G.I. Joe Adventure Team
My Joes!
And we are back from break. I needed to take a beat and reassess some things. Things are going to a bit different yet familiar. I’ll be writing about my personal experience with media and merchandise, not so much as a review - more like sharing my thoughts. I tried the review thing, and being too positive about everything I post is tiresome to some folks. I pretty much don’t talk about pop-culture things that I don’t find enjoyable in some fashion. The thing is, I am not a professional reviewer and I am going to stop trying to act like one. There are things I dig, and I like to share those things. So here we are.
Now, on to the Adventure Team.
These commercials fueled a young boy's dreams... my dreams. My era of G.I. Joe was all about adventure, sun-soaked afternoons spent battling imaginary foes in the backyard, where the line between reality and play blurred into a kaleidoscope of excitement and thrills. War was something that everybody wished to forget, a somber reminder of the struggles that shaped our world, yet it also ignited a spark of intrigue that drew us in as we navigated the complexities of childhood. This may explain a bit of the "extreme" sports that my generation got into as we grew older, trading in plastic swords for skateboards and bicycles, seeking adrenaline and the euphoric rush that mirrored those thrilling narratives we once savored on our television screens. With each trick and stunt, we chased the same sense of heroism and camaraderie that defined our youthful escapades, carving out our own adventures in a world that constantly beckoned us to explore beyond the known.
This brings us back to the beginning. G.I. Joe was already an established brand when I was born in 1970. It was built on service and military action. The pointless war against the red boogieman in Vietnam changed things; it changed Joe for the better. The Adventure Team went beyond jingoistic brainwashing into the world of exploration. There was weaponry, and some questionable tomb robbing, but the concept of Joe grew in new ways. The oil-embargo of the 1970s saw plastics become more expensive and many toys began shrinking. The Adventure Team was phased out for a Science Fiction fueled version of Joe, called Super-Joe Commander, which were approx. eight inches tall. These couldn’t compete with other toy lines, such as Star Wars, Micronauts, or other Mego 8 inch figs… although I loved mine.
