August 1990. I was with my Grandma and Grandpa in the back seat of their car. The smell of Viceroy cigarettes was wafting through the air and the sounds of KTAR talk radio was blaring. We were coming back from Payson during the waning days of summer. The announcer came on with some breaking news. Saddam Hussein's forces had invaded Kuwait. War was on. In the following months, the TV would be filled with images of soldiers streaming into the middle east. It was the first war I remember watching live on TV as it happened. The war was what rekindled my interest in GI Joe. It wasn't too long after Operation Desert Shield turned into Operation Desert Storm that I was combing everywhere I could to find those Joes I had lost from a few years earlier.
This was a great time to collect GI Joe. Just about every comic book shop had a rumpled box behind the counter that was filled with Joes and their weapons. The storekeepers were more than happy to get rid of them for next to nothing. I remember buying them for about a buck a piece at certain places. Joe vehicles were equally as irritating for comic book retailers. They were selling them off to me for usually under 10 bucks a pop! I scored some good deals through the regular retailers as well. Lionel Playworld in its dying days kept the older Joes on their shelves and I managed to pick up the Mobile Command Center on clearance. The Toys R Us across the street had an open box Night Boomer on clearance as well that I picked up (I wish I still had that one!). A small town store called Cornet was another favorite of mine for Joe shopping (toys in general). They had multiple years of Joe stock from a few years back, plus they still carried MASK a few years after they stopped making them! Toy shows seemed to pop up every month at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. I found my '82 Scarlett at one for what seemed like a fortune back then... $15!!
I was an older, more sophisticated GI Joe fan during this time. In my younger days, GI Joe and Cobra would fight in straight battles. Now I had developed complicated plots and sub-plots. Joes died, some came back to life. There was plenty of machevellian plotting in the Cobra camp as many strove to overthrow Cobra Commander, and they all failed. Some plots involved time travel, wormholes, space battles and riots. Cobra Commander even managed to get elected mayor of Pinewood, California. Pinewood was a city I had made up a few years earlier and it was the epicenter of my Joeverse (and still is to this day). GI Joe had a base there and Cobra was constantly trying to take over the city. All these adventures make up the foundation of my current day Joeverse.
Sadly, it all came to an end in 1994. Some of the last Joes I remember buying were the 30th Anniversary Action Soldier, Pilot, and Marine sets and a few of the Street Fighter figures. I didn't realize at that time that the line was coming to an end. My attention turned to getting my first car, and from there my life as an ordinary teenager began, and the Joes went into the attic and the closet.
COMING SOON! PART 3!
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