More proof that war-obsessed children will become war-obsessed adults. If not, perhaps, in the way that you’d think.
I stumbled across the site Yo Joe, which is an awesome database of GI Joe figures from 1982-2004, complete with pics and accessories.
I was a gleeful 80s child, who combined My Little Pony play with GI Joes. Because, c’mon, GI is the perfect action figure to pair with My Little Pony. And they even had female GI Joes.
Turns out, there were a few more female GI Joes than I knew about. Which pisses me off, cause I only knew about 3, and could only ever find two of them:
Scarlett came out with the original `82 batch, which I think is cool – I mean, c’mon, a decent female fighter with an OK name in the first batch! My cousin had a Scarlett, so I usually got to play her (in addition to the plethora of male characters). `83 gave us Cover Girl (never heard of her), which I actually find to be one of the funnier female code names. She was packaged with a tank. Gotta love that. She was followed by Baroness (Cobra intelligence) in `84, who I’d totally fogotten. She was followed by the kick-ass Lady Jaye . I was crazy about getting a Lady Jaye, but every Christmas I searched through the stacks at the toy stores, I never found her. Zarana – who I’d never even heard of until I trolled through the site – came out in `86. And finally, my favorite female GI Joe of all time, Jinx, came out in `87. I think I liked her the most because she was the most easily available at the toy stores. If you were willing to spend twenty minutes going through the huge stacks of GI Joes at Toys R Us, you could usually find her. I know, because I was really depressed when I lost her the first time, and elated when I managed to – miraculously, it seemed – find another one to replace her.
I think these female figures also pleased me because, well… they actually wore sensible clothes.
It makes me wonder: did they not stock the female characters because they really weren’t popular, or did they not stock them because of the women-and-war-are-evil crap and they got some upset parent letters about it?
I’d be curious to know…
