Influences, Part One

A few questions from my friends about my collection got me thinking--more-- about the people and events that influenced me with my collection. I think it'll take more than one entry to get it all down, but whatever. The "influences" that strike me right now include The U.S. Army, the TV show "Combat!," Hasbro/GI Joe, a guy with the internet handle of "Eagle," another guy with the internet handle of "ALX2000," model railroading, war-gaming, role-playing gaming, and an internet group called "Flash Force." There may be more, if I think on it for a while, but these are the influences for my current collection.

The U.S. Army

Well, how obvious does it have to be? Ever since I was a small kid before starting Kindergarten, I wanted to be a soldier one day. Don't ask me how a three or four year old kid knew about the Army, but I did. I can only guess that I was impressed at that young age watching war movies on TV. Certainly my parents weren't ex-soldiers for goodness sakes! My Mom cried when I told her I wanted to be a soldier when I grew up. My Dad didn't strike me as caring one way or the other. I could have told him I wanted to be a musician or a newspaper salesman and I would likely have received the same response.

Anyway, there was "something" about becoming a soldier that was for me--it was a "given," and it was written in stone as far as I could tell. I read every school library book I could lay hands on about the Army and the World Wars. I think I started collecting books about the Army and military history from the time I started getting an allowance and birthday money. Mainly, they were what I call "reference books" dealing with the more technical aspects of military subjects, like the specifications of military vehicles and aircraft and such. I also bought books about war and military history.Toys about things "military" were high on my priority list as a kid as young as four years old as I remember. My first military toy was a toy bolt-action rifle that had real ejection and loading action. It didn't shoot out a bullet, but it had plastic shells to load into the magazine and each time you worked the bolt handle, you ejected a round. The rifle had a big simulated scope on top--it was, I think, intended to be a "big game hunter's rifle," but for me, it was a sniper rifle! Yah, I was four years old and sniping my home and neighborhood. What a cool toy it was and I have no idea what happened to it or when it came up "missing." My guess is my parents had something to do with it "getting gone."

So, it should be no surprise that when I turned 18 in 1970, I enlisted in the Army for three years, with a guarantee to attend the NCO Candidate Course at Ft. Benning, Georgia, after going to Ft, Jackson, S.C, for Mortarman's school...all prior to my also guaranteed tour of duty in Viet Nam. In 1979, I took my Army Discharge and went back home to Michigan to assume a new career as Civilian. An Army career was behind me and to tell the truth--the Army was kinda boring after the excitement of Viet Nam was done. Nuff said about that.

Remember the TV show "Combat!"?

It starred Vic Morrow and Rick Jason. If you were born after about 1958, you were probably too young to remember or watch this neat show about World War 2 in France. It was weekly fare for my brother and I and I was dressed up in my best approximation of an Army uniform, complete with my toy guns, grenades, and webgear. Week after week, Sergeant Saunders and his men battled the Krauts across France after D-Day and, week after week, they kicked German butt by the end of the show. That's what I wanted to do when I joined the Army--kick ass and let someone else take the names! Didn't work out exactly that way, but it was fun and it was a learning experience.

Week after week, these guys fought their way across France. Sometimes they got wounded, but usually only the new guys and maybe the Guest Star would get killed. The stories were usually simple "people" stories about the guys interacting with one another. Sometimes there were funny parts, but normally it was war--they got into trouble and they had to figure out how to get out of trouble by the end of the show. It always bothered me, though, that the guys would be in a battle each week, yet they never got any medals or decorations, and if they got wounded, they always recovered by the following week. And nobody that I remembered ever got a promotion. Just fighting, fighting, fighting all the time against them despicable, ol' atrocity-committing Germans. I loved it!

When I started getting GI Joes as a kid, guess what I did with them? Yup, I made them into Combat characters. Not exactly the SAME characters, but one Joe was the Lieutenant, one was the Sergeant, the rest of the troops were riflemen. Joe ran patrols through the house and through the backyard, in Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.

Hasbro/GI Joe

How can I explain the influence GI Joe had on me? Since I was already studying the Army and military subjects, I was astounded as a kid to see Joe and recognize his uniforms and equipment as "pretty darn close to the real thing!" Yup, he was dressed more or less correctly for the 50's. He had an M-1 Garand rifle and an M-1 Carbine. He had a .45 caliber pistol, M-1919A4 .30 caliber machine-gun, 81mm. mortar, radio, field telephone, ammo belt, pistol belt, Ridgeway fatigue cap, backpack, pup-tent, mess gear, and tons of more cool stuff to dress him up and outfit him like NO toy soldier had ever been equipped before!

I grew up with little plastic army men, those 2 1/2 inch tall soldiers made by Marx and gawd knows how many other toy companies, and I was kinda put off by them because they were molded in one position and their molded gear didn't look exactly right for US Army soldiers--well, some did and some didn't. But, there was NO COMPARISON with Joe and his friends. Only Joe had the coolest gear and weaponry that you could choose for him for each and every mission you could dream up for him. Joe was the "real deal" in my young mind at the time. I might have been too young to be a soldier then, but Joe filled the imagination bill for me until I WAS old enough to join up and see the world.

A Real Guy and a real influence

There was a guy went by the handle of "Eagle" on his own web-site years back when I first went on-line. The web-site has long since evaporated. I don't know what happened for sure. I remember the guy was a fireman, and he had some kind of medical problem that caused him some great difficulty in his life. I think he had some serious disease like cancer, or something, that took him away from the hobby of computer-stuff and Joes. Sure hope things worked out for him and his family and he just moved along to another hobby. I sure do hope he didn't end up dying from his disease, poor guy.

But, why is he influential to me? Well, he did several cool things for me. First he took his figs out of their boxes and actually played with them! More than that--he literally cut them up and re-molded and re-constructed parts and made his own clothing and otherwise customized his figs the way HE wanted them and not how the toy companies manufactured them! He also organized his figure collection into various teams of "themes" he was playing with at the time. I remember one team were some 1930's-type investigators/crime fighters. Another team were comic-book heroes. Another team were modern-day Adventure Team-like characters. He organized them and gave each team a section of his website with detailed histories and specialties for each character. This was in the age BEFORE Dragon, before BBI. It was GI Joe, Playmates, and barbie figures! Those were the choices!

He showed me that there was more than one way to play with your Joes. At the time, I was still in that "collectors" mentality, where ya bought every Joe thing you could and displayed box and all as your "collection." I didn't do that entirely, but I had quite a number of troops stored away in the original boxes and I had no intention of "playing" with them--they were for looks. Eagle showed me to consider the figure sets more as "parts" like a model kit of a tank or car. You could "build" the kit as intended by the maker, OR...you could re-arrange the parts and use them in different ways. The GI Joe sets at the time were pretty much made as ONE Joe, ONE uniform, ONE weapon choice. Ya put them all together like the picture on the box. Eagle didn't do that--he did a lot of mix-and-match and made custom pieces for the troops. Heck, one female figure he made, he cut apart a GI Jane and added some Barbie parts to make a better articulated figure that could wear some Barbie clothing because a "straight" Jane was wrongly proportioned to wear most Barbie clothes.

I remember one special thing about Eagle--he had a General Colin Powell figure in his team. I was astounded by that because his Powell figure was wearing different uniform parts and dressed like a regular ol' combat soldier! MAN! At the time, Colin Powell was an expensive set, like about $50! I couldn't believe somebody would use a Powell figure for "just a regular guy" figure!!!

After the shock wore off, I realized, "what difference does it make--if its YOUR action figure?" You can play with YOUR action figures ANY WAY YOU WANT TO!

End of Part One

Watch for Part two sometime soon. I need to do something else besides pound a keyboard, and you need to do something else, too, no doubt!

Thanks for reading and visiting!