I’m very curious about the way you played with your G.I.Joe back in the days.
What did your scenarios / battles look like in general? Did you use many / few Joes + many / few of their vehicles against many / few Cobra’s + many / few of their vehicles? Did the battlestations and motorized action packs get a lot of playtime? This is how my G.I.Joe sessions usually took place:

First I selected the Joes, often just a couple of three or four figures, rarely more than six. Then I selected one or two of the smaller vehicles for them (AWE Striker, Swampmasher, Tank Car), or only one bigger vehicle like the Dragonfly. Next, selected the Cobra’s and created a base for them, somewhere in the corner of my room. When selecting the Cobra’s, I always added more and more figures, especially all the different kind of Vipers and figures you’d now armybuilt. (I wasn’t into army building then.) Actually, their main function was cannon fodder, so the Joes had more Cobra’s to kill. Unique characters like Zandar, Dr. Mindbender or Destro got lesser use, only four or five of them in each scenario. The base was always near my bookcase so I could use the shelves for the planes, mountaineers, and radar stations. Sometimes the base had some river running next to it, that depended on which Joes and their vehicles I was going to use. I did always use all of my battlestations (Bunker, Surveillance Port, the shooting wall from the Rifle Range Unit) and every suitable motorized action pack such as the Twin Missile Radar, Machine Gun Nest, Rope Crosser or Radar Station (stolen from the Joes). I also had these wooden selfmade bunker/buildings and the polystyrene stuff from new radio’s, tv’s, computers etc. All to surround the inner area of the base. After that, I started selecting the Cobra vehicles, again the smaller sized ones like the Stinger, Ferret, Flight Pod, Imp, Jet Pack and Pogo. Occasionally one big vehicle like the BUGG, Demon, Hydrofoil, Earthquake or Razorback. The vehicles where parked inside the camp or drove outside it to patrol. Quite often, the Ammo Dump Unit was there to, seized bij the Cobra’s or whatever. Anyway, later on it would be a great opportunity for the Joes to blow it up so some Cobra’s or vehicles blasted into pieces.
Then it was time for the battle!
The Joes sneaked into the camp or just drove in there shooting around to free a hostage or just to defeat the Cobra’s. Bazooka’s and rocket launchers always got use to blow stuff up, but I also used other items. Sneak Peek’s walkie-talkie, the small block from Roadblock’s backpack and Mainframe’s computer served as timebombs, the bags from Tunnelrat, Recoil and Beach Head contained demolition charges in my fantasy. This way the Joes could destroy everything. With their guns they’d shoot all of the Cobra troopers and vipers, in many different and creative, but realistic ways they fell down or were blown away from explosions. The ninja’s, ofcourse, used their swords, arrows, bare hands and feet to eliminate the enemies commando-style. All of the troopers and vipers would fall in battle, the unique characters always found a way to escape, they never got killed. Same thing goes for the Joes, they only got wounded.
The other way round, when Cobra attacked a Joe camp, there were just a few Joes and Cobra attacked with many troopers and vehicles and a few characters. Naturally, the Joes had made an excellent defense. Tripwires mines and the ones from the Mine Detector lay outside the base so Cobra vehicles would fly into the air and crash in a spectacular “A-Team way”. The Joes resisted every strike even though much of their equiptment and buildings were damaged.

Another scenario I frequently used was where a caravan would be ambushed or attacked by some patrol. Again, it was few Joes + vehicles against many Cobra’s + vehicles. This lead to many hot pursuits, Destruction Derby’s and Carmageddon-like scenes in my room.

I guess the reason for my “few Joes against many Cobra’s”-thing was that I wanted to maintain “control” of the situation. Fifteen Joes driving six vehicles, that was just too much going on, I couldn’t keep up with that, because all of their actions would influence each other. I didn’t feel that way with the Cobra’s. I probably considered them less intelligent, so they would stick more to their places and took less tactically smart actions.

So, these kind of things took place in my room quite often. Ofcourse not always, but they did actually appeared many times. How did you guys play with your stuff?
(no, I don’t expect your stories to be as big as mine, but they are welcome)

Tim 121RVC

When I first got into the figures, the first ones I had were a straight-arm Grunt, Airborne, and the Baroness. Then I got a Storm Shadow and a RAM.

Back then I had this little bag (we would call it a camera bag now) that looked like a little backpack. My entire collection fit in it for easy transport.

Airborne was the JOE in charge, because of his brighter uniform. He captured the Baroness and was waiting for the rest of the JOEs to show up, which coincidently so was I...

I basically bought all my own GIJOE,unlike Star Wars where I ended getting about 12 figures for Christmas way back when.

As I got more JOEs, the battles became more grandiose. I had Lincoln Log buildings, Tonka Trucks, some of my Brother's Fisher Price rescue vehicles (I built armored cabs to cover the open driver compartments out of cardboard), and this really cool Nylint? DUKW my Dad had (must take pictures to post).

I would carefully set up the characters in different places around the living room and then base the adventures from there.

In my bedroom I had JOEs climbing up the bunkbed to reach an objective.

Sometimes I just went with the idea of 3-3/4 action figures interacting in the real life environment (crap, Small Soldiers stole my thoughts...)

I'd double the troops by having my Star Wars figures appear through some type of space portal (crap, DS9 stole that one too) to seek the JOEs help. Luke Skywalker sparred with Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow, ninjas vs Jedi. Ace got checked out in a X-Wing, while Mainframe worked with R2 and Threepio.

Later on I managed to get enough figures that I had to carry them around in an OD metal ammo container. It was stamped ".50 Cal Ammo 200 Rounds"

Around 1989 a lady from my church stopped by to drop off a huge box of vehicle parts. can't remmber what all I got, but after setting everything to sort there was a two foot by six foot section of the carpet covered in parts/shells.

I didn't buy a lot of my vehicles at retail, instead I'd get them from the giant flea market I went to every year. I know one year I got a complete Night Raven, others years got me various SnoCats, and a couple years ago I got a awesome MOBAY w/Steeler for $20. Sometimes people would sell JOEs in bushel baskets for 35 cents each and I would buy as many as I could.

Back in 2004 I got an APC, a VAMP, and a few smaller vehicles for $15.

Two years ago I got a TBP, a STUN, a 'battle-damaged' WHALE shell, and a bunch of other vehicles for $60.

Gotta love flea markets.


My earliest attempt at customizing was actually taking the arms from a Flint v1 to replace the broken thumbs on a Snake-Eyes v2. I didn't know about the tattoo then. Last year, thanks o Raspuin, I managed to score two Snake-Eyes v2s and got replacement arms.

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Define 'back in the Days"?

one of the advantages of being a teacher, and a Big Brother back in the 90's is that I had tons of 'Adversaries" to attack.

Most of my battles as a kid were against my Older Brother's star wars figures, or my Godbrother's troops. Usually it was a smal unit inside a vehicle. who were either infiltrating the Death Star Playset, attacking Castle Grayskull, or sneaking into the Voltron castle of lions. My older brother would often cheat, Saying Joe weapons couldnt penetrate stormtrooper armor, whereas my younger brother would use his He-Man & Ninja Turtles against my joe troops (backed by transformers)

with my students, I would have a bunch of kids over my house on the weekends, and they would constantly try to attack my "Mega Joe base" (the oiginal HQ, 2 91 Hqs, and the MCC all together) in which I would constantly blast them back to the stone age... Then spend the rest of the night watching Simpsons episodes on VHS and eating Pizza...

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They differed so greatly it is hard to compare. I'll lay out the things that happened the most often though.

If it was with my older brother or with friends, I pulled out everything. Every figure, every weapon, every vehicle. The neighborhood, backyard, or house wide wars were epic in scale. I still remember the week long GI Joe vs Star Wars war we had that had every kid on our street participating in it at some point. When my friend got grounded to his yard we made his fence the death star.

Every time I got a new vehicle or new figure I made up a mission for them to carry out. Of course whoever it was would need some company and some enemies to take along. So Alpine would have to go climbing something and take on some Cobra outpost. Snow Job had to go skiing down somewhere to take out Destro.

Of course there were oddities like GI Joe vs Cobra football and this one time when I had a shoot out match with all of the characters who had double holsters and they had to carry double duplicate weapons and draw from the hip Old West style.

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When you were a kid and ARAH ruled the world...........

I too had many, very different scenarios. The ones I described are, in general the ones I used most. Let's say, at least once a month I did one of those. The other days had other stories.

Tim 121RVC

I had three "era" of GI Joe.
First era was the Flash era when he led a small group of commandos against incredible odds. Cobra had endless supplies of crimson guards and blue shirts which was the same two figures coming back again and again. Named characters like CC and Destro we safe in their secret mountain lair. They would send Baroness and Bludd to lead their invasion. In a terrible battle involving about 50 death scenes with the same blue shirt Bludd would ambush Flash and laugh, but the Baroness who was secretly in love with Flash would then jump in front of him thus taking the bullet and giving time to the hero to jump at Bludd and kill him after a long fist fight. On her last breath, Baroness would reveal the location of the Cobra base. Flash would then gather his team for a final showdown...

On the side Ace was the hero of some space adventures while Storm Shadow was an invincible ninja fighting anyone who dared to face him.

Second era.
Blowtorch would pick up the leading role when Flash mysteriously vanished from my room. Scarlett would often get kidnapped and BT would lead the team to the rescue.
Sometimes Duke would be a Cobra agent because he was jealous (à la Starscream).

Later BT would become a lone secret agent fighting many menace from spies, terrorists, Cobra and space robots. He would be the first to encounter the terrible Bobby – an evil mastermind who had the body of an 8 year old child (incarnated by a playmobil figure). He would lead some underground legion to rule over the city.

Third era.
Following the lost of Blowtorch's thumbs and sensible area, Falcon picked up the fight against evil. From soldier o fortune to secret ninja warrior, he got many identities during that period. Often posing as a mechanic, he would pick up weapons from his secret hideout and fall on evil like a storm of justice.
As a soldier he was sent on missions to destroy enemy base.
As a ninja (he would become SS v2 or SE v3 depending on the mood) he would watch over the city and fight Bobby's lethal minions. He would often get information from the drunk Windchill (who was very wobbly) on Bobby's whereabouts.
He finally put an end on Bobby's reign of terror by kicking him from the roof of a tall building. Documents from a secret Nazi lab proved Bobby's real identity.

A new villain rose as Armored Cobra commander who would lead his army from the living room furniture. The scenario was that he would beat Falcon, leaving him for dead. Falcon would retreat to train in the mountains to return as a super ninja. He would go back home to get his ninja suit and sword to get his revenge...

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I had some great battles. I had three methods of play.

#1 I set up the Joes and Cobra facing eachother on the coffee table. Kinda like the Revolution War with the British and America fighting in lines. Every figure would have their gun pointed at the enemy. Using a pointy object (like a pen) I followed the path of each bullet and removed the figure that would have been hit. Switch back and forth between Joes and Cobra. Once every had at least one shot. I moved them a step closer and repeated the process.

#2 The Invasion of Cobra Castle. This involved using about 50 VHS tapes. I built an entire Fortress for Cobra. Placed figures through out. The Joes would start at the bottom and proceed in a bloody room to room battle to the top.

#3 Kitchen Sink War. No Kitchen Sinks involved. This basically involved every Joe toy I had and most of the living room.

When I was younger I would set up my bedroom with everything. The cobras would have taken the Joe base (as I didn't have a terrordrome) and I had (ultimatly) 4 teams or waves of joes. That would come in bit by bit (cause they were "bottle necked" by the bed.mountain and couldn't stage an all out assault).

Useually Snake Eyes and his commando unit (Menaing anyone with silent weapons, Recon in thier discription, had a parachute, or outback) would come in from the west and set charges to "suprize" the cobras and weaken the defences.

The battle would swing back and forth until it was down to a few figures who weren't injured (I never killed off main characters, only Cobra Trooprs) and would end with CC's capture or escape (depending on what kind of mood I was in).

Other than that I would have some smaller things happen, Like when I got the hiss and I had it vs. the Battle Bear Skimobile. Snow Job ultimatly drove the thing under the cockpit and into the tracks sending Destro flying (Of course SJ got out just in the nick of time).

Neighborhood battles were played out...when the neighbor kids were home. It was great...there was 5 of us who were all into GI Joe...and we all seemed to get different vehicles for the holiday/birthday gifts...so that worked out great.

I live in the same town I grew up in...and when I was younger...one kids house we always played joes in his yard - big open yard, and the fence line was a large continuous hedge. We would spend the days over there making bases at ground level in those hedges. Many a time I drive by that house and I can still see the 5 of us there in that yard.

my Joe team was Blowtorch ,Spirit, Snake Eyes v2, Scarlett, and Lady Jaye, Cross Country and Tollboth did all my driving , these figures was set out and never really hurt or played with to hard , ( my favorites) now the rest of the Joes were bombed daily by the Rattler, and Night Raven , then the Hiss and Stinger would come in with a little fang air cover and blow the rest of them to hell 3 or 4 times a day .Then the Dreadnoks would come in and take care of anything left .. it didn;t matter in side or out winter or summer i had my little group of Joes that never got dirty or hurt , and never lost to Cobra , then my Cobra amry was taken care of very well , but the rest of my Joes took an oldschool beating everyday.Cobra won every battle but they could never win the war because they could get to my little group of Joes