Hah! I had the mercury space capsule! The foil suit wasn’t real durable, though.
I remember leading up to the Christmas of 1965, peering desperately through a keyhole into the locked room where my parents were storing our gifts in preparation for wrapping them, and lo and behold-
A GI Joe footlocker! Had yellow rope handles, as I recall...:)
One day, my GI Joe was gone. Gone. Couldn’t find him. Looked everywhere. I was heartbroken.
When I went to elementary school a few days later, I was walking down the hall past the locked glass cabinets that had the best dioramas by the third grade class (I was in second grade, and my diorama was the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimack...cardboard covered with tin-foil for water...:)
I looked over and saw one with an honorable mention done by my brother, and...there was my GI Joe...HEADLESS! (Who knew my brother was an Islamo-fascist in those days?)
Well, he wasn’t quite headless, the had an egg on his neck where his head had been. I did get him back, but what good is a headless GI Joe? It was his whole personality. (everyone knew the color of their hair was what imparted their special individual skills on them!)
I buried him in the back yard while my dog looked on. As I walked away head bowed, she was gleefully pawing at the earth, and ran after me with a newly disinterred GI Joe, his arms no longer folded in peaceful repose across his chest, but now flopping wildly from each side of the labrador retriever’s mouth!