Front & Center

There may be a war raging in Viet Nam, but the feedback to the nation's toy manufacturers this year has been minimal. As the Christmas rush went into its last hectic week, retailers had an arsenal of toy guns, helmets, boy-size bazookas and similar military attractions unsold upon the shelves. "People are sickened by anything painted in olive drab," said Harvey Cole, a wholesale distributor in the Seattle area. There was, added a competitor, just one exception. "Along comes G.I. Joe and his endless military gear and the parents rush the stores. You explain it."

G.I. Joe is the 11 1/2-in.-high doll whose face--a composite of 20 Congressional Medal of Honor winners--is instantly recognized in at least 10 million American homes. Launched over three years ago by Hassenfeld Bros, of Pawtucket, R.I., he has 21 movable parts that enable him to salute smartly, grasp the fork of a tiny mess kit with ease, crouch in a foxhole or squeeze into a Jeep. "He's like a real person," said Chicago's Jon Anderson, 5. And while some fathers worry that doll-playing is "sissy," others find Joe "real gutsy." Asks one mother: "How else can a child go deep sea diving, or drive a tank through the desert?"

To his creators, G.I. Joe is also a gold mine. "Once a kid gets Joe," says President Merrill Hassenfeld happily, "his parents are hooked." Not only hooked, but squirming, for, though the basic doll costs only $4, he comes with enough extra equipment to make a quartermaster's head swim, can be equipped for multiple duties ranging from ski patrol and forward artillery observer to underwater demolition.

A complete arsenal, in theory, would cost around $200, and many a family has found itself getting almost as far ahead of its original spending estimates as, say, Defense Secretary McNamara. This Christmas season, G.I. Joe is still the bestselling single new toy around, despite the competition of other dolls such as Stone Burke, paratrooper, James Bond, Illya Kuryakin and Captain Action, who can be dressed as Batman, Superman or Steve Canyon. Keeping the troops faithful to Joe are a brand-new G.I.-Joe Mercury capsule with solid silver space suit ($10), a G.I.-Joe Sea-Sled that operates under water ($14), and a six-man international task force of "action soldiers of the world"--French, German, Japanese, British, Australian, and a fur-capped Russian.

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