You'll Get A Quick Kick Outta This....

Although it had a rather modest start in 1982 with a handful of figures mostly dressed up in fairly traditional “green” army gear with basic specialties & designations, as the Real American Hero line of G.I.Joe line progressed through the years, things got a lot more creative and colorful really fast. Pretty soon, the Joe ranks were populated by soldiers wearing sports jerseys, bright neon colors & seemingly village people inspired uniforms. And the more basic combat specialties like rangers, commandos & marines were joined by deceptive warfare & hostile environment specialists.

Kronicle of Kronis

Meet Kronis. I know it usually isn't very fair to judge a person based solely on looks…but in this case, I’ll make an exception if you do choose to jump to your own conclusions. Maybe it’s his dark blue skin and scarred body, or his evil looking grin, or maybe it’s because he’s standing next to that one eyed dude and a big furry ape man with spikes. Either way, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Kronis isn't the type of person you’d like to run into on your own in a dark alley late at night.

Let Me Make You Kwinn-To

In 1982, Marvel started publishing the comic “G.I.Joe – A Real American Hero”. This together with the cartoon series that started a year later was part of Hasbro’s master plan of using different media to help promote their product. So really as far as Hasbro was concerned, the comic really had one main purpose, to be a glorified catalogue to feature and help sell more of their toys.

All Fired Up Over A Jet

When I was a kid, my dad went off on numerous business trips out of the country. And when he came home, he would more often than not spoil us silly with all the pasalubongs (gifts) that he would bring back for us. And when he went off on one of his trips in 1985, I had only one thing on my mind for him to get for me…Transformers. I don’t really remember asking him for anything specific…at that point didn’t really have any real Transformer toys, just a solitary Diaclone jet that was meant to be Thundercracker. So really, I would be happy with ANY Transformer he would bring home.