G.I.Joe 

Your G.I. Joe, Your Rules: Why Imagination Is the Real Secret Behind the Brand’s Lasting Power

There were plenty of great action figure lines in the 1980s, but few encouraged imaginative play quite like G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Masters of the Universe had Eternia. Transformers had Cybertron. Star Wars had an enormous galaxy already mapped out through movies and expanded stories. G.I. Joe certainly had its own mythology, but the toy line gave kids something incredibly powerful: room to make the universe their own. A file card might tell you a character’s name, specialty, hometown, and a few personality traits, but after that, the…

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The POP-EXPOSE 

Growing Up in the ’80s Part 3: True Freedom

By Destro Designs-Viper Den Studios There was a long stretch of being a kid that I swear, no matter what my friends and I did, we never got caught. Adults left kids alone a bit more back then. Adults weren’t up kids’ asses, making them spend endless hours every week in structured sports, coupled with piano lessons, dance class, and two intramural activities at school. I coach a lot of youth sports, and these kids today don’t have any time to just be kids. George Carlin touched on this, and…

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