Gi Joe: Action Pals for Adventure

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My first action figure love was the GI Joe Adventure team, truly the gateway experience for a pretty happy childhood. No matter how many times I see the art on those wonderful painted boxes, I feel five years old. I seriously hope that never fades.

Here are some fun links to explore on the site:




1975 GI Joe Catalog





German Action Team Catalog





And another one, now with ladies!



1974 Adventure Team Newsletter

For more Fashion Mockery and 70's toy love visit us at Plaid Stallions.com


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[rykerw1701]

Some great stuff here. I didn't know about the German pieces. About once every year or so I get fired about about vintage GI Joe and pick up a new piece. He was the first toy I really remember playing with, even before Mego.

Here's a great link to a site about Joe I got from a forum member last year: http://www.vintage3djoes.com/

[Mikey]

As a kid in the 70's I can't remember ever seeing or having the fuzzhead+beardless Man of Action

Was he pretty uncommon ?

[SpaceCrawler]

The Man Of Action (the name of the fuzzhead with no beard) wasn't uncommon. But probably outnumbered by the bearded guys.

Sean

[HardyGirl]

To me the Adventure Team is the definitive GIJoe. I never owned any as a kid (but I have lots of them now), but my cousins (mostly boys) did. I know 2 of them, Kurt and Everett, loved playing w/ their Air Adventurer and Sea Adventurer in their backyard when I visited them in Southern CA. And also as a child, those were the commercials I saw on TV while watching cartoons after school.

[SainthoodDenied]

I was born in 71 so I got in on the last of the Adventure Team guys as a kid, the muscle body version and Eagle Eye Joe. I remember buy the carded Photo Recon set of the rack at a Ben Franklins store that was in town when I was a kid before there was a wal-mart or kmart around.

[jwyblejr]

I've been looking at some of the parts on Ebay and noticed how some of the items look the same as some you'd find in Action Jackson sets,like the one piece looks pretty much close to the Fire Rescue Pack. I wonder who copied who?

[Earth 2 Chris]

Sorry I missed out on these. Just a few years too young! I had some friends who told me of their older brother's "big GI Joes"! I assumed there was big Duke, Snake-Eyes, etc.

Chris

[Agent4125]

I had some of the Action Team figures and outfits.
Got them in 1979 or 1980 when they where discontinued and
our Aldi supermarket sold a lot of the remaining stock for very low prices.

At that time I was a big Star Wars fan. But I only had 3 of the large size Kenner figures
so that the Action Team guys and girls had to become Star Wars characters most of the time.
The bearded guy in the orange outfit became a rebel pilot, the other guy was Han Solo
and the blonde girl played the part of Princess Leia (without her hair buns ).

I really liked studying the Action Team catalogs. What I didn't understood back then was
why the figures looked different in some of the catalog pics. My Action Team figures had
the gripping hands but in the catalog pics there were figures with hard hands.
Back then I didn't know that there had been earlier versions of the figures with
different bodies, different hands etc.

[PNGwynne]

Oh, that's a lovely ad. I was all about Mego, SMDM, and then (shudder!) Star Wars as a kid, but I've grown to love collecting 12" GI Joe as an adult.

[SpaceCrawler]

Sorry I missed out on these. Just a few years too young! I had some friends who told me of their older brother's "big GI Joes"! I assumed there was big Duke, Snake-Eyes, etc.

Chris

Those characters were never part of the GI Joe line until the 3 inch days (and that GI Joe line has nothing to do with the earlier 12 inch Joe line). Prior to 1976 GI Joe was simply a 12 inch nameless action figure. From 64-69 he had molded hair and hard hands, mostly military accessories (though the last couple of years included mostly "adventure" stuff as anti-war feelings became more prevalent in the US). In 1970 the Adventure Team was born with the fuzz heads. Later came the Kung Fu grip hands. In 75-76 they introduced the muscle body Joe to cut costs and try to re-energize the line. That failed and they ceased US production. Towards the end they also introduced some odd things, like Bullet Man and earlier Mike Power (a 6 Million Dollar Man rip off). Those were the only named figures in the original 12 inch line.

Duke and all that garbage came only with the entirely unrelated 3 & 3/4 inch line of toys. Hasbro, out of their eternal laziness with handling the GI Joe brand, just reused the name. The name was the only relation between the 12 inch Joes and the later little Joes.

Sean

[toys2cool]

my first ever joe was a fuzzy kung fu grip

[El Hombre Nuclear]

I had some of the Action Team figures and outfits.
Got them in 1979 or 1980 when they where discontinued and
our Aldi supermarket sold a lot of the remaining stock for very low prices.

At that time I was a big Star Wars fan. But I only had 3 of the large size Kenner figures
so that the Action Team guys and girls had to become Star Wars characters most of the time.
The bearded guy in the orange outfit became a rebel pilot, the other guy was Han Solo
and the blonde girl played the part of Princess Leia (without her hair buns ).

I really liked studying the Action Team catalogs. What I didn't understood back then was
why the figures looked different in some of the catalog pics. My Action Team figures had
the gripping hands but in the catalog pics there were figures with hard hands.
Back then I didn't know that there had been earlier versions of the figures with
different bodies, different hands etc.

That's funny, because it seems that we had similar experiences with these guys. I actually just posted this earlier today as a comment on this entry over on the PS blog, but after reading your post, I thought I'd put it up here, too:

"The funny thing is that, at least where I grew up, the late-period Adventure Team stuff (amongst many other mid 70s toy holdovers) was still around throughout that whole Star Wars-dominated "GI Joe interregnum" of the late 70s/very early 80s. Those cool orange boxes were sitting around everywhere at toy stores, and one of my fondest childhood toy memories is circa 1978 or 1979, when my next door neighbor's son, who was briefly back from college, saw me playing with my Adventure Team figures in the front yard, and said "Hey, wait a minute, maybe you'll like these!" He then proceeded to run upstairs to his old bedroom closet, and came back down with this big box of toys, which turned out to be nearly the whole set of just about every "first wave" mid/late '60s action figure line you could think of. '60s Joes and clones, Captain Action, etc. I was flabbergasted (can a 5 year old be flabbergasted?). They were quickly integrated into my daily adventures, seeing action until around '82-'83, when the '80s really came on and all my old toy buddies were closeted in favor of the "new hotness" of RAH, MOTU, etc. Sadly, all of that stuff is gone now, but the memories remain... Thanks, Adventure Team!"