You know... I never really watched cartoon or read comic - that as something that I wasn't very keen on. I got other great cartoons tht day - General Daimos for instance .
But the personality.. yes... EVERY figure has a file card. And if sometimes Cobras are shown as a complete dumbasses, these filecards DO give them life :) Yes... they are alive for me, as they are alive for you :)
That's why It's always a great problem for me to decide who's gonna die in my dios. (I'm counting only SINGLE characters. Vipers always die in dozens, as you know... target practice;))

In my 1st dio, I killed off Big Ben, Rampage, Torpedo and a WHOLE slew of others. And for those who actually got thru it, Nunchuk is still in disguise as Viper and Firefly is still in a jailcell! I never did wrap those ends up. lol.

Big Ben? :eek: :mad:

*De-cloaks for posting*

This is a really great thread! Like some of you I grew up with the Joe's! I was born in 1985, in 89 I got Dodger. My first figure. I was hooked. The videos of the cartoon soon followed. I grew up with the toyline and stayed reasonably faithful to it. X-MEN and the Turtles tried to put me off Joe, but never succeeded! Because I watched the toon as a boy, the cartoon style sculpts and colouring of figures are usually always my favourite. My only regret is, that as a boy, I didn't have many cartoon style figures or vehicles. As a boy I wanted every Joe figure and playset made. My first ever ambition. One which I still try to accomplish today! I might have had it done had I not started army building! Oops!

GI Joe is more than a toyline, to all of us and to every other collector.

Realism still does not really bother me, though. I blame the toon for that!

Another thing for sure, is that in my case at least, is that the older I get, the more the Joe's mean to me. So many memories!

Also since starting to take pictures of my Joe's, even before I started posting here, I learned to appreciate the Joe's all the more. I love photographing the Joe's and that has played a big part in keeping me hooked, even still! I have General Hawk and Timelf to thank for that! Their dio's inspired me to start doing dio pics. Although these guys and many other dioists -I know that isn't a word, but you know what I mean- inspire me still, these days you guys on Joedios, inspire me and influence me to keep on snapping all the more! Now I just need to make more progress on that pesky dio of my own!

So now you know...

Dave

Why I like Joe
 

I got my first Joe in 1964, he was the Action Pilot, I played with him all the time and eventually got about a dozen Joes and various 1/6th scale figures. I remember having the Mercury capsule and having "splashdowns" in our pool. I was always a comic book/strip fan and used to make my own elaborate stories with my Joes. Somewhere around 1971, my Mom gave away all my Joes to a cousin. In 1973, I started doing stop-motion animation and bought a bunch of Mego figures (8" tall as opposed to 12" tall). Most of these guys survived and i still have some. In the 90s when the 12" Joes were reintroduced, I got a few and some Action Man as well as Captain Action reissues. I really started to go crazy about a year ago and have been all out G.I. Joe insane. I started to get some of the sets I had as a kid and also started doing photo-stories with them. I never got into the 3.75" Joe, too busy doing all that fun bad stuff we all do in our 20s and somehow I kept that up into my 30s. When Sigma 6 came out, I fell in love with the cartoony Joes and have been collecting them.

So, why do I like Joe? He let's me feel young and creative again. He inspires me to be a 48 year old kid!!!

i first got involved with gijoes when i was 9 and i'm 11 now so when i get my allowance and theirs actully 3,3/4in joes on the shelves cause in VA theirs barely any new little joes we still haven't gotten the viper lockdown set but in johnson city theirs a toys r us that i have not been to yet and xmas is comming up so you never now

When ever I see a joe I grab it!

Yeah G, how can you kill off Big Ben?! I hope it wasn't the original! :)

Joes make me feel like a kid again. I'm 29 and in denial. A kid will say- adults suck, they're boring, stupid, and excessively serious, and for the most part I sympathize completely. :D

In the era of nu skulpts, the older archaic ones just didn't seem to match up. Big Ben and Surefire were quickly killed off in a pretty cartoony generic attack. Therefore, it was the W1.5 JvC versions that bit the dust.

Ah oui, R.I.P. --that was Big Bon, a member of the french SAS :D

I like them for the same reason everyone else does. They take me back to simpler days. Days when i would rush home from school, grab a bite to eat and run to my friend's house, where we would all meet and start picking who we were gonna be. We would play for hours and hours and didn't have to worry about paying bills, working, or even girls, although that is my fav thing to worry about,lol.
I think toys, not just joes, but all the toys we played with as kids make us feel young and take us back to the worry free days. What i would'nt give to have a channel with M.A.S.K, the Real Ghostbusters, Bravestar, COPS, Transformes and G.I. Joe to watch in the evenings. Sorry I went on so long, this is why i dont post.