GI Joe Stamp and Sticker Set
by Jeremy
One of the often overlooked avenues of toy collecting is collecting items that don’t fall under the toy/action figure category. These products, such as magazines, clothes, stationery, etc., can be a fascinating avenue to consider when you’re all burned-out on buying toys. It’s hard to believe now, but during its heyday, G.I. Joe was a cultural phenomenon! Who could forget the Corduroy Bear TV special from 1984 that prominently featured a G.I. Joe train set, or the scene from the legendary 1985 movie The Legend of Billie Jean where the Helen Slater character writes an IOU for the G.I. Joe walkie-talkies she takes?
There are all kinds of really interesting ancillary G.I. Joe products that I like to collect as much as the figures themselves. Various issues of Cracked magazine that parodied Joe (G.I. Joke), paper plates, lunch boxes ,table cloths, puzzles, tissue, stationery, (believe it or not I’ve seen a Snow-Job eraser), coloring books, the official G.I. Joe magazine, and many more items really helped support the brand. Seeing how different companies interpret the Joe brand has always been fascinating to me.
I picked up some interesting items recently. First off are some G.I.Joe stampers. I have a Scrap-Iron stamp that is a picture of his standing missile-launcher, a nice Slugger stamp, a really cool Crimson Guardsman bust/stamper, and a BLAM! sound effect stamp, probably directly lifted from the Marvel comic. I like the Crimson Guardsmen stamp in particular, in any event it’s a good conversation piece. A quick curious glance at eBay suggests there were perhaps dozens of these made-at any rate they’re not too common.
I found the G.I. Joe sticker album a few years ago at my buddy’s comic shop. He gave it to me for nothing (Thanks, Don!) and one quick HISS Tank trade later, I had the whole sticker set plus the display box and a few unopened packs. Just looking at that display box and the price (29 cents!) reminds me of my teenage years in the inner city of Buffalo, going to the corner store to buy penny Swedish red fish, where the proprietor actually counted ’em out one by one using his bare hands….
The sticker book includes a “decoder”, basically a red transparent piece of plastic, that when laying over certain parts of the album, revealed secret codes and such. These kind of products, I find really interesting and can really make your Joe collection stand out.
Pingback: Joe A Day » New Field Report: GI Joe Stamp and Sticker Set by Jeremy
You know, I vaguely remember having that sticker album. You’ve inspired me to dig through some of my old stuff to maybe track that down (I know I didn’t have the whole set) and a weird G.I. Joe board game I remember having as a kid. This is some neat stuff.
I remeber when i was in junior school, one of my teachers had a Leader-1 stamp which all the guys wanted on their work. They would ask for “The Transformer stamp” I would almost have a heart attack, trying to tell them that Gobots and Transformers were unrelated. How many other seven year olds were like that?
A few peices of JOE merchandise i remember fondly are a colouring book [which had the Rolling thunder in it] and a mail order catalouge i have yet to find anywhere. I used to stare at that catalouge for hours. All i really remeber from it was that Serpentor was on the first page and that it also featured the Quick Kick which was made out of the weak plastic
Excellent post, Jeremy. In recent years, I got the first issue of the official magazine, a couple of small storybooks and the larger reprint trade of issues #3, #6, and #7, all featuring Earl Norem painted covers.
I once had the 1982 lunchbox and thermos, along with a cool water bottle you could clip on to your bicycle. I’ve never seen that one for sale on the net to this day. I was a member of the original Hasbro G.I. Joe fan club and still have the personalized dog tag with my old Chicago address on it.
Around 24 years ago, I branched out into collecting non-figure collectibles, rack toys, and various ancillary paraphernalia based on Marvel, DC, Disney, several action figure brands, and anything cool you could think of. I sold it all many years ago to my great regret nowadays, so what I do is collect pics of similar items off eBay auctions to catalog what is out there in case I can afford it all again someday…
Great review! In Europe the stickers were by Panini!
I loved that sticker book. I had 2 of them when I was a kid, both mostly filled to completion but both frustratingly short ina few spots. d’oh! I’m pretty sure I had the CG stamper too.
I just dug out my sticker books the other day!
I got 3 of these sticker books. All the same but none have all the stickers. Very cool. Brought back a lot of memories
Great find! Those sticker books are super awesome! I agree, the memories they bring back are awesome! 🙂