How did you play with your Joes, especially the characters?

I never let any character die, not from the Joes or Cobra. Not even the characters I didn't like. They could get hurt or badly injured, but they would stay alive. I did let the army builders die. Why? Dunno, I think I thought of all the battles als an on-going story/war so when characters would die, I wouldn't be able to use them anymore. Yeah, I took that pretty seriously as a kid, but I do also remember myself adapting to my friend's ideas when we played together, he did let the characters die.

When I played with my Joes, I often made up my own characters through the toys.
Faceless minions would die since they be available as "endless" supplies. A single trooper could incarnate legions and come back again and again.

Characters would die too for the sake of adding drama to the day's adventure. The Baroness has sacrificed herself more than once because she was secretly in love with the hero.

I think that Cobra Commander died everyday or so.
One day, he got frozen in the freezer and came back the next day stuck in a block of ice. Once his soldiers unfroze him, he was much more powerful. It was after that that he started to wear the V3 armor. With his new powers he almost killed Falcon who had to hide in the mountains to train and come back as the White Tiger Ninja (V2 Stormy).

Good times.

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I don't recall a lot of them dying, but a lot of them got hurt badly. My battles weren't just joe vs. cobra it was usually, Joe versus Cobra Commander and his new secret weapons, transforming robots giant mutated barbarian types and eventually giant mutant animals. Some cobra would defect to Joe because Cobra commander had gone too far... the mutants and robots always died.

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Cool Story Bro!!

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Not really, now. What's the point of owning an action figure if he'll just become a corpse?

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Rip Cord was my daily sacrificial victim. Some days it was just a flesh wound and some days it was a heroic death but poor Rip Cord always got the bum end if the fight.

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Hm. Thinking back...no . 99% of the time no individual characters died (but Cobra troops did ). However i do recall once someone (Repeater?) made the ultimate sacrifice for the team when storming the Terror Dome (much like the pic below):


ARAH....what a great toy line

Every one of my Joes received the opportunity to make the ultimate sacrifice. Sometimes multiple Joes per mission. Most missions were standalone and I even let my favorites Flash and Snake-Eyes take a dirt nap when it fit the story.

My Joes never died in combat but most of them were pretty greivously wounded. That's what makes the Joe team special, they get pushed to the edge banged up and came home.

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When I was a kid, my mom refused to replace toys I broke. So any Joe that lost a thumb or crotch died. Grunt was the first. Then Stalker (something about those painted thumbs made them extra fragile). I was really upset when Snake Eyes v. 1 went (fatal groin injury). But Snake Eyes v. 2 was a different enough figure that my mom didn't realize she was bringing him back from the dead.

Then I learned to unscrew the backs and swap heads and suddenly a character could survive formerly terminal injuries.

The only Joe characters that died were the ones I created with the intention of them being killed off. I had a slew of new recruits that didn't make it past one or two missions. The established Joe's would often be seriously injured, but I don't recall them ever actually dying.

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Playing with my joes back in the days consists of joes getting injured, and Cobra Vipers becoming immortal.... meaning they get killed in battle, but comes back in the form of another copy of that Viper... since there wasn't really any army building back then.

This. Almost exactly. My Crimson Guard who had become too fragile to even stand, had an "epic" last battle atop a plank of wood I suspended over a campfire.

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Yeah, I had guys die every single time I played GI Joe as a kid. When I was a kid, I spent more time in the setup and planning than in the actual playing, and so the playing was incidental. As such, I'd get bored, the Joes would be mopping the floor with Cobra, and Cobra Commander would lose it and go nuclear, literally. Several times CC set off a nuke wiping out all Joes and Cobras in the vicinity.

Death, everywhere death! They died every time only to be reset when that particular battle or story line had played out. I played with a lot of friends so keeping a character dead for longer than a few days just wasn't in the cards. Plus we great conversations about the greatest ways so and so got killed numerous times over the summer.

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