By the time I was in 9th grade, yeah, I had decided I was too old for toys. I had moved to California to live with my dad, but didn't take any of my stuff like that with me.

I hadn't bought anything Joe related in years, yet I still looked whenever I might find myself in a toy store or department store.

Until 1992. Then for some reason I bought a Gung Ho figure. I guess I figured, I am now a Marine (having just joined the Marines and at the time was going through Motor Transport school), maybe I should get the guy who was THE Marine in my childhood world. In fact, to be perfectly honest, G.I.*JOE was about half the reason I joined the Marines. Gung Ho hung with me for a while.

After that I didn't buy another Joe figure for a few years, but I went back to collecting another figure form my childhood; Star Wars. Mr. Lucas aka "The Maker," decided to re-release the greatest movie trilogy ever made and with that re-release came a whole slew of new figures. I ended up with about thirty of them. I didn't really want any of the vehicles, coz they take up so much space, so I got the small Galoob (I think) collection.

One time whilst perusing the Star Wars isle at a We B Toys, I noticed that G.I.*JOE was now being released in three packs. I couldn't find any SW figures I wanted, so I plunked down the cash for ALL the three packs at once. I may not have been able to eat that week, but at least I had something to keep me entertained.

The new Joes were acquainted with my old childhood Joes and they got along fine, but got put into a storage unit because I had to move and could immediately bring them with me.
Here's the suck part; I was mailing in my payments for the storage unit. Apparently the book keeper wasn't doing her job very well and kept entering my payments into the wrong file, so when the owner was going over the records, it appeared as if I hadn't paid for storage in several months, so all my stuff was sold. Everything I owned, all my Marines Corps memorabilia, all but the clothes I had with me, my housewares and bathroom stuff and yes, all my old toys, including those Joe and Star Wars figures and toys.

G.I.*JOE was out of my mind for a while as I tried to regroup my life.

Fast forward a few years to 2002. I was working at a hotel as the night auditor. One of my co-workers is a comic geek and had some Joe, SW and TF decals on his laptop. One night he left a copy of the movie and I watched it and was brought back to my childhood.
Since my job as the night auditor was an eight hour shift with maybe two actual hours of work, I had a lot of dead time on my hands.

I cruised eBay looking for some of the old Joe toys I owned, just to see what they might be worth these days. Then I started getting it in my head about building small teams, like using Gung Ho, Leatherneck, Sgt Slaughter and Mainframe as a small team of Marines. Or maybe Repainting a Skystriker and using model decals make it look like a real F-14. Knowing the Dragonfly looks like an AH-1 Cobra, I thought about ways to fix that tail section to put a prop there. Strangely enough, I honestly thought I was the only person who had ever thought about customizing G.I.*JOE toys this way. None of this really went anywhere as I never bought anything, but it was just fun to fantasize for a bit. I did buy the entire series and movie on VHS, but that's about the only Joe purchase I'd made.

Again, hit the fast forward button to about a year ago. I walked into a surplus store that was going out of business. Amongst other things, they had a box full of G.I.*JOE and similar toys that they had on display in their storefront cases. I asked how much they wanted for the box and the girl said "I dunno. $20?" Cha-Ching! Sold!

The box had an almost complete, but badly yellowed Skystriker, a few 82/83 figures plus some others. Quite a few of them were complete or mostly complete surprisingly enough. With those figures, the Skystriker and a couple of other vehicles, I made over $150 on eBay. I had actually searched eBay for some of the missing parts and so total probably had about $50 total invested. Not a bad little profit. I didn't really have any ambition to start collecting at that time, but it was fun to refurbish those toys

One day out of pure boredom while reading an issue of Star Wars Insider, I saw a picture of the 501st and wondered if there were any G.I.*JOE related costuming groups. I looked up on line and sure enough there was G.I.Joe Costumers (a really good group of people). I lurked for a bit and decided to join up. Since I don't quite have the physique to be Gung Ho or Sgt Slaughter and they already had a Leatherneck, I decided to go with Mainframe (I'd have felt really out of place NOT wearing some kind of Marine Corps uniform)

This is where my current interest in G.I.*JOE came from. While trying to find references for Mainframe, I happened upon a site called Joe Battlelines, and read the review of Mainframe, but furthermore the great pictures. This got me to thinking a little less about a costume and little more about the figures and vehicles.

Now I wanted to get some figures. All because of a review of Mainframe written by Justin "General Hawk" Bell. Damn you Justin Bell! Damn you to where ever Canadians are typically damned to! (Probably Detroit) Because of your great pictures and awesome figure reviews, I am now a Joe-a-holic and have a really good collection going. Oh, not only did he get me hooked with his reviews, he hosts a web site site with something called a "Dio-Story." Something I read and now have endeavored to create myself.

I was reminded of one of my favorite episodes of the cartoon, "Let's Play Soldier." Within the show was what I thought was the perfect team made up of Gung Ho, Leatherneck, Beach Head, Wet Suit, and Low Light. So I thought I'd buy those figures., but maybe add Torpedo so there were two SEALs. Maybe Shipwreck too. Now they need something to get around in...HMMM, a Tomahawk would be cool. Maybe repaint a Moray in US Navy colours....

Crap.

Now I'm hooked.

Now I've got a decent collection of over 200 figures and almost 60 vehicles. I've started customizing a few vehicles and figures thanks to Joe Customs, a site that had made me realize that I wasn't the only one ever to think of customizing G.I.*JOEs. I don't know why I thought that, as I'm not that savvy, but I'm glad to have found the site and see what possibilities there are.

I've started my own Dio-Story thanks to JoeDios and General Joes, as well as having enjoyed taking pictures of the figures and vehicles for just regular pictures for fun.

Now, to counteract the suck part of when the book keeper lost my storage payments and I lost all my stuff, apparently my toys found their way into the on line world. A few months ago I bought a bunch of HISSes. One of these HISSes had the decals put on in a non-symmetrical way, much like those of the HISS I owned as a kid. I removed the turret from the hull and sure enough, painted on the bottom of the turret were my initials. My mom had painted them there so I could ID mine over those of my friends.

I was so happy to have scored one of my old toys for when I was a kid that I had thought was gone forever.

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The United States will conquer Terrorism with the help of God and a few Marines.

Some people, when trying to avoid thinking about those things that cause them pain, turn to drink, or perhaps food, or drugs... I turn not to any of those... I collect action figures, turning my mind to the hunt, so that I might find a mote of peace... Over the years, I've found that alcoholism is much more socially acceptable by far.