Toy Bender

The title of this post is a bit of misnomer. I don’t mean, “Why aren’t Joes 12 inches tall again with Kung Fu bears?”, but why isn’t G.I. Joe more popular than it is right now? I can’t seem to grasp why the figures are almost impossible to find and fans are on the whole pleased with the new Joes, yet G.I. Joe doesn’t seem to be very big. Every toy collector undoubtedly knows about the Joes and is either buying them or not, but what about in the mainstream? Chances are, unless your average parent just happens to be in a toy aisle and sees some Joes in stock then they might not even know that G.I. Joe is back in any significance.

Why is this? Why don’t the Wal-Marts in my area carry G.I. Joes? Hell, why does the Toys R Us in my area not even have hooks for the single cards? You may argue that it could be an isolated incident, but when there is a big toy line with a lot of push behind it, then you damn well will see a section in the aisle for that toy. There’s not a single Joe in the big TRU Christmas catalog.

Well, there’s two reasons for this:

1) Distribution: From everything I’ve read, Hasbro was caught with it’s proverbial pants down and didn’t anticipate how popular the 25th Anniversary figures were going to be. Retailers were probably caught off guard due to the G.I. Joe brand not having sales power the last couple of years. Fair enough, but Hasbro is one of the biggest toy companies around. It’s time to start flexing some muscle and get these things in more stores. It’s a little hard to buy a toy or get excited about buying a toy when you can’t find them in stores.

2) Lack of Media Presence: Distribution might be one of the problems, but the line is suffering due to one of the key cornerstones of a successful toy line: There’s no cartoon. The last G.I. Joe cartoon was a mess, besides it doesn’t tie in too well with the style of most of the characters in the 25th line. Sure there are the classic A Real American Hero cartoons, but they are pretty damn hard to find on television. Hell, you can’t even buy the episodes on DVD anymore because Sony is sitting its ugly fat ass on the rights. (Side Note: Rhino’s out of print DVDs are extremely expensive now, Season 2 Part 1 is now selling for around a hundred bucks plus). Now things might change if the live action G.I. Joe film is a big hit, but I have a feeling that the live action film is going to have little to do with the classic Joes. By the time that film arrives there’s a hell of a good chance that the line is going to be geared for whatever the look of the film will be, much like how most of the Transformers line went under a… transformation.

There’s still hope. It seems like stores are getting more Joes than they have before. While it’s common to find a few Snake Eyes and Stormshadows hanging out in the toy aisles, Hasbro seems to be intent on getting out as many figures as they can. We may not be getting G.I. Joe cereal or the U.S.S. Flagg, but we are looking at getting lots of great figures if the line keeps selling as well as it is now.