeBob Squarepants).

In fact, Hasbro’s “saturation marketing” technique worked so well that they’ve been using it ever since on their other toy lines. Perhaps you’ve heard of “Transformers”?

In just a few short days, Hasbro is continuing this ad campaign with the biggest and most effective toy selling device that exists, the major motion picture. The commercials for “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” seem to contain all that is needed to pique any guy’s interest; big explosions, tough guys saving the world with impossible technology, and a menacing evil organization just waiting to be defeated by our heroes. They even hired the famous director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing), a man who is no stranger to making epic movies that are fun to watch.

I plan to go and see it and I think you should too, if you’re into this kind of movie. It won’t win any Oscars, but they’re not trying to win Oscars. They’re trying to sell more G.I. Joes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. This strategy works well for them, and it provides plenty of entertainment for doll-collecting geeks like us.

Did I say dolls? I meant action figures.