A Man and His Soldiers of Fortune

When James DeSimone got his first G.I. Joe, he was 8 years old and living in Brooklyn. His father was in Vietnam. The toy cost about $3, but DeSimone wouldn’t have taken a million for it. “G.I. Joe was my pal. G.I. Joe was my dad,” he says.

Today, DeSimone is 39 and a walking encyclopedia of G.I. Joe. He claims to have the world’s largest G.I. Joe collection--10,000 pieces, including 700 figures and all 75 different incarnations--”and little grenades and knives and stuff.”

In the back yard of his Burbank home, he’s built a two-story structure to house bazookas, jeeps, uniformed figures of assorted allies and adversaries, rafts, mummy cases, spacewalking gear, scuba tanks and even a tiny plastic snake.

There are pup tents, flight suits and karate belts. There are G.I. Joes that talk at a tug of their dog tags (“Let’s take that hill! . . .”) and 3 3/4 inch G.I. Joes. (Joe shrank and grew again in spurts over the years.)

The 12-inch, original size Joe is the one most sought by real collectors. Introduced in 1964 as “America’s Movable Fighting Man,” G.I. Joe came complete with 21 movable parts and a super-macho image. And, like Barbie, who was born five years earlier, he demanded an abundance of money-gobbling clothes and accessories. G.I. Joe needed guns, uniforms, jeeps and parachutes.

G.I. Joe could salute, play dead, grip a rifle. And, being a real he-man, he took as well as he gave. DeSimone had about 12 different G.I. Joes and, he remembers, “I did terrible things to them, threw them up in the air, tortured them, drowned them--and made them go out on a date with Barbie. That was the worst thing you could do to G.I. Joe.”

DeSimone remembers when G.I. Joe hit the stores in 1964. “All of the boys used to be jealous” that the girls had Barbie. “Now we had something comparable. We could play with a doll and get away with it, and it would be cool. We didn’t call him a doll, of course.”

The war in Vietnam--from which DeSimone’s dad would return safely--grew increasingly unpopular at home, as did the concept of a military Joe. Flowers were in, guns were out and by the late ‘60s, G.I. Joe, America’s all-time best-selling boys’ toy, was under attack for teaching kids violence.

So, toy maker Hasbro went back to the drawing board and introduced a more politically correct G.I. Joe. “He became an Arctic explorer, a space explorer, a sea explorer,” says DeSimone. “He was 90% out of the military and into the Adventure Team.”

There are G.I. Joe collectors by the thousands. DeSimone claims 800 members--including about 40 women--in eight countries in his Southern California G.I. Joe Collector Club, one of several unofficial groups for devotees.

They’re expected to turn out in force Sunday at Target stores for the debut of a limited edition set of four G.I. Joe military figures that marks the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. “I’m getting the chills” in anticipation, says DeSimone.

He’s not alone. On his kitchen table are checks totaling $20,000 for orders sent to him by club members who don’t live near a Target. (The shopping service is one of the perks of membership, which costs $10 a year plus a $6 book of stamps to cover costs of the newsletter.)

“They collect G.I. Joe because it was the most articulated doll ever made,” DeSimone says, adding that, alas, current models have bigger muscles, but only 12 movable parts. “And the equipment and accessories were authentically correct.” (No, Joe was never anatomically correct.)

DeSimone values his collection at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some rare figures such as the short-lived G.I. Joe Nurse (a flop) fetch up to $1,000 today.

Nothing is for sale. He jokes, “When I die, my wife will be rich.” Meanwhile, he displays his Joes on huge dioramas that he trucks to his collectors conventions. (Next event: Oct. 28 and 29 at the Pasadena Hilton.)

DeSimone began collecting on a whim in 1981, after seeing a newspaper ad placed by a collector. Soon, he was haunting swap meets and garage sales. In 1991, he got two wake-up calls: His son Jonathan was born and he lost his job as a yogurt salesman. So, he decided to turn a dollar or two by throwing a G.I. Joe convention. To his astonishment, 1,000 people showed up. The conventions, and his catalogues, bring in enough, he says, “to sustain my efforts.”

As an advocate for hobbyists, DeSimone grumbles about the “Barbie-ization” of G.I. Joe, mentioning the special-edition Navy Seal G.I. Joe debuting this month exclusively at FAO Schwarz. Price tag with motorized mission raft: $85.

But for $4.99 each, one can still get the 1995 G.I. Joe Sgt. Savage action series, wherein Joe goes back to the future as a World War II POW who is cryogenically frozen and wakes after 50 years “stronger, faster, tougher. . . .”

“Most of the people who collect G.I. Joe today are men,” says DeSimone. “Today’s kids don’t use their imagination as much as we used to.”

Perhaps, but a Hasbro Toy Group representative says there will be a 1996 Joe and, “there are no plans to discontinue him.”

Now, whatever happened to those G.I. Joes that DeSimone so loved as a kid? “My mother threw them out,” he says. But a few were buried in the yard of the house on Staten Island where the family lived after leaving Brooklyn. It was a rite of passage he dictated for his younger brother, who’d inherited his G.I. Joes.

Maybe, when DeSimone goes back for his 20th high school reunion. . . .

Former Playmates to the Aid of Another

The invitation from Playboy Enterprises read, “Help us help Sharry Konopski, Miss August 1987, learn to walk again.”

Twelve former playmates and a handful of celebrities including Michael Jordan came to the party at The Gate on La Cienega. But the guest of honor wasn’t there: On April 1, driving through a thick fog near her home in Washington state, Konopski, 27, braked to avoid a trio of deer, skidded and rolled her 1982 Mustang.

She broke two vertebrae and is paralyzed from the chest down.

That night she’d been heading home after work: She was owner and sole employee of a night cleaning service, which she’d started to help make ends meet while she finished college.

Being a Playboy centerfold had been “a lot of fun,” she says, but unlike many other Playmates, she had not pursued a modeling or acting career. Opting out of the fast lane, she’d returned home to Washington, started college and married a cabinetmaker.

Konopski did work a few L.A. car shows and Playboy mansion parties but, she found, “there are too many sharks out there, too many 80-year-old men who like really young girls. I got out of the business before I got hurt.”

After weeks in a hospital--prognosis, permanent paralysis--she has a pile of medical bills (insurance didn’t cover all of the $100,000-plus) and she needs a $20,000 van with a hydraulic lift for her wheelchair so she can go to school and drive her two young children around.

Organizers hope the L.A. party will clear $5,000.

Among those attending was Ellen Stohl, 31, who is paraplegic and was the first disabled person featured in Playboy, in July, 1987. She was getting a lot of attention, and she understood too well. “People think I’m Sharry because I’m in a wheelchair.”

She has a mission to make people understand that disabled people can be sexy, too. “I’d like to see Sharry get back in the magazine,” she said.