JoeDeclassified.com

Found this awhile ago in an old issue of Starlog I own and thought I'd scan them. I've clipped the Joe bit from the main article and put it after the second page. The rest of the article is pretty interesting as well and talks about Star Wars, Masters of the Universe and Indiana Jones to name a few. It kind of gives a little insight into the action figure market at the time JOE was released.

You'll notice that the report lists the JOEs as being released in 5 1/2 inch format, the same as He-Man.

--Jared

Wanted to add a few things that I should have put in the initial post.

The reason I dug this up today is that I spent probably a good hour or so over Saturday and Sunday talking to Bob Prupris and Kirk Bozigian, who were absolutely gracious and wonderful men. They were kind enough to entertain my questions and give me some fantastic answers.

Kirk gave an excellent presentation on the marketing environment that existed during the GI JOE years especially the 90-94 era during one of the panels. Before he got started I had spoken to he and Bob at the autograph booth and had walked with them from there to the panel hall. I told Kirk that I had often heard the explanation offered for Eco-Warriors as one that was politically motivated; that Hasbro had some sort of politically correct awakening and had consciously decided to move away from violent military toys for moral reasons and had embraced environmentalism as a way to be politically responsible as the environmental movement was gaining ground in the early 90's.

Kirk told me that this was rubbish and stated that the Eco-Warriors had been a way for Hasbro to compete with other lines that were gaining ground over GI JOE. It was a way to shake things up and slam the toys with more playability.

As to the moral move away from violent military toys, Kirk laughed and said, "I don't know where they're getting that, somebody getting sprayed with acid seems pretty violent to me!"

I told him he had a hell of a point!

The above article was written really on the cusp of the "television show as advertisement for a toy line" era that would revolutionize the toy industry. I think it gives some insight as to the climate that the toy industry was in at the birth of JOE.

Thoughts?

A few interesting points for me from reading that:

In 1982:

Annie and Garfield were the expected by the toy industry to be the hottest items back then....Little Orphan Annie & Garfield....

Male Oreinted Action Figures were making a comeback? (I assume they mean that boys were wanting action figures again, but it also reads like female action figures were the most popular there for a while even though it's been long said that female action figures don't sell ) Why not just say that action figures were making a comeback?

Starlog needed fact checkers back then or companies needed better press releases. Here's a few discrepancies I found:

-Beast Man, Most powerful force of evil in the universe; Skeletors, Beastly Dog-soldiers (I think they have the names mixed up and they added an S to the name Skeletor)

-All the action is to take place around Castle Greyskull as He-Man & company try to free the Universe from the evil control exerted by Beast Man (Again? Was there some last minute change in the evil power structure at Mattel I just didn't know about?)

-Hasbro has redesigned & reintroduced G.I. Joe, making his first apperance in six years. Scaled down to the now-popular 5 1/2" hight, (Wait...what? GI Joes are 5 1/2" tall!? OMG I'm a giant! They seem at least a couple of inches shorter in my hand! )

-New from Kenner this year will be action figures based on (what else?) Raiders of the Lost Ark. These figures are only 4 3/4" in height,

I have prepared a visual aid for the last two "intersting bits" I read from Starlog (Please ignore the tape measure behind the figures)




In closing, I'd just like to point out that Lost Treasure is an awesome game!

It's possible that Mattel had Beast Man as the main baddy and not Skeletor then switched. Hasbro had Soundwave as the leader of the Decepticons hence the logo looking like his head.

I had thought about that, but the description of Skeletors as "Beastly Dog-Soldiers" seems to suggest they got the names mixed up. (Unless there's an alternate headsculpt for Skeletor (I'd love to see that ))

The way it's worded makes me think of an army of Beastmen.

Maybe that was the original intent? Instead of a singular character, Beastman was meant to be the "trooper" of Skeletor's legions?

Kind of like how the mutants in Thundercats were a species before becoming singular characters?

Yeah, that's the feeling I'm getting too. It's pretty funny but I wound up with a Warlord comic that has a preview of the (then) upcomming MOTU comic. In it you have Teela who looks close to the same, then there's the Sorceress who looks like the toy version of Teela with the snake armor and everything Guess they made a few last minute changes in that too

I was always under the impression that many of the original MOTU figures were either races or classes and meant to be army-built, from Beast Man and Mer-Man to Stratos and Man-At-Arms.