Rant #1,912: Soldier Boy

With everything going on in the world today, it would not be very surprising if this little news item was missed, but it is major news to those boys who grew up in the mid- to late 1960s.

Stanley Weston passed away on May 1 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 84 years old.

Who was Stanley Weston?

He was a man with a vision, took a major chance, and ended up creating one of the most iconic toys in the history of toydom--

G.I. Joe.

Weston, an Army veteran and marketing agent, thought it was odd that the market for dolls had only captured the female part of the equation. Barbie, and seemingly thousands of spinoffs and copycats, had only been directed at young girls, and he saw a niche that had not yet been filled, that of a doll for boys.

But the toy could not be marketed as a doll. Boys, and more importantly parents, would not buy a "doll" for a boy.

But they would buy an action figure, and Weston, along with Donald Levine, Hassenfield Bros. (later Hasbro) chief of research and development, went along with that theme, and released the then nearly foot high G.I. Joe for the 1964 Christmas marketplace, and the toy was one of the biggest selling toys during that season, and for many seasons thereafter.

G.I. Joe was more than those little plastic men that boys used to play with when they were playing "War" in earlier generations. G.I. Joe had nearly two dozen moveable parts, and could actually grasp onto weapons with a moveable thumb.

He also had hair and sometimes facial hair, and even a scar to show boys that people can get hurt during combat.

And like Barbie, he had outfits that could be purchased separately.

The toy was such a strong seller that it even was able to withstand the growing backlash against the Vietnam War, and went into the 1970s with some subtle changes.

However, even G.I. Joe could not outlast public opinion and more importantly, boys getting into other things, like the earliest of the video games, and the toy bit the dust in the late 1970s.

However, G.I. Joe was far from done. The toy was revived in the 1980s in a much smaller form, and G.I. Joe expanded his grasp on "manly" pursuits, and he could be a serviceman or an astronaut or whatever he wanted to be--or what the boy wanted him to be.

The character also branched out into other media, like TV, comic books, and yes, video and video games. The toy was the basis for a couple of movies, and lives on today.

But getting back to Weston, he later sued Hasbro over rights to the figure, and he reached a settlement with the toymaker just last year.

Whatever the case, Weston's idea turned into a multi-billion dollar success, and in these times where the sexes want to be treated equally, he was pretty much ahead of his time; if girls could like dolls, why couldn't boys?

The only difference was that girls, even young girls, were smart enough to accept Barbie as a doll; boys could not accept a "doll," but would accept an action figure.

Good for the girls, and good for the boys, too.

Have a good weekend, and a good Memorial Day holiday, and I will speak to you again on Tuesday.