As a young lad, my summers were split into two, roughly even, segments. The first half consisted of baseball and day camp at the YMCA. Once baseball season ended, usually in mid-July, my mom would ship me off to spend a month or so with my grandparents in central Kansas.<\/p>\n
Her parents were farmers. They could pick up three TV stations (on a good day). Their home was small and few items from my uncles\u2019 childhoods remained. I\u2019d spend my time at their house either throwing a baseball against the side of the barn, going to the pool in the nearest town with my cousins, or using things from the suitcase full of books, toys, games, and baseball cards I brought along to pass the days.<\/p>\n
My dad\u2019s parents, though, lived up the road a bit in a small city. They had cable TV.1<\/a><\/sup> There was a small zoo that I later realized was pretty sad and likely cruel to the animals. Evenings would be spent sitting on the front porch listening to the Royals game with my grandfather. But, most importantly, their basement was filled with toys left by my youngest uncle, who is just 11 years older than me. On my first day at their house, after spending the obligatory time catching up and settling into my room, I would rush downstairs and start dragging out things to play with for the next week. Prominent in that pile was my uncle\u2019s old G.I. Joe collection.<\/p>\n I loved those old Joes. I lamented that the line disappeared in the late 1970s, just as I was getting old enough to really be into them. When Hasbro resurrected the line as Star Wars-sized figures a few years later, I\u2019ll admit I spent probably a year or two longer than I should have playing with them. I had to make up for lost time, I guess.<\/p>\n Don Levine, the man who created the G.I. Joe, died last week.<\/p>\n Alex Pappademas wrote this terrific tribute to Levine and overview of the history of G.I. Joe<\/a> for Grantland.<\/p>\n \n \u201cHasbro was the laughingstock of the toy fair in 1964<\/a> because no one assumed G.I. Joe would sell,\u201d the company\u2019s longtime marketing director Wayne Charness told the Chicago Tribune in the late \u201980s, when sales of G.I. Joe figures and ancillary products had topped $2 billion. \u201cThe buyers thought we had a terrible idea, and they only bought a small amount, but that first year we had a monster hit. We laughed all the way into 1989, and we\u2019re still laughing.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n