Special Project for my Son

[ActionYankee]

I'm recently a father, and I want to carry the hobby on in my son, of course. But with the lack of GI Joe product on the market, he is unlikely to experience the 'new in box' awe after unwrapping a gift.

Or can he...

I plan to make my own line of figures that'll riff on the Adventure Team, The Losers, Challengers of the Unknown, and Hasbro's The Defenders.

I would like the figures to have their own logo and custom boxes, and a line of accessories to go with.



I rather like the look of these Geyperman Basic figures, and may adopt the look. I like the boxes in that I wouldn't need to make a lot of box art like if I chose a GI Joe/AT style box.

One idea is to use a few of the Cotswold Original Headsculpts, but am not 100% on board with it. May just go for a buncha Jakes that I paint myself.


I've got a few years to complete this project, as he is 4 days old as of this posting. But I hope to post semi-regular updates.

I am also open to suggestions and other ideas.

[ATC]

There were a few "sportsman" sets out there that ended up in my collection. I don't remember where I picked them up. Some stuff is re-purposed Big Jim stuff, but some is 12" sportsman stuff. One is a duck hunting outfit with trebark camo and a duck blind along with a really cool shotgun. I think that one came with a female figure (that got a new head and is now wearing a Hitler Youth uniform on my shelf). Oddly enough, that figure was LEFT HANDED! That was unusual. Left hand is pistol-grippy while the right hand is open (they fit the shotgun nicely, left handed). Some of the "sportsman" stuff made its way into the Adventure Team milieu, the camping stuff contributed to an AT "base camp" setup. There may not be a big distinction between Adventure and Sportsman (like Capture of the Pygmy Gorilla, White Tiger Hunt, etc).

Tents are easy to make. In this pic, the table is a Big Jim table, as are the stools and cooking pots. The bucket came from Soldiers of the World. One leg of the table is a dowel, because I only had 3 legs (I've since found another). The tripod and coffee pot are from the General Grant (or Lee) set. The lantern and spotlight are keychains with the chains removed (they both really work). The fire pit is an old CD. My son (who was very young at the time) has stones glue-gunned around the perimeter, sticks with ends painted yellow and red, and some cotton ball fluff for smoke. It was a fun project he enjoyed. And it looks better than the crummy "version two" rubbery plastic one that came with the White Tiger Hunt set (or the original vacu-formed thin plastic original White Tiger Hut fire ring).

http://www.gijoe.50megs.com/Tent-pg.html

You can find sportsman-type boats at craft stores like Hobby Lobby that far outclass the Hasbro versions. Here's a pic of a Hobby Lobby canoe and boat flanking the Hasbro Pygmy Gorilla boat. The Mountie's canoe is much cooler, as is the Indiana Jones guy's rowboat. I was gong to put an electric outboard motor on that rowboat, but couldn't find one at a decent price. (They used to be all over the place when I was a kid, but now you can only get them from Japanese vendors and pay quadruple the price for postage!) Note the Hasbro boat was undergoing repairs when this photo was taken. I had cut out plastic that was progressively melting and replaced it with sheet plastic of the same thickness. I hadn't puttied, sanded, or repainted it yet. The Hasbro boat looks downright silly beside the Hobby Lobby boats; Land Adventurer has given up. Those Hobby Lobby boats aren't water-ready, though. They're decorations. If you wanted boats your son could play with in water, they'd probably ought to have a few coats of varnish or polyurethane before putting them in the water.

http://www.italspat.iwarp.com/boatpg.htm

Good luck!
- ATC
http://www.gijoe.50megs.com/

[ActionYankee]

Hoping Rowan will fancy at least some of my efforts. I think I've got some good ideas for military sets, and good ideas for Adventure Sets.

The outdoorsman line, though limited in scope, can be put together well.

[ATC]

Good luck with the Outdoorsman and Adventures Of efforts, Yankee. I remember as a kid, my Mom was a women's libber and was SOOOO relieved when GIJOE was no long a "War Toy" and became Adventure Team with bearded hippies who wore bright girly colors. Naturally, I was totally disinterested. Instead I searched yard sales for military-era gijoes and used my meager allowance to buy (what I considered) "real" Joe stuff. REAL Joes had molded hair, not fuzzy stuff that wore off wherever it touches the helmet. Even when I had AT stuff in my toy box, they were still special government operatives taking down drug lords, so it was still a paramilitary theme involving squad tactics and resolution of issues through force. Every encounter had to involve at least ONE fistfight (which was par for the course in TV shows those days). I had no idea how to "play" at hunting for a tiny non-posable monkey or jumping into a volcano... how could THAT be fun? I saw the same evolution in my own kids... all the non-military Joe stuff we got ended up being used in a military fashion, even the "outdoorsy" stuff (like vintage Big Jim stuff). My daughter liked the Big Jim stuff, though. She thought the Big Jim camper was just right for Barbie, the rowboat was a romantic device, and "family camping trips" were fun. Tiny little Big Jim and even smaller vintage Action Jackson were their sons, who would occasionally get into trouble with their (Hasbro bomb detection) dog. I didn't like AT stuff at all until I was a middle-aged fogey. Now I've probably got as much AT stuff as I do military stuff! I think it'll be interesting for you to watch your son's play with the different toys, to see how his play style naturally evolves. Good luck on this massive project!
- ATC

[ActionYankee]

So SWMBO put a limit of 10 figures on the project.

Which should work out pretty well,

I figure:

4 Serviceman, stand ins for the Action Soldier, Sailor, Marine, and Pilot. Will likely go for Woodland camo fatigues, and an M4 for "right out of the box play" as with Action Man.

1 Mike-Power type, without the ridiculous backstory. This will be a figure with prosthetic limbs.

1 Outdoorsman figure. My take on the hunting/fishing/camping figures, but portrayed with a 50's Americana vibe.

4 Adventures Of figures. A revival of 1969, with red top packaging.

There will be an assortment of sets to go with each line of course.


Figures will be a variety of ethnicities. One of the secondary goals of this project is to give him a slightly larger worldview. Even if it's only toys.

[Myles_Falworth]

Maybe combine part of your last name with "bro" like Hasbro did. Mego was named after something one of the boys said as a child "Me go"

[ActionYankee]

I think I'll kinda parallel Joe's real history a bit.

start with military sets, figures are billed as "Serviceman" instead of Action Soldier, etc.

Then test the waters with some red top "Adventures of" style sets.

The pending interest, build a small Adventure Team.


"Joe" heads I think I'll get as castings of vintage. AA and Asian heads will come from Cots.

[LittleGreeneMan]

For a team name you could always go with the popular military novel from the 80's, "Team Yankee", which was about the US Army tankers in Europe fighting the Soviet Union. Also, I've found that if you start looking at old movie posters, especially from the 60's, they often have a flair about them that says "GI Joe". Think old war movies or stills of Charlton Heston from his sci-fi movies. There are also several Raiders of the Lost Ark posters that give off a great vibe for adventure figure box art. Another source might also be the book covers for The Destroyer, Mack Bolan, The Executioner, etc., lines of manly adventure books. Just do a quick search for these series and you'll find a wealth of art that inspires ideas for you. I might suggest you do different characters based on their positions in the team and include support staff, like mechanics or pilots. A lot of fun with the concept of the old Adventure Team was getting an outfit or set and then thinking up how you would use it. Today it's all about the figure and what character he is, but back then it was about buying The Search for the Abominable Snowman or Eight Ropes of Danger and then using the accessory set to fuel your imagination. What I'm suggesting is making some adventure sets in the form of foot lockers or a similar container with cool box art, and when he is done playing with his gear he can put his stuff aware and be ready for a different adventure later on. Just my thoughts, but hope they might help.

[ActionYankee]

Think I'm gonna settle on GI Joe Elite.

that way, they can be called "Joes" or "GI Joes" and it'll be easier for him to talk about at school.

None of his contemporaries would know what "Operation: Action" is, or "Action Yank."

Odds are, not too many will know GI Joe, but they may go home and talk to mom and dad, and dad may want to reminisce so he'll call up his mom to see if the childhood Joes are still in the attic/basement, and just like that, I saved the hobby.

[ActionYankee]

Though I may shoot the moon, try and get some repro heads, and give the project the GI Joe name.



Grrrr this is hard.

[TNshooter]

Fighting Yank, if I'm right, disappeared when Mego came out with Action Jackson. Action Jackson was a lot like GI Joe in the fact that you bought the basic figure
and then got uniform sets separately. But in an 8" figure. The "razor and razor blades" concept of the original Joe. That was in the early 1970's. Only older collectors
are familiar with Fighting Yank.

But then there is the name of "Yank" or "Yankee." That is what the US soldiers of WWII was called by our European brothers in arms. Before that what the south called
the northern troops during the Civil War. Basically meaning someone from the north.

So unless your son knows about the Fighting Yank figures, he won't see the similarity.

Just a thought.

Daryl

[ActionYankee]

The longer I think about it, the better "Action Yank" sounds. I dunno what about dropping the double e at the the end made it sound better, but it does.

However, that does leave it really close to Fighting Yank...

[TNshooter]

I've been watching Grit, and I saw the professor as the bank robber.

Another was Roscoe from Dukes of Hazzard. He was a bit younger.

[ATC]

On MeTV westerns, and grit, you can see lots of personalities when they were really young. Kind of funny to see the professor on Gilligan's island as an old west bank robber hold up man...

[TNshooter]

Action Yankee,

Upon some research I found I had the years reversed. The Story of GI Joe is from 1945. The GI Joe comics I had seen photos of the covers were from the 1950's.

An army publication called Yank had comics done by a serviceman during WWII, starting in 1942. The covers I had seen photos of are from a company that did comics during the Korean conflict
starting around 1951. Wikipedia has a list of various company's that did Joe comics, including Hasbro that apparently did comics in house during the AT years. The reference didn't say if it was
only comics for toy sets, but I got the impression they were doing more than that. I may be wrong. But the page said that there have been Joe comics since '42, with the exception of two periods
of more that a year that there wasn't a Joe comic. I found that interesting. Of course since '82 for the most part they have all been about the ARAH. With brief periods that covered GI Joe Extreme
and I think Sigma Six. And a few different companies producing them.

The movie launched Burgess Meredith's career as a movie star, as a young man. Some actors I remember, I remember them from shows they did in the sixties or seventies.
Lately I've seen that some did old western movies before that (and before I was born). Brian Keith is one, another is Bob Hale who did a few western movies before he became the Skipper on
Gilligan's Island.

I'm sorry again for the useless trivia. I just found all of that interesting.