Christmas Toy from 1975

Memories of Christmas always lead to the inevitable discussion that starts with “Oh... I had that as a kid.” It’s an honestly delightful exercise, and when you can match up a memory with another human being, so much nicer the experience. It’s this exercise of nostalgia and memory and that makes certain Christmas moments so delightful for me.

My buddy Matt and I recently had such a moment of memory magnetism when remembering this:





The G.I. Joe Sea Wolf Submarine. 1975. Complete with pincer arm, underwater camera, transparent cockpit, periscope, remote control buoyancy mechanism, and menacing squid.


I’ve got many pleasant memories of many different toys. But why hit you with all of them during my inaugural Christmas as a blog writer. You’ll notice I’m covering many different Christmas-themed topics this year, and I think in doing so has upped my own enjoyment of the season. So why not save some tongue twirling topics for next year?

Before my full-on obsession with super heroes really fully took root, I was into GI Joe’s. Santa kept bringing them for Christmas and I kept loving them. The big, full size, pre-1980’s GI Joe. With playsets and accessories that could take up an entire room.


The story of GI Joe toys is a famous one to toy collectors. Toy execs knew exactly how much Barbie was making in sales to little girls. And it was the accessories, not the doll herself, that was turning the big bucks. So how to appeal to boys? Up until this point, boys playing with dolls, or ‘action figures’, wasn’t really a thing. GI Joe changed all that. The action figure that’s sitting on your desk right now might not exist if it weren’t for Joe. Playing with any kind of doll was looked down on for boys. Until toy execs decided in 1964 they could sell weapons of war and vehicles of awesomeness as the requisite accessories. And if anyone was worried about seeming to be too girly while playing with dolls, they just had to look at the GI Joe figure they were holding and revel in the little, stubbly beard that graced his manly-scarred face. And if your pals with marbles and tops and slingshots and footballs still had their doubts, you could introduce them to the kung-fu grip.

I remember this particular sub very vividly. Fact is… I’m not entirely sure it was Santa that brought it to me or that I got it for Christmas at all. What I do know is that thinking back on the toy, it invokes a nostalgic feel.

I loved the fact that you could play with it in the bathtub! And that squid… I played with that thing for hours.


I received this when we lived in San Antonio, Texas. Not the house with the court and the hill and the back yard, but the other one. The smaller house. You remember? It was waaaay before my baby sister Robyn and therefore I still got SOME attention. At least for a little while.

When moving in the Air Force as often as I did, you didn’t get to keep a lot of your toys. In fact, if you weren’t playing with it at the very second of packing it was fifty-fifty whether or not Mom would put it in the pile to leave for Goodwill. This was just a practical part of weight-restricted moving. So I think the actual sub only made one or two moves with me. But that squid! The squid went from menacing GI Joes to menacing Mego super-heroes to menacing Micronauts and I think it even severely threatened a couple of Star Wars figures before it was lost in yet another move.

Got a particular Christmas toy you remember? If so, what’s the earliest one you can remember?

Thanks,
DCD