At 35, GI Joe Soldiers On to Fans' Delight

At 35, GI Joe Soldiers On to Fans’ Delight

By JOHN BALZ

July 31, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — GI Joe doesn’t look much different. He still has a scar on his right cheek, though his jaw is a bit more chiseled. His hair is still sandy-blond but it comes in black too. His eyebrows have grayed and he’s showing a few finely etched wrinkles around his nose.

Give the guy a break, he just turned 35.

Several thousand fans of the “action figure” (please don’t call him a doll) gathered Friday at a Washington hotel to help Joe celebrate his birthday--among them Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr., the Apollo astronaut who walked on the moon and now has a GI Joe figure fashioned in his image.

The army of Joe aficionados also included collectors, dealers, father-son duos, military history buffs and regular Joes, all patrolling a 17,000-square-foot ballroom at a convention sponsored by manufacturer Hasbro Inc., to coincide with Joe’s anniversary.

“This is an extension of our childhood, only now we can afford a lot of stuff our parents wouldn’t buy when we were younger,” said Mike Fisher, 36, of Napa Valley, whose collection of GI Joe “stuff” numbers about 2,000 pieces.

The convention room brimmed with memorabilia such as a 1967 Japanese American Joe priced at $2,200; a special-edition Delta Force Joe; Killer WHALE (Warrior Hovering Assault Launching Envoy) Hovercrafts; even a “GI Joe hero” figurine in the form of baseball great Ted Williams, who served as a pilot in the Korean War.

More than 375 million GI Joes have been sold worldwide since Hasbro introduced a 12-inch model in 1964, company officials said. But they have lost track of how many special editions of the venerable boy-toy have been issued.

Fred Jeska, 47, said that he did not consider himself a die-hard Joe fan but admitted to building a “Joe Room” over the garage of his Woodland, Calif., home to house his 500 figures. Collecting Joes is an interest he can share with his son Donovan, 10, Jeska said.

Another father-son team, Kevin Epling and his son Matt, 11, worked together on a 5- by 10-foot commemorative display of soldiers fighting amid a rubble-strewn World War II battlefield. Epling, 35, said that he uses the figures to teach his son about sacrifice, freedom and American history.

“I love to sit and play GI Joes with my son and explain what’s good and what’s bad, rather than put him in front of [the television show] ‘South Park’ for half an hour,” said Epling, of Michigan. “I get more out of [GI Joe] now than I did as a kid.”

Joe admirers get together throughout the year in official fan clubs, at military shows and at toy collector gatherings across the nation. Friday’s convention was the fifth that Hasbro has sponsored. Fans also log on to Internet Web sites to trade stories and track down hard-to-find items.

One of the few woman at Friday’s gathering was Julie Rhodes, 37, who with husband, David, was making her first trip to a GI Joe convention. The couple was first in line to get her Buzz Aldrin figure autographed by the astronaut. Rhodes, who played with her brothers’ GI Joes as a child, now has her own collection of more than 50 pieces.

Even some hard-core GI Joe dealers are nostalgic for a figure marketed as “a real American hero.” Many scout out the most coveted items for their own collections, such as the British-edition “Action Man” Joe. The talking version speaks with a Cockney accent.

Still, as Bruce Bellino of Allen, Texas, can attest, even childhood treasures have a price.

Said Bellino, 44, who owns a military collectibles business: “My wife said I had to make my hobby pay.”