G.I. Joe and ‘Army Man Bueker’

By J. Bueker

Forty years ago this day, G.I. Joes made their first appearance under Christmas trees on Joan De Arc Avenue. The emergence of this American icon represented a watershed development in the history of children’s toys and of boyhood generally.

First produced by Hasbro in 1964, G.I. Joe was in one sense a logical consequence of the Barbie doll phenomenon that Mattel had unleashed five years earlier. However the idea that American boys would be interested in playing with dolls, or even that they should be playing with dolls at all, was a provocative one in the early ‘60s. Hasbro responded to the challenge by insisting upon calling their poseable doll an “action figure,” and portraying him as a very manly and rugged one at that. It worked.

Originally there were four different G.I. Joes, each representing one of the major branches of the service: soldier, marine, sailor and pilot. A total of no less than 75 different accessories were also offered for sale with the original Joes, a remarkably ambitious product release even by today’s standards.

The new toys were instantly a huge success, and in the years that followed Hasbro aggressively introduced new accessories to the line, everything from jeeps and footlockers to space capsules and deep-sea diving equipment. In 1967, G.I. Nurse made her spectacularly unsuccessful debut, disappearing from store shelves completely within the space of a year. For some reason Hasbro was surprised to learn that boys were not especially keen to play with a female doll, while most girls shunned anything associated with G.I. Joe. Today, the G.I. Joe nurse doll is probably the most desirable of all G.I. Joe collectibles, fetching upwards of $6000 mint-in-box.

As it happened, the appearance of G.I. Joe coincided with my first grade year at Sahuaro School, a year when I was intoxicated with all things military. Inspired by the popular Combat! television program, I spent inordinate amounts of time in the classroom writing reports about the results of World War II and on the playground emulating Vic Morrow and his heroics on the tube. Such was my unbridled enthusiasm in playing war at both home and school that neighbor David Till took to derisively referring to me as “Army Man Bueker.” David continued to call me by that name for as long as the Tills lived on the street, evidently deeply envious of my military prowess.

Carl Bueker was not at all certain that giving his young sons dolls with which to play was a good plan. The acceptance and ultimate success of G.I. Joe required nothing less than a major paradigm shift in parental thinking. My father’s reluctance was not at all uncommon, but he finally acquiesced to his wife’s insistence that Joe was the obvious, trendy toy to get the boys that Christmas.

Christmas 1964 is an understandably fuzzy memory for me, but I do clearly recall brother Charles and I receiving our Joes. Santa was also kind enough to provide each of us with a package of basic Joe accessories like a pistol and mess kit, to go with our boxed figure. I remember being fascinated by the various documents that came with Joe, with all the cool to-scale accessories that were available, and with that awesome scar on the upper right cheek of the warrior’s face.

The popular and time-honored custom of boys to subject their G.I. Joes to intense torture and even dismemberment never really caught on at our house. I enjoyed fashioning a green sock into a sleeping bag for my action figure, and then leaving him alone to face the elements outside in the backyard all night. Joe also bravely participated in naval maneuvers for two summers in the famous Bueker garage pool. Chris Dickey and Mark Wells had Joes of their own of course, and so by day our backyards became theaters of make believe warfare.

I was still playing with that G.I. Joe doll years later, which leads to a favorite Chris-Town story. One afternoon in the summer of 1967, Charles and I were browsing at Woolworth’s when I spotted what appeared to be U.S. currency lying in amongst a table of assorted merchandise. Upon closer inspection, I found that the object was in fact a five-dollar bill, in those days a very handsome sum for a nine-year-old. After conferring with Charles, I agreed to march the bill up to the front of the store and dutifully inform management of the circumstance. The cashier regarded us coolly, but at length declared that nary a soul had reported any missing cash and thus finders were keepers and the bread was ours. Since it was I who had discovered the funds, the decision on what to do with them was mine and mine alone. Naturally saving the money, or even notifying our mother, who was off shopping elsewhere in the mall, never entered my mind.

No, the first thing that occurred to me to do was to buy a long-desired G.I. Joe accessory, and so I did: The G.I. Joe machine gun with tripod and ammunition box. We had to traverse the entire length of the mall to purchase the item, which I had recently seen on display at The Broadway. The transaction required almost the entire five dollars, but now my Joe had the gear he needed to help stave off the fearsome Nazi threat. Charles always felt that the purchase was utterly impulsive and ultimately ill advised, from which I can only infer that he must have had a different toy in mind for my five-dollar windfall.

As my interests slowly evolved away from army play, Joe saw fewer and fewer missions until he was finally retired from service altogether in the late ‘60s. I barely noticed in 1982 when a much smaller version of the doll (3 ¾”) was introduced to a new generation of children. Hasbro wisely started producing the 12-inch figures again in 1996, and has once again evolved a huge line of different varieties of the action figure and the accessories to go with them. Faithfully realized facsimiles of the four original Joes and their coolest accessories were released this year by Hasbro to celebrate the 40^th anniversary.

Forty years later, it appears that G.I. Joe is once again just hitting his rugged and manly stride.

Magoo as Scrooge

By J. Bueker

A litany of formidable acting talents down through the years have tackled the daunting role of Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ immortal A Christmas Carol. George C. Scott’s outstanding performance in the 1984 made-for-TV movie comes immediately to mind, as do Alistar Sim’s touching 1951 performance and Albert Finney’s turn in the musical adaptation in 1970. A solid argument can be made, however, that the grandest Scrooge of them all was not an actual human being, but rather 1960s TV cartoon icon Mr. Magoo.

Produced in 1962, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol presents a wonderfully schmaltzy retelling of the classic yuletide tale that could have only been made in the ‘60s. The writers were obliged to abandon the standard Magoo paradigm of the oblivious near-sighted old coot and allow the character to take on the very different persona of Ebenezer Scrooge. Rarely has a popular cartoon character ever been assigned such a markedly different dimension and scope for its audience to assimilate.

The program is in essence a play within a play, framed as a Broadway musical starring Magoo as Scrooge. Once the curtain rises, we are treated to a surprisingly faithful and complete rendition of the classic story, all performed within the span of a mere 53 minutes. The pathos of Tiny Tim and the transformation of old man Scrooge shine through the relatively cheap and stiff animation, and a number of the visual effects are actually quite well done. Even when viewed on our fuzzy old black and white Philco, the silent specter of Christmas Yet to Come presented a remarkably foreboding image.

In addition to the voice of the incomparable Jim Backus as Magoo-Scrooge, the special also featured Jack Cassidy as Bob Cratchit and Jane Kean as Scrooge’s long lost fiancé, Belle. Morey Amsterdam makes a brief appearance as one of the businessmen who discuss Scrooge’s demise while he is made to listen, and Rocky and Bullwinkle veterans June Foray and Paul Frees also contribute a variety of memorable voices, ranging from the Ghost of Christmas Present to the grinning thief with the eye patch who gleefully divvies up Scrooge’s belongings with his cronies in the program’s funniest sequence.

The music in Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol is first rate. The charming score by Funny Girl composers Jules Styne and Bob Merrill is consistently entertaining throughout, most notably the hectic opening number “Back on Broadway,” the melancholy ballad “Winter Was Warm,” and the joyous Cratchit family song “Lord’s Bright Blessing,” in which we learn of young Tim’s obsession with something called “razzleberry dressing.” This latter number is reprised at the end of the show as the camera pans back to reveal the audience in the theater, of which we have been a part all along.

Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was the first animated Christmas special made specifically for prime time TV. It was destined to become somewhat overshadowed by the likes of A Charlie Brown Christmas and Frosty the Snowman a few years later, but the show has quite happily endured and is now widely available on VHS and DVD. The fact remains that it was Quincy Magoo who introduced the baby boomer generation to the everlasting magic of Dickens’ “ghostly little book.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________JDA

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