Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 26, 1995 TAG: 9510260001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEVERLY BEYETTE LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``G.I. Joe was my pal. G.I. Joe was my dad,'' he says.
Today, DeSimone is 39 and a walking encyclopedia of G.I. Joe. He claims to have the world's largest G.I. Joe collection - 10,000 pieces, including 700 figures and all 75 different incarnations - ``and little grenades and knives and stuff.''
In the back yard of his Burbank, Calif., home, he has built a two-story structure to house bazookas, jeeps, uniformed figures of assorted allies and adversaries, rafts, mummy cases, spacewalking gear, scuba tanks and even a tiny plastic snake.
There are pup tents, flight suits and karate belts. There are G.I. Joes that talk at a tug of their dog tags (``Let's take that hill!'') and 33/4-inch G.I. Joes. (Joe shrunk and grew again in spurts over the years.)
The 12-inch, original size Joe is the one most sought by real collectors. Introduced in 1964 as ``America's Movable Fighting Man,'' G.I. Joe came complete with 21 movable parts and a super-macho image. And, like Barbie, who was born five years earlier, he demanded an abundance of money-gobbling clothes and accessories. G.I. Joe needed guns, uniforms, jeeps and parachutes.
G.I. Joe could salute, play dead, grip a rifle. And, being a real he-man, he took as well as he gave. DeSimone had about 12 different G.I. Joes and, he remembers, ``I did terrible things to them, threw them up in the air, tortured them, drowned them - and made them go out on a date with Barbie. That was the worst thing you could do to G.I. Joe.''
DeSimone remembers when G.I. Joe hit the stores in 1964. ``All of the boys used to be jealous'' that the girls had Barbie. ``Now we had something comparable. We could play with a doll and get away with it, and it would be cool. We didn't call him a doll, of course.''
The war in Vietnam - from which DeSimone's dad would return safely - grew increasingly unpopular at home, as did the concept of a military Joe. Flowers were in, guns were out and by the late '60s, G.I. Joe, America's all-time best-selling boys' toy, was under attack for teaching kids violence.
So, toy maker Hasbro went back to the drawing board and introduced a more politically correct G.I. Joe. ``He became an Arctic explorer, a space explorer, a sea explorer,'' says DeSimone. ``He was 90 percent out of the military and into the Adventure Team.''
There are G.I. Joe collectors by the thousands. DeSimone claims 800 members - including about 40 women - in eight countries in his Southern California G.I. Joe Collector Club, one of several unofficial groups for devotees.
They're expected to turn out in force for the debut of a limited edition set of four G.I. Joe military figures that marks the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. ``I'm getting the chills'' in anticipation, says DeSimone.
DeSimone values his collection at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some rare figures such as the short-lived G.I. Joe Nurse (a flop) fetch up to $1,000 today.
Nothing is for sale. He jokes, ``When I die, my wife will be rich.'' Meanwhile, he displays his Joes on huge dioramas that he trucks to his collectors conventions.
DeSimone began collecting on a whim in 1981, after seeing a newspaper ad placed by a collector. Soon, he was haunting swap meets and garage sales. In 1991, he got two wake-up calls: His son Jonathan was born and he lost his job as a yogurt salesman. So he decided to turn a dollar or two by throwing a G.I. Joe convention. To his astonishment, 1,000 people showed up. The conventions, and his catalogs, bring in enough, he says, ``to sustain my efforts.''
As an advocate for hobbyists, DeSimone grumbles about the ``Barbie-ization'' of G.I. Joe, mentioning the special-edition Navy Seal G.I. Joe debuting this month exclusively at FAO Schwarz. Price tag with motorized mission raft: $85.
But for $4.99 each, one can still get the 1995 G.I. Joe Sgt. Savage action series, wherein Joe goes back to the future as a World War II POW who is cryogenically frozen and wakes after 50 years ``stronger, faster, tougher. ...''
``Most of the people who collect G.I. Joe today are men,'' says DeSimone. ``Today's kids don't use their imagination as much as we used to.''
by CNB