MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

GI Joe: A Real American Hero was an American cartoon that ran from 1982-1994. This cartoon’s main purpose, like its comics, was to sell toys. Its first two waves of action figures contained toys that realistically represented U.S. soldiers fighting an enemy that, while fictitious, still appeared rooted in real-world military styles. Uniforms were not terribly abstract, and both sides were made up of officers who performed duties that mimicked those of actual servicemembers. However, this all changed with Wave Three. Unlike later waves, which became almost entirely sci-fi-based, Wave Three blended characters who represented generic “soldier” looks - olive green fatigues, helmets and guns that looked like those actually employed by the military - with fantastical characters whose purposes drifted into the magical. For example, in Wave Three, fans met Zartan, the swamp-dwelling master of disguise capable of supernaturally changing his skin tone. In contrast to Zartan, though, was Wave Three’s Recondo, a fairly standard jungle-equipped GI Joe soldier. When assembled, the characters of Wave Three create a story of magical realism, where the conventional weapons of Recondo operate in a world that also allows Zartan’s superhuman powers. While this conceit of magical realism has existed in literature for some time, GI Joe’s attempt to commercialize it via plastic toys was not entirely successful. On his character’s file card, Zartan was defined as both a person with “multiple personalities” and schizophrenia. Advocacy groups found the equating of these two disorders troublesome, especially for an “evil” and magical character, and Zartan’s psychological profile on his file card was subsequently deleted. Furthermore, the Native American Spirit and Ironknife also attempted to drift into the magical, but, in so doing, also landed in the stereotypical. Through its stumbles, Wave Three indicates the limits of magical realism when presented in toy texts.