SERPENTORSLAIR.COM • RETRO TOY NOSTALGIA

The G.I. Joe Ads Still Hit Like a Megaton Bomb 40 Years Later

Before the internet, before social media, and before instant toy reveals, a G.I. Joe commercial or a page from the Sears catalog could make an ordinary afternoon unforgettable.

BY DESTRO DESIGNS – VIPER DEN STUDIOS

As a kid, we didn’t have the internet to Google upcoming releases or to stare at figures we wanted to get.

We had to cut pages out of the Sears catalog, the Sunday paper, and cardbacks. We had to be lucky enough to catch a commercial that aired on TV.

But the way the ads were so few and far between made them amazing.

You never knew what you were going to see or where you were going to see it. At Christmastime, toy catalogs would hold every possible Joe available for release, and I cannot tell you how much time I spent staring at these.

“You never knew what you were going to see or where you were going to see it.”

THE MAGIC OF SATURDAY MORNING

When a G.I. Joe Commercial Was an Event

I’ve recently started clipping the commercials to play them on the timeline because they’re so unbelievably great.

Always a couple of kids playing in a diorama meant to look like outside, and that always hits so hard as a kid because that’s what we had as well: the outside and our imaginations.

So, while the commercials were definitely the much bigger dopamine hit, mainlined right into our brains, they were few and fleeting. Just as quickly as you got high as a cat’s back, you were left with nothing in less than a minute.

MEMORIES ON PAPER

Catalog Pages Were Childhood Treasures

The catalogs and write-ups, on the other hand, would stay in front of you for as long as you could keep the picture from fading.

I used to have a photo album that my parents got me so I could clip certain catalog pages and keep them preserved to stare at. I swear my mom still has one of them, but I can’t seem to find it.

“I used to have a photo album that my parents got me so I could clip certain catalog pages and keep them preserved to stare at.”

FORTY YEARS OF MEMORIES

A Rainbow Bridge Back to Childhood

And so, while I’ve said so many things about why G.I. Joe itself hits us so hard and why our connection still lives forty years later, it’s no surprise that ads like the commercials and newspapers act as a direct rainbow bridge from one period of time to another in our minds.

Sometimes there’s a familiarity that strikes through and really sets off the alarm bells, leading to a flood of memories and recollections.

Y’all, you’ve heard me say it before. I was truly a hound for G.I. Joe when I was young, so rest assured, when I say that I used to go absolutely buck-nuts crazy when a commercial came on, I’m not even in the slightest bit exaggerating.

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