THE STORY OF MONOPOLY, SlLLY PUTTY, BINGO, TWISTER, FRISSBEE, SCRABBLE, ETCETERA (10 page)

G.I. Joe, a rough and ready combatant with a wide range of death-dealing hardware, was especially hard hit by the movement against war toys. Ironically, Joe had originally been promoted not as a war toy but as a three-dimensional protest against the long-honored cliche that boys will not play with dolls.

Throughout history, the ratio of female-figure dolls has outnumbered male dolls twelve to one; and of the latter, only a fraction were used as boys’ toys. Yet when parents or social customs have not kept boys from playing with them, dolls have always been equally popular with both sexes. The fact that a stuffed animal often becomes an ersatz doll, cherished by young lads, indicates that this basic play activity is a necessary one.

When Hasbro first conceived of making an “action figure” for boys to play with, it probably did not see itself as a pioneer for men’s liberation. No doubt the company only intended to make a new variety of toy soldier—a familiar boys’ toy category.

G.I. Joe was to be a foot-high jointed figure which could be dressed in the various armed services’ uniforms. Accessories for repeat sales could include miniature versions of fighting implements; rifles, flamethrowers, demolition gear, etc.

Hasbro, of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, got the idea from a licensing agent in 1963, when
The Lieutenant,
a TV show about a marine, was popular. The licensor suggested that Hasbro make a toy figure for boys based on the show’s title character.

The Hasbro staff saw merit in the proposal, but was reluctant to link a toy to a TV series. “Why should we associate the item with a character that will die when the show goes off, maybe six months from now?” the executives asked.

An action figure with its own distinct personality was conceived, and Merrill Hassenfeld, president of Hasbro, asked the major American toy buyers what sales potential they envisioned for the product. Their answer: none.

“They said that we were trying to make a doll for boys, and everybody knew that boys do not play with dolls,” related Fredric C. Behling, Hasbro’s associate marketing director. “We figured that boys do play with soldiers, but the buyers balked at that, too.”

“A toy soldier,” one buyer insisted, “is a little bit of lead or plastic two to three inches tall. The kid plays with an army of them. But he’s not going to play with a single twelve-inch-high figure—
that’s a doll!”

Hassenfeld decided to ignore the early warnings. The first four “G.I. Joes”—a soldier, a sailor, a marine, and a pilot—were placed on the market with their accessories. Working with the Rhode Island National Guard, the firm’s designers had consulted military manuals to get correct details on uniforms and weaponry to be reproduced in miniature.

Joe’s basic appeal was supposed to be his general military flavor as well as the tendency of children in the aimed-for age range, from four to six years, to amass related toys. It was the same family marketing scheme that Mattel had used for Barbie.

But at Toy Fair, when thousands of buyers saw the new toy, only a few thought it a good bet.

Hasbro persisted. It advertised Joe on local TV shows in cooperation with area toy wholesalers. Chicago was one of the first places Joe was tried out; it was extremely successful there. Soon everywhere the doll appeared, little boys welcomed it with outstretched arms.

In his first two years, G.I. Joe brought Hasbro an astounding $35 to $40 million in revenues. “The appeal,” said Behling, “was very violent, I suppose, though I don’t think anyone has ever proved a cause-and-effect between war play and adult aggression. Personally, I don’t think playing with a toy gun harms a child. Maybe the outlet for aggression is a good thing.

“Anyway, it was evident that the most popular G.I. Joes were the more militant ones. The marine sold best, and after him, the soldier. Partly, I think, the things that you can create for a sailor doll are not as appealing—though our G.I. Joe frogmen sold very well.”

The aggression encouraged by the toy, the key to its appeal, also proved its nemesis. Public outrage against the war in Vietnam began to affect nearly every area of national life in the early nineteen-sixties, and one of the first businesses to come under attack was the war-toy industry. Spokesmen urged the buying public to steer away from playthings that glorified the taking of human life. The press took up the issue. A new edition of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s
Baby and Child 
Care
contained a controversial section condemning toy-gun play activity.

Toymakers tended to ignore the wave of protest, believing it would eventually die down. Antiwar toy protests had been voiced as far back as the First World War; the critics, fewer in number in those days, were ridiculed and forgotten. Furthermore, the lesson of the past showed that children crave military playthings whenever their society is at war.

Vietnam is probably the first war in history which caused large numbers of children to be denied war toys by their parents. The bottom dropped out of this business in the mid-sixties and has not—as of this writing—bounced back. Skeptics who think that Nixon’s long, tortuous grinding down of hostilities will revive the market for the tiny weaponry should note that, by 1972, sales of the Western pistol and holster set had revived. But the military and police toy market was still dead.

Why should a Western gun be a more desirable toy than a bazooka? Don’t both represent effective tools for the cancellation of life? There is one essential difference between the two: military firearms tend to be thought of as aggressive equipment, while the Western gun—redolent of a time of lawlessness and the need to protect one’s own—is a defensive implement. Having a toy six-shooter casts the child in the role of hero, assuming the responsibility of a simpler enforcement ethic. As Jack Schaefer’s memorable character Shane put it: “A gun is just a tool, as good—and as bad—as the man who carries it.”

At first, Hasbro was able to ignore the antiwar cries. But in the second half of 1966, G.I. Joe reorders suddenly stopped. Inventory piled up in the Pawtucket factory. Management at first thought the sales drop was only temporary. But the lack of reorders stretched into 1967, and the company began to get very nervous.

“In marketing terms,” said Merrill Hassenfeld, “G.I. Joe desperately needed repositioning. Parents had to view him as something more than a military figure, or else we’d face the inevitable—his retirement from the line.”

The firm might have cut its losses and scrapped G.I. Joe, but everyone at Hasbro felt the toy still performed a basic function in providing young boys with an acceptable form of doll play. So the question became: How can the military theme be disguised or altered without losing whatever residual consumer identification still exists?

Hasbro and its advertising agency undertook a study to explore possible ways of changing Joe’s image. New versions of the toy were tested on children, to see which might be the most fun to play with.

A great deal of soul-searching went on during this period throughout the industry. Manufacturers finally realized that the consumer really meant it when he said he was disenchanted with toys of violence.

In 1969, Hasbro found what it believed to be a new, acceptable format for G.I. Joe: an adventure team concept. Joe was now a member of a quartet of efficient technicians who aided individuals and governments in adventurous undertakings such as the recovery of missing treasure, aquanautic exploration, and capture of wild animals.

“At first, the idea was only moderately successful,” explained Behling. “We had to work through the old inventory, altering it to fit the new look of the toy. And, anyway, image is a hard thing to change. Part of the problem was the military-sounding name. But we could not change that, because some buyers would not have bought the new toy without the old name.”

By the second half of 1970, Hasbro was seeing a strong upswing in G.I. Joe sales. The message of the altered image was getting across, and the old inventory had been exhausted. Newer, gadgety accessories were put on the market. 1971 nearly doubled 1970’s sales, by mid-1972, the firm expected G.I. Joe to rack up record money again.

G.I. Joe is still paramilitary in that his clothes and equipment are all strictly functional. A typical G.I. Joe adventure kit is called “Secret of the Stolen Idol.” The kit includes a small comic book that tells of a quest for a stolen Buddha-like idol with jewels in a secret compartment. G.I. Joe, presumably serving as a good-will ambassador from the West, agrees to help an Oriental sect recover its object of worship. Assembling a prefab helicopter, Joe surveys the area and eventually sees five villains escaping with the idol. They drop their loot and run away in terror. Landing his chopper, G.I. Joe approaches and finds that a giant cobra is coiled near the idol, which is perched precariously on a mountain ledge.

The old G.I. Joe probably would have blown the snake’s head off and been done with it, but not the adventurer. He gets back in his helicopter and drops a winch with a loop of rope over the idol. After several tries, Joe secures it and returns the totem to the grateful natives.

According to Hasbro, when the boy receives the stolen idol kit and reads the comic book, he gets out his G.I. Joe doll (sold separately) and puts it through the script of the adventure with the accessories in the kit: a miniature helicopter with a working winch and blade, a replica of the idol with secret compartment filled with “jewels,” and a toy cobra. The new G.I. Joe allows the young boy to indulge in adventure fantasies not unlike the old radio and movie serials—
Captain Midnight, Jack Armstrong,
and the like. When he tires of the script, he can create his own tales using the component toys.

Fantasizing, of course, is the major appeal of the G.I. Joe doll. But, according to Behling, the boy does not project himself into the character of Joe himself, as girls do with Barbie. Instead, the boy tends to think of himself as a slightly younger pal of Joe, accompanying him at the time of the adventure. Also, whereas a girl pictures herself as a teenage Barbie, boys imagine themselves as Joe’s grown-up, although younger, friend. “A girl,” said Behling, “thinks of herself as a teenager at a prom. A boy of the same age might think of himself as a football player, but
not
in high school; he would imagine himself a professional.”

The looks of the two dolls, G.I. Joe and Barbie, certainly do reflect different preoccupations. A girl’s doll must look very pretty and graceful. Although Joe is an appropriate half inch taller than Barbie, he would never be included as a friend to the fashion doll. “The reason is that Joe is jointed in a manner that would kill Barbie’s sales if she were made similarly,” Behling feels. “The jointure for G.I. Joe is more functional, less concerned with loveliness of detail.”

Hasbro feels that there is little tomboy interest in the G.I. Joe series. Once a combat nurse was included in the line, but it was a flop. Boys didn’t want it, and girls shunned it because it was not made to the usual fashion doll esthetics.

Many parents remain unconvinced that G.I. Joe can be a valuable toy. “The problem no longer exists of G.I. Joe being a sugar-coated war toy,” said Behling. “But we still cannot contend with those fathers who grumble that they will ‘never let my kid play with a doll!’ ”

In order to revivify its toy, Hasbro practically had to emasculate its commando—at least in terms of the old definition of masculinity as aggressiveness and the will for destruction. If so, American society has been long overdue for such a process of desexualization.

“I looked out of the window, and what I saw was just like science fiction! It was the middle of Earth Week, and there in the center of Madison Avenue were all these secretaries jumping rope and stuffy-looking businessmen on beach blankets biting Blimpies. All of a sudden I got this fantastic idea—just imagine all those usually uptight Manhattanites cavorting and gyrating on a bunch of Twister mats!”

The next day—April 30, 1971—the speaker arranged to have several Twister mats taken to Madison Avenue. Accompanying the colorful vinyl sheets was a bevy of miniskirted actresses and models. The girls quickly rounded up contestants from the crowd, and in a matter of minutes the street was transformed into a giant Twister contest.

“The weirdest thing,” said Marianne “Mickey” Mackay, public-relations director for the Milton Bradley Company, “is that it was pouring rain that day, but it made no difference. All up and down the Avenue, mobs of people played Twister while they got soaked. People were even taking off their shoes before stepping onto the game mats!

“Finally, because of the rain, Mayor Lindsay opened the Avenue to traffic. But it didn’t stop the Twister players—they just hauled the mats onto the sidewalk and kept right on playing.”

This incident, which took place on the Friday that ended

Earth Week in 1971, illustrates Twister’s odd power to attract even the most unlikely participants.

Twister has reaped a huge success for the Milton Bradley Company, thanks to the highly creative promotional efforts of Mickey Mackay, a kooky PR woman who honors her nickname by wearing Mickey Mouse cufflinks and an original Disney watch. Without the vigorous promotional campaign she and her associates mounted for Twister, the product might have ended up on the junkheap.

The first of the “body action” games, Twister was so different from any other game yet on the market that at first nobody gave it much chance of becoming popular. “The trouble was that Twister has to be seen to be appreciated,” Miss Mackay explained. “No amount of purely verbal description can replace the visual impact of a Twister game in action.”

Despite this warning, here is an attempt to describe the game. The host spreads out the vinyl Twister mat, emblazoned with brightly colored circles. One person stands on the sidelines and works a spinner, while two contestants stand on the mat in their stocking feet and follow the spinmaster’s instructions. The spinner indicates where players should put their limbs; one hand may have to touch a green circle, the other, red; while the feet are also positioned as the spinner requires. Each time the spinner is whirled, a new position is announced and the contestants must adjust their limbs. The winner is the last person to maintain balance.