A Conversation with John Michlig By Barry Kay Interview reprinted from The GI Joe Collector's Club Newsletter Back to BEHIND THE SCENES TABLE OF CONTENTS FURTHER READING GI JOE: The Complete Story of America's Favorite Man of Action by John Michlig (Chronicle Books) The GI Joe Masterpiece Edition The Masterpiece Edition is now available at eToys ORDER HERE. Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between GI Joe, Barbie, and the Companies That Make Them by G. Wayne Miller. LINKS to GI Joe collector and enthusiast sites. GITROOPER'S GI JOE PAGE is the best welcome wagon for new collectors and persons just starting out in the hobby. HASBROCOLLECTORS.COM THE WOLF FILES at ABCNEWS.COM: "All Dolled Up" Travellin' Joe One lucky GI Joe action figure travels the world, and you are there. JOE WORLD A great site to visit if you want to get started in the hobby. Back to THE GILL NET HOMEPAGE Contact John Michlig

There has been a lot written about GI Joe over the last 34 years, but no one book has ever told the entire in-depth story of the rise, fall and re-birth of America's Moveable Fighting Man - until now. Chronicle books has just released "The Complete Story of America's Favorite Man of Action" by author John Michlig and it is truly the complete story. Many of you may recognize Michlig's name from his last project, The GI Joe Masterpiece Edition containing the book "GI Joe, The Story behind the Legend." John and his wife live in Wisconsin and they are expecting their first child. I recently had the opportunity to speak with John about his work on the Masterpiece Edition as well as his new book, or as he calls it, the "BIG" book. Barry Kay: What was your background prior to working on the GI Joe Masterpiece Edition? John Michlig: Many years ago I worked for an advertising agency as a writer and graphic designer. I left the agency and started working freelance as a writer and designer when the agency began to compartmentalize job descriptions and I began to do more design than writing. As a freelancer I did magazine articles but most of my income came from product development and promotional development for clients like Western Publishing, which is now called Golden Books. I wrote Golden Books like Sonic the Hedgehog. Western Publishing's creative agency would get hired by Oldsmobile, Fruit of the Loom, Hershey's, Nintendo, Warner Bros. and others, and they'd subcontract me to do the concept generation and editorial. I designed some of the little toys that kids get when they go to Pizza Hut, prizes for cereal boxes, mail in premiums and things like that. For every ten I designed only two or three would actually see the light of day, but that's the way that those things were done. BK: So how did the "Masterpiece" project get started? JM: Collecting or not, GI Joe seems to be something that men in their 30's have in common-when sports and weather are exhausted as topics, guys can always talk about their childhood adventures with GI Joe. I started to notice that people were spending a lot of money on the hobby; people who didn't necessarily make it known to their friends that they were collecting GI Joes would have a basement full of them! I went to my first GI Joe convention in 1994 in New York to do a magazine article about the collecting aspect of the phenomena for Collecting Toys magazine. At the convention, one of the first things that I noticed was that there were "celebrities" within the collecting culture. Some collectors would have their name on a sign above their displays, and I even saw some of them signing autographs. I asked some of them if they knew who invented GI Joe or who did the artwork on the posters and t-shirts they were selling, and none of them really knew. They didn't have any real background on the toy. "My interview tape was still running as I described the product to Levine; I said, 'I envision a box where you open the lid and you see a book that explains the background of GI Joe. And right next to that book is your old friend GI Joe, exactly as he was in 1964.' That way husbands could sneak it into their houses past their wives by saying, 'I didn't buy a toy, I bought a book, it just happens to have an action figure attached to it!' In my mind, it was basically a scam to get GI Joe back into people's houses." It was at that 1994 convention that I met people like Sam Speers, George Eisenberg and Don Levine. My short initial conversations with them convinced me that the story of GI Joe would be very interesting to write about because there had been so many people involved in creating this one product. Some of them worked together in the same room while others had never never even met one another; I thought it would be really interesting to assemble everyone's perspective. By chance I happened to meet Don Levine at the convention's press conference, and I immediately hit him up for an interview so I could write an article about his experiences at Hasbro. It became clear that the GI Joe story could be told through Levine. He was there at the beginning, middle and end of the original process, and very little happened without his personal knowledge. All of the various initial assignments flowed out from him. A month or so later I was in Levine's home interviewing him for my article when I mentioned that there were enough characters and material in the story of GI Joe for an entire book. After we'd pretty much wrapped up our session he asked me to explain my idea for a book, how I saw it in my mind. I told him that I would contact all of the people involved, the book could be very visual since he had a lot of things in his basement and the others had things as well and we could take pictures of it all. I also told him that there could be a "secret weapon" involved. GI Joe was not only my toy when I was a kid, he was also my friend. I recognized a special relationship there. I thought it would be great to give a friend back to people with this book by packaging it with an original, riveted, fully articulated GI Joe. My interview tape was still running as I described the product to Levine; I said, "I envision a box where you open the lid and you see a book that explains the background of GI Joe. And right next to that book is your old friend GI Joe, exactly as he was in 1964. That way husbands could sneak it into their houses past their wives by saying, "I didn't buy a toy, I bought a book, it just happens to have an action figure attached to it!" In my mind, it was basically a scam to get GI Joe back into people's houses. As it turns out, the GI Joe Masterpiece Edition ended up looking nearly exactly as I originally described it to Levine. Levine really liked the idea-he explained that he was "out of the GI Joe business, but something like this idea could bring me back." Still, he wasn't immediately convinced that the old GI Joe body had any intrinsic value, and neither was Hasbro. My first selling job was to convince Levine and Hasbro that people LOVED that crazy riveted body. Levine said to me, "If you can go home to Milwaukee and create something to show me what this will look like, maybe we can do something." I quickly hired two local artists and told them what I wanted to see: A book on one side, GI Joe on the other, but the main thing was that it had to have the look and feel of a book with an action figure, not a toy that comes with a book. We created a prototype that I FedEx'ed to Levine. He liked it and showed it to Hasbro and they were intrigued by it, so it was time to get a publisher interested. I formulated the product with Chronicle Books in mind because they'd done some great work with pop culture topics. I called Steve Sansweet-who at that point had written STAR WARS: FROM CONCEPT TO SCREEN TO COLLECTIBLE for Chronicle-and he concurred that Chronicle would be a good publisher to work with. Levine, however, wasn't familiar with Chronicle or the publishing industry in general so he wanted to pitch the big New York houses that were local to him and had familiar names. I produced detailed proposals for each publisher he made an appointment with. I wasn't surprised when Levine met with much encouragement but no success. One publisher wanted to do the book, but have the figure be a mail in premium so people would have to send $10 and then they would be sent a GI Joe. Another publisher wanted to make GI Joe a statue that would look like GI Joe, but not have any moving parts. Another company wanted to do a miniature GI Joe instead of the full-sized one. At the American Booksellers Association convention in Chicago I approached Peter Workman of Workman Publishing with my presentation-they do lots of "mixed" book products that include juggling balls with a book about juggling, etc.-and he looked at me like I was nuts. That was the only negative response we got. Finally, Levine and I flew out to San Francisco to see Chronicle Books, my first choice. We sat down with Jeff Schulte, who would eventually be the editor of the book. He was about my age so I knew that he would get what we were trying to do. From that meeting on I knew that we were going to be working with Chronicle. After that it was just a matter of negotiations and developing my idea. BK: At that point had you already decided that the book would just cover GI Joe's creation? JM: No, I remember that while my designers and I were constructing the first prototype of the book-and-figure package I actually took GI Joe and laid him down on his side and said, "OK that's how thick the book can be." We wanted a book that would have approximately the same depth as the figure so the package would be a good fit. But as I started talking to Chronicle about practical issues like manufacturing, weight limitations and measurement limitations, we had to rethink our plan in terms of a lighter book. Given that, I knew I would have to limit myself to a specific period of GI Joe's history, so I decided to tell the story of GI Joe's creation and initial success. BK: Well, lets talk about your new book "The Complete Story of America's Favorite Man of Action." I have to say that I read the book and I think it's great. JM: I'm really glad you like it. BK: I especially enjoyed the chapters on the Adventure team, so little has been written about that era. JM: It was the most interesting part of doing the research for me since most of those people had never asked about their involvement with GI Joe before. BK: I was really surprised to see how much Hasbro's approach to GI Joe had changed by the time the Adventure Team came around. JM: Part of what I was trying to get across at the same time that I was telling GI Joe's story was to tell the story-through the lens of Hasbro, Inc.-of how toy marketing had changed from the 60's to the 70's and into the 80's and 90's. GI Joe is a perfect example of a toy that retained its name and basic thrust, but had to go through three very distinctive marketing schemes in order to survive. If you wanted to do a seminar on toy marketing, GI Joe would be the toy to do it on. Other then GI Joe and Barbie, there aren't many toys that have lasted and evolved through the different eras. GI Joe is a more startling example since it didn't stay as constant as Barbie did. The look and theme of GI Joe changed along with the actual change in how things are marketed. When the military GI Joes came out in the 60's it was made and marketed in the way that all toys were back then: Hasbro decided to make something nifty that they thought kids would like, then they said, "OK now lets go sell it" and it was up to the marketing guys to go out and sell the toy. By the time that the Adventure Team came out it had all been turned around, due in a large part to Stephen Hassenfeld. He decided, basically, that Hasbro would have to think about how to market a product before actually designing the toy. The product development department used to drive the company, but that all turned around. It wasn't a gradual change either. Stephen Hassenfeld came in and said that from now on we are going to address the market rather then just go on instinct. Guesswork would not have a place in the new toy market that was emerging; in the new market you had to react quickly, you had to ANTICIPATE, so you couldn't just throw ten things out there and hope that one would stick. Hasbro had to find a way to measure exactly what kids wanted, what they were interested in and what they would respond to. That's why, for example, the Adventure Team vehicles were yellow. Camo was too difficult to produce; green was too military; black was boring. Hasbro research determined that yellow looks great on TV and that it wasn't a "little kid" color. Most children's toys were made using primary colors like red, blue and white-those were the colors that Fisher Price used on their toys. Hasbro saw yellow as an active color for more "grown up" kids. BK: How long did it take you to put this book together? JM: The new book took a lot less time to do then the first one because I had already met most of the people involved and they knew by now that I was "legit." Once they found out that I was the guy who wrote the first book they'd say, "I was wondering when someone was going to come talk to me." In any project like this, once you track down the first few key sources everything else falls into line pretty nicely. The hard part was the editing. I had about 100 hours of interviews and about ten times more pictures than actually ended up in the book. It's very difficult to whittle down so much information into a compact story. When I look at any book or article I produce, all I see is what I couldn't include. Another difficult part of producing a nonfiction, photo-filled book is trusting others to apply their creative input to your work. Writing is a very solitary exercise, and every writer remembers vividly being absolutely alone with his or her ideas and words. Once you turn over those words and ideas to a publisher, you've effectively lost your "child." Its funny; when I was working on the first book, Chronicle assigned a designer to it that they were very high on. They told me I was very lucky to have him, I going to love his work. So I called him and sent him a lot of material with notes on it but I didn't want to give him too many direct directives because, first of all, designers don't necessarily want to hear too much input from a mere author. Also, this was a guy who is known in the industry and has done some great, award-winning work. I looked up his other stuff and liked what I saw, so I was anxiously waiting to see what he'd do with GI Joe. When I got my first look at his layout, it was basically text and then a rectangle with a picture in it, then you would turn the page and see more text and then another rectangle with a picture in it. So I called Chronicle and said that it was neat and tidy, but it wasn't the least bit visually interesting. They flew the designer out to New York, where I was during Toy Fair, and we sat together in my hotel room for a day going through every page and I'd tell him, "See this picture here of this prototype head, this is exciting to someone who has an appreciation of this particular toy. It needs to be very, very large!" He took another swing at the design, but I could see that his heart wasn't in it. It turned out that this particular designer not only didn't have a GI Joe as a kid-couldn't afford one, he said-but seemed to have issues with his peers who DID have GI Joe. I ended up dictating the design to someone in-house at Chronicle-you'll notice that there's no designer credit for the GI Joe Masterpiece Edition book. When it came time to do the second book I had a huge chip on my shoulder, so I told Chronicle that I wanted to meet in advance the people that would be working on the second book. I flew out to San Francisco to meet the two guys that they wanted to do the second book. One was much younger then me, a skateboard guy with big baggy pants, and the other was about my age and a bit more low key. We went through all of my material and I could tell that they knew what GI Joe was all about. There are a few layouts in the new book that I dictated directly, but these guys made me feel that my book was in good hands and did a great job. BK: I like the fact that the book does not get into the value of specific GI Joe items today. Was that a conscious decision to leave out a price guide? JM: I never for a moment considered expending the space to list and assign values to a bunch of GI Joe figures and accessories. My job is to tell an interesting story in word and pictures no matter what the subject matter happens to be. Besides, I'm very uncomfortable with that whole mercenary aspect of collecting popular culture items. You'd be surprised how many people track me down and call me with questions like that: "I have this GI Joe figure that I yanked out of my attic and I want to know where I can turn it in for big dough." They're barking up the wrong tree. To me, GI Joe's value resides in how the toy makes you feel. I'm a child of the Adventure Team (John is 33 years old.) I would love to get a complete Secret of the Mummy's Tomb set like the one I got for my sixth birthday. It had the six-wheeled ATV that made me a star in the neighborhood; the little jewels-lost 'em; the mummy and sarcophagus-lost 'em; the giant box with its cool illustration was in the garbage after a month when my mom said, "You can't keep a box, who keeps a silly box?" If I could have a complete Secret of the Mummy's Tomb set right now, I'd be very happy-but what is it "worth"? Probably less then a foreign soldier or an original boxed Action Marine, but I believe the real value lies in how a particular toy makes you feel. BK: Why do you say that you're not a legitimate collector? JM: Before I went to the convention in New York in 1994 I thought that I sort of collected GI Joe because I still have my original GI Joes from when I was a kid-two of them, with their vehicles and Adventure Team Headquarters. I had my GI Joes on the shelf in my writing room, and anyone who came into my office saw them and said, "Oh, you must collect GI Joes." I also have always had different old and new toys in my office and den, but that's just because I like 'em. Then I went to that New York GI Joe convention and I saw what real collectors are-when you have 50 Joes on display and another 200 in storage, and you have every little piece of equipment that came with something, or it's "mint in the box" and never been opened. Then I was pretty much convinced that I wasn't a collector, per se. Chronicle Books liked to call me a "GI Joe collector" in their press releases, but they didn't ask me first. Now I guess I could be called a minor league collector. In the course of doing research for the two books I've accumulated things, and I have a couple of shelves where I have groups of GI Joe figures standing there. I buy the new Classic Collection guys when I can find them. Nothing stays in the box. BK: I think it would have been hard for you to do your research and not be drawn into collecting, although I think the fact that you aren't a fanatical collector allowed you to tell an objective story. JM: Well, a hardcore collector is bound to be drawn to aspects of the GI Joe phenomena that simply don't appeal to or register with the mainstream. To a great many big-time collectors, anything beyond a price list is just wasted paper. A very well-known GI Joe collector made a point of telling me that he had a couple dozen copies of the GI Joe Masterpiece Edition but had never bothered to read the book. He's as fanatical as you can possibly be about GI Joe, but he has utterly no interest in the human background of the icon. If I was at a convention and I walked past someone's table and saw that Mummy's Tomb boxed set and I had enough money in my pocket-and it wasn't some ridiculous price-I would go home with it. But I don't have that secondary "collector's bone" that would tell me, "You have this, you HAVE to get that." There's an often-cited theory from a turn of the century essay that states that a true collector eventually grows to HATE that which he or she collects, because the desire to keep their collection complete is so all-consuming and overwhelming that the original joy derived from the individual items is forgotten. I've seen that at GI Joe conventions, though not to any alarming degree. Doing the two books made me a fan of the military stuff like Soldiers of the World. I'm accumulating Classic Collection GI Joe figures at a leisurely rate. I really like the way they look. BK: So you're a fan of the Classic Collection? JM: Oh, sure. Some more than others, of course. I've said this in a few interviews and I'm usually afraid people will flinch when I say it, but if you take away the fact that you have to shoot people and that people are shooting at you, the military is pretty darn fun! You have tents and shovels and airplanes and tanks and all these cool things that hook onto your belt. That stuff is nifty! Also, when I look at the Classic Collection it has a direct connection to real heroes of both modern day military as well as WWII and Korea, and I guess I look at it that way as well. Look at the D-Day figure. There was a lot of media coverage of the Normandy landing a few years ago so I really got to know the ins and outs of that operation, how the soldiers were equipped, the fears they had, the people who made it and the people who didn't. The D-Day figure is astounding because all the "pieces" are there. I imagine there are some veterans of that operation that can use the D-Day GI Joe to explain that part of their lives to their children and grandchildren. I think that the purpose of the current Classic Collection figures is to remind people who are our age-who have or are going to have kids-how great a 12-inch articulated figure is as a toy You can dress and equip and make the choices for this man of action. I have had GI Joes in my hands quite a bit since I started writing these books and I can't deny the fact that if I'm holding a GI Joe I'm going to play with it. People our age can remember very easily how much fun GI Joe was. It's not like those little plastic action figures now where everything is molded on and it is what it is. GI Joe is a clean slate that you can make into your own personal adventure character. Since the release of the Masterpiece Edition I've seen adults in the toy aisles, dads there with their kids. They'd see the Masterpiece Edition GI Joe and tell their children, "See, this is what I used to play with!" You can see them making the decision in their heads, which eventually leads them to buy it and take GI Joe home again. You know that they're going to take it out of the box and show their kids how they used to play, and before you know it dad and the kids will be playing together. Next, the kids are going to want another one and some fun accessories. That's what's going to get kids interested in GI Joe again. I really believe that we have to reacquaint the parents with GI Joe because they are the ones who make the buying decisions. Lets face it; as a kid you are not going to get what your parents don't want to get you. BK: And most kids aren't going to buy a $25 figure for themselves. JM: Right, so we have to reacquaint the parents with GI Joe via the $25 figures and say to them, "Remember how much fun you had with this? Now go show your kids!" Once that's done the next step is getting figures that are a bit more inexpensive and making more accessories available. We may even see something similar to what we saw in the 60's, where the military guy evolves to an Adventurer. Look at what going on over in Europe. Action Man never went away. A friend of mine sent me a few Action Man figures and an Action Man Stealth Bomber and Heligun. In taking them out of the boxes and putting them together it reminded me of when I was a kid and I got a new Adventure Team set. I thought, wow, if they can do this in England they can certainly do it here. Kids didn't forget how much fun that this kind of toy can be. I remember an ongoing debate Don Levine and I used to have at book signings where we appeared together. If a little kid and his mom or dad came up to get their GI Joe Masterpiece Edition signed, I'd always say to the kid, "Make sure your dad lets you break GI Joe free from this box so you can play with him." Don would say, "No, no-you have to keep him in the box so it'll be worth more." It became almost like a schtick between us, but I'd generally get the last word by writing "SET HIM FREE!" next to my signature. I don't know if I have a boy or girl on the way, but either way I am going to show my child how I played with GI Joe. If he or she chooses to play with me or to collect with me then great; we are going to have a huge collection, we are going to play with them, and we are NOT leaving anything in the box. We'll be in the backyard exploring dirt mountains. BK: You've spent the last few years of your life working on GI Joe related projects, what have you taken away from the experience? JM: When I started, I was simply trying to tell a story that hadn't yet been told and get people like Sam Speers, Stan Weston, Jerry Einhorn, Janet Downing Taylor and the rest on the record with their experiences-and, while I was at it, sneak GI Joe back into the lives of men my age. In the end I formed some lasting relationships with the creators and the collectors of GI Joe. Now my dad has become a GI Joe collector, and since he's a NASCAR fan as well he's hot on the trail of the Racing Champions GI Joe car. Still hasn't found one. I also acquired an enormous amount of respect for the heritage of Hasbro, Inc. As I was writing the manuscript for the big book it became clear to me that I was writing more then just the story of GI Joe, but also the story of the Hassenfeld family. I was always impressed and a bit envious of the relationship that the creators of GI Joe had-and have-with Merrill, Stephen and Alan Hassenfeld. Those were days when younger people were mentored by more experienced executives, and Merrill Hassenfeld established a nurturing tone from the very top. Almost everyone I spoke to made it a point to emphasize that the man who took all the risk, really put it all on the line and had the final yes or no vote in everything was Merrill Hassenfeld. If GI Joe were to fail it was his family business that would have taken the big dive. Everyone else was working very hard, but their risk was minimal because Hassenfeld took care of the people that worked for him. He was a very beloved man, and many people owe their eventual success to him. The same goes for Stephen Hassenfeld. As GI Joe was floundering in the late 60's into the early 70's it all could very well have ended right there, but Stephen--Merrill's son--said no, GI Joe is worth saving. He found a way to keep the product viable at that point, and again in the 80's with the Real American Hero. Now you have Alan Hassenfeld, Stephen's brother, running the company-how many multinational businesses out there today can say that the current president of their company has the same last name as the founders? I've become acquainted with Alan and had a few opportunities to chat with him; all the nice things people say about him are true. He takes a personal interest in GI Joe, and it's only a matter of time before things come together for the next big re-emergence of our favorite toy. BK: What next for you? JM: Well, I try to do a book every year, and my next project will probably be about the life and archive of Bob Burns. Bob has in his house the largest personal collection of sci-fi- and monster-movie props in the world-everything from the original King Kong armature to the Alien Queen head-and a story to go with each item. Baby boomers may remember Bob as "Tracy the Gorilla" from the Filmation "Ghostbusters" Saturday morning series. I've also received a few inquires from publishers who are interested in a book about my experiences while developing the GI Joe Masterpiece Edition. I've kept very, very detailed notes from day one, so I'm giving those offers some consideration for sometime in the future. Most importantly, though, my wife and I are getting ready for the appearance of our "fully articulated baby of action" this summer. Unfortunately, he or she is due right when the San Antonio convention is scheduled, but I'm sure Brian Savage will accept my excuse for non-attendance. #### © 2002 John Michlig Back to THE GILL NET HOMEPAGE johnruexp@earthlink.net GI Joe (R) is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc.