When Hasbro started the Real American Hero line of G.I.Joe,
they faced the daunting task of trying to win over kids like me who were
hardcore Star Wars collectors. Back
then, when it came to 3¾ action figures, Star Wars, was king. But right out of the gate, Hasbro pretty much
struck gold by implementing 3 things into their toy line that would set G.I.Joe
apart from all the rest, including Star Wars.
The first and second were the most obvious, added
articulation and accessories. These in
themselves were enough to win any kid over, but they decided to go the knockout
punch with FILE CARDS.
Unlike Star Wars, G.I.Joe didn’t have a movie to introduce
us to the numerous characters, so Hasbro made the extra effort to make short
but DETAILED write ups on each character they produced. These file cards had pretty much everything
you needed to know about each character, their real names, place of birth, their
military & educational background, their primary & secondary weapons of
choice and finally just some interesting bits about their personalities.
To put it bluntly, I LOVED THESE CARDS! And I actually
collected them more than the figures themselves! Whenever a friend of mine
would get a new Joe I would ask for their filecard until I had at least three or
four times as many filecards as I had actual figures. I even MADE filecards of the Joes I couldn’t
get my hands on (usually the vehicle drivers) just to be complete.
So what would I do with them? Well…read them of course! But
aside from that, my friends and I formulated a game similar to Trump Cards
(remember those?). Most file cards (the
Joes at least) had similar details. Each
soldier had a “SN number (serial number?)” composed of a first, middle and last
number, as well as a military grade or rank (E-4 to E-7, sergeant, first lieutenant
, general etc) and we would use these details to battle. So we’d split the deck of cards amongst
ourselves and take turns calling out a specific detail from the card we had in
play, like “first number”, and the person with the highest “first number” would
get everyone else’s card in play. And we’d
keep on doing this till one guy had all the cards…so yeah…basically Trump Cards.
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| home made cut & paste! |
I was the designated “keeper of the cards”, a responsibility
I took to heart. In fact one time the
whole deck was confiscated (for no reason…I swear we were playing during a
break time) by a teacher in school, I promptly told my parents about it when I
got home and the next day the teacher gave them back to me, no questions asked. And up to this day, these file cards are one
of the ONLY things left from my childhood toy collections, I just never had the
heart to throw or give them away.
Anyway, to end I’d just like to share a few interesting
facts about these file cards I learned over time.
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| All hail Hama! |
From the first year the 3 ¾ Joe line was released in 1982 till
the line died down sometime in the 90’s, pretty much all the file cards (and we’re
talking hundreds of characters) were written by one guy, Larry Hama, who also
wrote the original Marvel comic run of G.I.Joe which lasted over a hundred
issues as well. He’s considered the “Godfather
of the modern era of G.I.Joe”.
Many of the Joes were named by Hama after family, friends
& comrades who died during the Vietnam War, and others after historical figures,
like the Japanese-American “silent weapons” expert Quick Kick, was named
"MacArthur S. Ito" after U.S. World War II Gen. Douglas MacArthur and
Japanese Lt.-Gen. Takeo Ito (thanks Wikipedia ha ha).
In recognition for his contributions, popular G.I.Joe member
Tunnel Rat is actually modelled after Larry Hama’s likeness.
In choosing the birthplace’s of each Joe, Hama made sure
they came from as many parts of the US as possible. To keep track and to make sure no place was
over or under used, he had a US map displayed in his workplace plotting out
where each Joe was from. At one point Hasbro
realized that Hama was using names of real people for his file cards and they
wanted IN on the action, so for a time, Joes started being named after Hasbro
employees and they ALL came from Rhode Island! (Where Hasbro’s global
headquarters is located)
For the Cobra troopers, since the file card wasn’t actually
about an individual but about the class of trooper, the birthplace was
designated as “various countries”. As a
kid, I actually thought that “Various Countries” was an actual country….called
Various ha ha...
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| I'd like to visit Various Countries one day.... |
