G.i.-Joe

by RPG on 2011-12-02

Welcome to our G.I. Joe coloring pages! On this page you’ll be able to find some nice G.I. Joe coloring pages, but you’ll also be able to learn a lot about G.I. Joe.
If you’re not too keen on learning about G.I. Joe, then I suggest you scroll right down to the G.I. Joe coloring pages.

Did you know that G.I. Joe is not the name of just one person?

G.I. Joe is a line of action figures produced by the toy company Hasbro. The initial product offering represented four of the branches of the U.S. armed forces with the Action Soldier (U.S. Army), Action Sailor (U.S. Navy), Action Pilot (USAF), Action Marine (USMC) and later on, the Action Nurse. The term G.I. stands for Government Issue and became a generic term for U.S. soldiers (predating the action figures), especially ground forces. The development of G.I. Joe led to the coining of the term “action figure”.

You can see several of the G.I. Joe action figures in our G.I. Joe coloring pages.

The G.I. Joe trademark has been used by Hasbro to title two different toy lines. The original 12-inch line that began in 1964 centered on realistic action figures. In the United Kingdom, this line was licensed to Palitoy and known as Action Man. In 1982, the line was relaunched in a three and a quarter-inch scale complete with vehicles, playsets, and a complex background story involving an ongoing struggle between the G.I. Joe Team and the evil Cobra Command which seeks to take over the Free World while using terrorism. As the American line evolved into the Real American Hero series, Action Man also changed, by using the same molds and being renamed as Action Force. Although the members of the G.I. Joe team are not superheroes, they all had expertise in areas such as martial arts, weapons and explosives.

The conventional marketing wisdom of the early 1960s was that boys would not play with dolls, thus the word doll was never used by Hasbro or anyone involved in the development or marketing of G.I. Joe. Action figure was the only acceptable term, and has since become the generic description for any pose-able doll intended for boys. America’s movable fighting man is a registered trademark of Hasbro, and was prominently displayed on every boxed figure package.

The Hasbro prototypes were originally named Rocky (marine/soldier) Skip (sailor) and Ace (pilot), before the more universal name G.I. Joe was adopted. One of the prototypes would later sell in a Heritage auction in 2003 for $200,001.

Aside from the obvious trademarking on the right buttock, other aspects of the figure were copyrighted features that allowed Hasbro to successfully pursue cases against producers of cheap imitations, since the human figure itself cannot be copyrighted or trademarked. The scar on the right cheek was one; another, unintentional at first, was the placement of the right thumbnail on the underside of the thumb.

Now that you’ve learned all about G.I. Joe it’s time to head right on down to the G.I. Joe coloring pages! We hope you’ll like our G.I. Joe coloring pages, because you’re allowed to color as many as you’d like!