Gung Ho

G.I. Joe's Hulk Hogan

by Dave McAwesome

Gung Ho was the first G.I. Joe figure with biceps. This figure would unwittingly start a trend of unrealism that would soon tear the toy line apart (Roadblock, Sgt. Slaughter, William "The Refrigerator" Perry, Crocmaster, Big Boa, Road Pig...ugh).

I must confess a huge like for Gung Ho. He was a marine. He was big. He had a mustache. He had a huge tattoo on his chest (this was before tattoos were popular, and no, your barbed wire, chinese character, or original ink that you got on spring break just to fit in looks retarded. Eff you, too. That's right. Eff you to effing hell. Go jump off a bridge, you trend-whoring, microcephalic lemming, you.). Gung Ho also had guns. Except we didn't call big biceps 'guns' in those days. We called them pythons, as any good Hulkamaniac would. St. Hogan taught us that 24-inch pythons were the altar at which we should pray. Tempted in a moment of weakness by the devil (Bobby 'The Brain' Heenan), my friend Spiff Huntington and I tried to measure Gung Ho's biceps in scale (3 3/4 figures are about 1:19) to see if we had ourselves a new god. I forgot what we came up with. 20 inches? We stuck with Hogan, then became pagans when The Ultimate Warrior started channeling Valhalla, then back to Hogan who was a bad guy now and...you know what? Don't start personalized religions based on professional wrestlers.