The summer of 2023 may have belonged to Barbie, but the year also closed out with a very lovely tribute to her longtime rival from toy store shelves. Arriving in book form rather than a movie, The Art of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero is a gorgeous and exhaustively comprehensive chronicle of one of the most ambitious multi-media marketing campaigns ever launched for a children’s toy line.
A passion project for R. Carson Mataxis, curator of the 3DJoes.com reference site, The Art of G.I. Joe was initiated as a Kickstarter campaign in 2022 that funded successfully and has finally come to fruition, with a product shipped out to backers just after Christmas 2023. The results were worth the wait. The massive 712-page, 15-pound tome is what you’d euphemistically call a coffee table art book. It’s large and heavy enough that a coffee table alone may not be enough for it. To get the full benefit, I recommend an even larger surface, such as reading it seated at a dining room table. Or, for the ultimate nostalgic experience, spread it out on the carpet, toss down some pillows and cushions, and page through it like you did the Sears Wish Book when you were ten-years-old.
| Title: | The Art of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero – Omnibus Hardcover |
| Authors: | R. Carson Mataxis Chad Hucal |
| Published: | 2023 |
| Format: | Hardcover Book |
Lest any readers question why I’d review this art book on what is ostensibly a home theater blog, allow me to make three points:
- This is my web site and I can write about whatever I feel like. G.I. Joe was very important to my childhood, and remains important to me as an adult toy collector.
- The 1980s G.I. Joe toy line spawned a very popular cartoon series and an animated movie, both of which are covered by this book.
- The Art of G.I. Joe book will be accompanied by a supplemental Blu-ray disc (to be delivered later this spring) featuring video interviews with original G.I. Joe artists and creators.
The original G.I. Joe, known as “America’s Moveable Fighting Man,” was famously introduced as a 12-inch action figure (don’t dare call him a “doll”) in the 1960s, intended as a boys’ alternative to Barbie. However, the property hit the zenith of its popularity during a 1980s relaunch in the form of a wide-ranging line of 3.75″ figures with compatible vehicles and playsets. To ensure its success, the Hasbro toy corporation exerted a huge amount of effort (and invested huge sums of money) into creating packaging with dynamic and exciting artwork.
To come at kids – and, more importantly, their parents’ wallets – from every possible direction, the brand was licensed into all forms of media and tie-in merchandise: comic books, a cartoon, lunch boxes, school supplies, coloring and activity books, model train sets, sticker albums, trading cards, Shrinky Dinks, Colorforms, board games, Find-Your-Fate (a knockoff Choose Your Own Adventure) and other young adult novels, Atari and Nintendo video games, and much more. Just about anything you can name that might have appealed to a young boy in the 1980s and early 1990s most likely had a G.I. Joe logo and piece of art slapped onto it at some point. G.I. Joe was inescapable. Its iconography was everywhere.
Measuring 14″x15″ and 2″ deep, The Art of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero – Omnibus Hardcover is a very big book that comes packaged in an even larger hard storage case cleverly designed to emulate the 1982 G.I. Joe Official Collector Display Case. Also inside the case is a portfolio of two dozen 11″x14″ glossy art prints. It’s quite an impressive package.
As per its title, The Art of G.I. Joe approaches this subject from the perspective of the artwork that defined the franchise, caught the eyes of children, and set it apart from competitors. The book features large, full-color and high-resolution images of every single G.I. Joe action figure, vehicle, and playset package released during what is now defined as the “Vintage” era of 1982-1994.
Although you can also find those images on the web, including on the 3DJoes site, seeing them printed in this size and quality brings out a stunning sense of detail easily overlooked elsewhere. In addition to that, the book includes many unadorned blow-ups of the raw art before any text, logos, or other clutter was added to obscure them. Other pages show draft art in early temp stages as well as discarded designs.
Already impressive in page count, many chapters throughout the book include fold-out panels on one or both sides, which can bring the display width to nearly five feet!
To be honest, the size, weight, and form factor can be a little cumbersome at times. The book definitely requires a large surface to spread out onto. Sitting in a recliner with this in your lap may not prove too comfortable. However, those issues are more than offset by the benefits of seeing the art magnified to this scale and detail.
The scope of this book goes far beyond just the toy packaging. All those other forms of tie-in merchandise mentioned above are showcased too. Mataxis has spent years collecting and documenting seemingly every piece of G.I. Joe art released during the line’s run, and they’re all given a spotlight here, from the smallest promo circular crammed inside a figure cardback blister to the oversized 884-piece Milton Bradley jigsaw mural puzzles.
The text is just as compelling as the photos. Through a series of profiles and interviews (with those still alive) of artists, toy creators, marketing personnel, former Hasbro executives, and others who were there in the thick of it at the time, the book paints a vivid picture of how the company devoted every resource to creating a phenomenon that would dominate the toy industry and the popular consciousness of young schoolchildren for more than a decade.
Specifically, the book makes a case that doing so required genuine artistry from all quarters. This 40-year-old toy line – as well as its silly cartoon and comic book and other assorted ephemera – are worth looking back and studying as real art, for both the talent required to create them, and the emotional impact they made on their audience.
Sadly, the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero bubble burst in the early 1990s and Hasbro canceled the line in 1994. Initial attempts to reinvent G.I. Joe in new forms (Sgt. Savage and His Screaming Eagles, G.I. Joe Extreme) went poorly and were short-lived. Subsequent revivals of the A Real American Hero brand targeting collectors rather than children have had on-and-off success over the years, but efforts to launch a franchise of live-action movies have consistently failed. Most recently, the property has been doing pretty well with a line of 6″ figures called G.I. Joe Classified that pay considerable homage to the 1980s toys, and a run of G.I. Joe x Transformers crossovers that recreate some of the original G.I. Joe figures and re-imagine G.I. Joe vehicles as Transformer characters. Robert Kirkman’s Skybound publishing label also just kicked off the G.I. Joe portion of its Energon Universe comic book continuity at the end of December.
G.I. Joe may never capture the imaginations of children again the way it did in the 1980s, but a book like The Art of G.I. Joe is a beautiful testament to the combination of genius and hard work it took to pull off that feat in the first place.
Copies of The Art of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero – Omnibus Hardcover began shipping to Kickstarter backers at the end of December. Once all Kickstarter orders are fulfilled, additional copies will be available for direct sale. Details are available at 3DJoes.
The Video File Blog 
Lovely! I need this!
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This looks pretty awesome. It makes me wish they would do one for Cops and Transformers. I always loved the artwork on the packaging for these.
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