The story of an American fighting man.
The president of the Hasbro toy company wanted to make a splash at the 1964 New York Toy Fair. The question was: Which product to go with? It was a choice between a miniature grocery store . . . and a doll for boys.
Hasbro president Merrill Hassenfeld decided to go with the doll.
Of course no one wanted to call it a doll. What red-blooded American boy would play with dolls? So the design team coined a new phrase for their product, calling it an “action figure,” and put it into production.
That’s how it came about that G.I. Joe reported for duty on February 9, 1964. His body was inspired by a twelve-inch-tall wooden sculptor’s mannequin that could bend at every joint. His face had a scar on the right cheek so that he looked tougher than Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken. (It also made him easier to copyright!)
The U.S. was still mourning President Kennedy’s death, the Beatles were taking the country by storm, and Vietnam was not yet part of the national consciousness. G.I. Joe was the right toy at the right time. Soon an army of Joes began to invade American homes.
Joe was retired in 1978, a victim of disillusionment over Vietnam and the OPEC oil embargo, which sent the price of plastic through the roof. A three-and-three-quarter-inch Joe came out in the 1980s, but the original foot-high soldier didn’t return to active duty until his thirtieth anniversary, in 1994. He’s been going strong since. Sales skyrocketed after 9/11, and it looks like this is one soldier with a long career ahead of him.
Hasbro announced that the face of G.I. Joe was a composite of twenty Medal of Honor winners, but that was just a marketing ploy. Sculptor Phil Kraczhowski, paid $600 to sculpt Joe’s head, was instructed to make him a rugged American male. Kraczhowski had done numerous busts of JFK, and many on the design team felt that he incorporated a lot of the president’s features in Joe’s face.
The unwitting catalyst for the creation of G.I. Joe was TV producer Gene Roddenberry. The man who would go on to create Star Trek was producing a TV show called The Lieutenant. Marketing consultant Stan Weston approached Hasbro with the idea of creating some kind of toy to tie in with the show. The tie-in idea eventually died, as did the series, but G.I. Joe was on his way. Weston was offered $100,000 in cash or 1 percent of sales. He took the cash, thus losing out on more than $20 million worth of royalties.