GIJoes vs. Transformers

My friend James' most recent blog today caused me to have a childhood flashback. I didn't have a spectacular childhood, but I did have a lot of awesome toys. That's one thing my dad spoiled me with. Every weekend when he visited me he would take me to ToysRUs and get me a new toy. My fixation? GIJoes. I had like almost every single GIJoe character and lot of the vehicles as well.

When I was a kid the two competing toys were GIJoes and Transformers. You either played with one or the other. Some played with both. I did have a few Transformers, but I never got into it. It was too hard to play. Because every time you had a battle you had to stop your imagination and transform all of them. It was too much work.

That makes me wonder if the kids who grew up playing Transformers had a certain kind of personality vs. the kids who grew up playing GIJoes. I definitely think the kids who grew up playing with Transformers were more techy. They are the kids who like science fiction, space, Astronomy, robots (obviously), and probably grew up to become Trekkies (Next Generation only) and work in some computer related field. And these kids were probably in the top 5% of their class since elementary school. Is that too much of a generalization or was I just describing my friend James?

The Joes on the other hand were non technical, a lot of them were probably jocks, kids without the patience or the quick hand eye coordination to transform all their toys in a split second. They probably love war and all types of hand to hand combat in general, more lazy, not into science fiction, hate Star Trek TNG, and every time they touch a computer it breaks or malfunctions. These are the guys who are always calling IT at a moments notice when all they really had to do was reboot their computer. Is that too much of a generalization or did I just describe myself?

In either case my friend's blog did transport me back for a split second to a time when I would escape for hours into a fantasy world full of Ninjas, a guy with a metal head, a snake commander, and the All American blonde hero Duke, who none of us should be able to relate to.

I do have to say that the Transformers did have a better cartoon than GIJoe. When I came home from school in Elementary school, it would be Thundercats, GIJoe, then Transformers. It was the ultimate line up. Transformers the movie was also way cooler than GIJoe the movie. There really wasn't any comparison. I mean Optimus Prime died for goodness sake! What kind of sick twisted person wrote that into the script! So many kids cried.

On a tangent, I did also play with He-Man Master of the Universe for awhile. I had a pretty good collection of those as well.


His body looks Korean cuz he has short legs.