G.I. Joe ~ Hasbro ~ Multi Media Merchandising (M3)

Stryder50

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Feb 8, 2021
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This would fit in a "hobby" or "toy" sub-forum of threads, but closest I see is "Art & Crafts" and some how that didn't sound/look appropriate.

Inspiration for this thread stems from a couple movie reviews I've come across, but before those, think maybe some back history and context might help. I recall that back around 1964-5 when 'Joe' first appeared, some wags to effect 'like Barbie, but for boys'. May have been, but has evolved a bit since then.
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From Wiki (of course), just to start things off ...
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G.I. Joe is an American media franchise and a line of action figures owned and produced by the toy company Hasbro.[3][4] The initial product offering represented four of the branches of the U.S. armed forces with the Action Soldier (U.S. Army), Action Sailor (U.S. Navy), Action Pilot (U.S. Air Force), Action Marine (U.S. Marine Corps) and later on, the Action Nurse. The name is derived from the usage of "G.I. Joe" for the generic U.S. soldier, itself derived from the more general term "G.I.".[5][6][7] The development of G.I. Joe led to the coining of the term "action figure". G.I. Joe's appeal to children has made it an American icon among toys.[8]

The G.I. Joe trademark has been used by Hasbro for several different toy lines, although only two have been successful. The original 12-inch (30 cm) line introduced on February 2, 1964, centered on realistic action figures.[9] In the United Kingdom, this line was licensed to Palitoy and known as Action Man. In 1982 the line was relaunched in a 3.75-inch (9.5 cm) scale complete with vehicles, playsets, and a complex background story involving an ongoing struggle between the G.I. Joe Team and the evil Cobra organization which seeks to take over the Free World through terrorism. As the American line evolved into the Real American Hero series, Action Man also changed, by using the same molds and being renamed as Action Force. Although the members of the G.I. Joe team are not superheroes, they all had expertise in areas such as martial arts, weapons, and explosives.[10]

G.I. Joe was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York, in 2004 and into the Pop Culture Hall of Fame in 2017.
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It is a fairly lengthy and inclusive starter article.
GIJoe_OriginalLineup.jpg
 
From the Wiki, this excerpt on the 'live action', a.k.a. real human actors, movies;
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In 2009 Stephen Sommers directed a big budget Hollywood live-action movie based on G.I. Joe. The first film in what is intended to be a franchise, is G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, stars Channing Tatum as Duke, Ray Park as Snake-Eyes, Christopher Eccleston as Destro, Jonathan Pryce in the role of the President of the United States, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander. Tatum describes the film as being a cross between X-Men, Transformers and Mission Impossible: "It's a huge $170 million movie. It's just a big kid sort of driven film".[36] The movie showcased the main members of G.I. Joe and Cobra. While some characters held true to the cartoon adaptations, others differed markedly in significant respects. As well, the storyline gave a different foundation for the battle between G.I. Joe and Cobra. The movie is based in present time (however at the beginning of the movie it states "In the not too distant future") and shows glimpses of each character's history. In the movie, Cobra sets out to cause destruction using high tech weapons and sell them to ruthless terrorists. The G.I. Joe members join together to stop Cobra from becoming a global terrorist organization.

To promote the film, G.I. Joe: The Invasion of Cobra Island was produced as a viral campaign. The short animated two-parter used stop motion and puppet animation utilizing Hasbro's toy line, and was produced by R.M. Productions Ltd.

The sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation starring Dwayne Johnson as Roadblock was scheduled to be released in June 2012 but was delayed until March 2013.[37] In the film, the Joes are framed as traitors by Zartan, who is still impersonating the President of the United States, and Cobra Commander now has all the world leaders under Cobra's control, with their advanced warheads aimed at innocent populaces around the world. Outnumbered and out gunned, the Joes form a plan with the original G.I. Joe General Joseph Colton to overthrow the Cobra Commander and his allies Zartan, Storm Shadow and Firefly.[38][39]

A new film, Snake Eyes starring Henry Golding, was released in 2021.
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Back during the late 1980s ~1990s when I was single parenting my two sons we had quite the collection of the 3.75" figures and vehicles. Still have most of that in storage, and though nothing in original packaging, I'm led to believe the might still have resale value.

When I visited my oldest son in Lincoln, Nebraska a couple years ago, he showed his collection of current "action figures" in both 3.75" and 12". Most were "Joe's", but many others are from other makers whom go into very authentic uniforms and gear, both modern and back to WWII era.

On Monday I'll be down South for a luncheon with my step-mom for her birthday, but after I may get with my younger son and his boy to go see this latest movie. Thanks to Covid, been nearly two years since we did a movie at the theater together. Youngest son's favorite of the Joe Team was Snake Eyes.

Excerpts from a couple movie reviews;
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'Snake Eyes' is better than expected — thanks to a guy you've never heard of​

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For about an hour, “Snake Eyes,” the latest installment in Hasbro’s "G.I Joe" film franchise, is honestly pretty good. The movie, which opens in theaters on Friday, has “Crazy Rich Asians” leading man Henry Golding as its star, and a shockingly good turn from British actor Andrew Koji. Of the three “Joe” films, this one, directed by Robert Schwentke, is most clearly influenced by the hundreds of issues of "Joe" comic books written by the great Larry Hama, an American writer and cartoonist whose comics draw skillfully on both his Japanese heritage and his experiences as a Vietnam vet.
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Then the movie starts reminding us to buy some toys, and we snap out of it.

Golding plays the nameless hero, a brawling drifter whose nickname Snake Eyes constantly reminds him of the moment his father lost a rigged dice game and was killed in front of him. Eventually, Snake washes up in Los Angeles, where he meets Kenta (Takehiro Hira), who promises him the identity of his father’s murderer in exchange for… a favor. Like most favors in movies of this sort, the cost keeps going up: First Snake must take on a horde of suit-wearing, sword-wielding Yakuza; then he must betray a friend; then he must help Kenta take over the world. It’s a little silly, but it’s also very entertaining. Our hero is, more or less, the bad guy, and the question of when he’s going to finally do the right thing provides an interesting tension throughout the film.

This is a movie about toys, but it is not a kids’ movie. That is, in part, because men my age (39) are the market for G. I. Joe action figures now. We were conditioned to love toys with stories attached: When President Ronald Reagan put conservatives in charge of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the 1980’s, children’s rights groups failed to have the “G. I. Joe: A Real American Hero” (and “Masters of the Universe”) cartoons designated “program-length commercials,” despite the fact that they were made by toy companies. The result was a glut of top-selling action figures like the Joes, Transformers and ThunderCats who also starred in their own cartoons and movies.

The original pitch for "G. I. Joe" is pretty cynical: the Joes are a heroic special ops force that must stop COBRA, a network of terrorist cells, insurgencies, smugglers, and drug dealers centralized under a single, malevolent command, as one character in “Snake Eyes” puts it. (That’s a perfect description of the CIA during the period when the toys were created, by the way.) I got down a box of old toys from my closet recently and let my four-year-old son go through it; I turned my back for a second only to hear the dreaded “Daddy, what’s this?” I looked, and he had a little plastic strand of concertina wire. I put the toys back up.

All this is to say that the original premise of the "Joes" ages pretty badly. But Hama’s scripts breathed a different life into their adventures.
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‘Snake Eyes’: Ninjas, Yakuzas and ‘G.I. Joe’ Origin Stories, Oh My!​

A spin-off involving the series most popular and enigmatic character provides an interesting franchise detour — until it very much doesn’t

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In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Over the next several days, He would create the evening and the day, the light and the dark, the waters and the firmament, the movies and the Military Industrial Complex and various corporate marketing divisions.

On the fourth day, He created Hasbro, a collective maker of toys, and watched as it dreamed up many ideas for figures of action. One was a line of large, burly soldiers of various types, some with beards and some without, all with scars upon their cheeks. Ah, they are like Barbies, but for boys, the Lord thought. They called them all “G.I. Joe.” And you shall know them by the trail of easily swallowable accessories behind them.

After these toys fell out of fashion, these people of Hasbro would consult with those from the land of Marvel, or so the legend said, and together they concocted an idea to do another line of action figures, also with the name G.I. Joe. These would be smaller, and varied, and Real American Heroes, and also include many vehicles and villains and ninjas. This pleased the Lord — He did love Him some ninjas. Comic books and an animated TV series would help spread the Gospel of St. Joseph of the Government Issue far and wide. The toys became very popular, especially a figure known as Snake Eyes. Why this tiny soldier was called that, the Lord could not say; the figure wore a mask that covered his allegedly reptilian peepers. But he wore all black body armor and looked cool, and God saw that he was good.
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Hama did a great job in writing a series that was less than juvenile at a time when comics were in transition to what some would see as more serious form of literature. IMO of course (have the first 100+ in this Marvel run)
 

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