1986: The Event Horizon of My G.I. Joe Childhood
By Destro Designs – Viper Den Studios
To me, the best year of G.I. Joe is 1986.
The combination of figures, playsets, and flat-out iconic awesomeness can’t be matched. 1985 does a great job trying, but forget it. 1986 is where it was at.
By this point, I had seen so many movies in the horror and action genres that I had a pretty good idea of what real action actually looked like.
I’m going to break down all of the different figures and playsets over the course of a couple of articles, because honestly, there’s so much that means so much to me.
Coinciding with the rise of Pythona, I reached new heights of fandom for G.I. Joe. 1986 took me to the event horizon of my childhood toy black hole of suckery, never to be seen again.
Screw riding bikes. Screw painting on construction paper. Screw going out to throw the baseball. All I wanted to do was play with my G.I. Joes. I lived across the street from a Pizza Hut that had three arcade games and a laundromat that had two, and I didn’t even bother with them most of the time because I had the best setup for my toys.
Funny story: Pablo, who lived at the other end of my block and was about 14 at the time, decided he wanted to play unlimited Centipede and Galaga. He drilled a hole into the side of a quarter and tied a string to it so he could dip the coin in and out of the machine, allowing him to rack up credits over and over again.
Pablo was no greedy dude, so I got to play endless amounts of Galaga because of him. He was the man. He also opened the door for me to start looking at things in a whole new way.
That was the year I was basically allowed to go wherever I wanted on my bicycle around the neighborhood. I started to get mischievous and enjoyed going places we weren’t supposed to go, like abandoned buildings or the park after dark.
When people ask about the freedom kids had in the 1980s, it’s truly no exaggeration to say that we did whatever the hell we wanted. My parents were good parents, but everybody’s kids were out running around and playing. I truly don’t ever remember having a leash on me whatsoever.
I had three friends who lived on the block, and we would definitely all play Joes together. Most of the time, they would carry their stuff over to my yard because it was so perfect. And by perfect, I mean it actually had grass. Also, my dad had a makeshift garage setup where there were all kinds of tools and stuff that we used to mess with all the time.
This is a quick article that’s going to serve as a jump-off point for the in-depth writings about 1986. This is just a simple look at what my life was like outside G.I. Joe and how that played into the world I had created in my backyard.
Friday, I go hard into the figures I had in the early part of the year and discuss the icons that followed throughout.
