Muñeco de Hitler

"...Comienza la batalla. Los nazis atacan de forma fulminante adentrándose en territorio aliado. Van aniquilando a sangre fría a todo aquel que se cruza en su camino, sean mujeres, niños o soldados. Nada, ni nadie puede detenerlos. Los norteamericanos, bajo el mando del teniente Falcón y su hermano Duke, tienen preparados un ataque aéreo con F22 que reservan para situaciones de alerta roja. De esa forma, los aliados comienzan la masacre contra el ejercito nazi: - Teniente estamos friendo vivos a esos cabrones, ja ja ja...-, se escucha desde el aire..."

Esta es una de las historias que Abel imaginaba mientras jugaba con sus GI Joe, en la bañera de su casa. Siempre actuaba de la misma forma, una vez los tenía a todos dentro del agua, asignaba a personaje un papel distinto y una misión de forma clara y concisa. Iba cogiendo uno por uno y les daba instrucciones hablándoles como si fueran actores que tienen que interpretar el papel de su vida. Cuando comenzaba el juego, su mente estaba a millones de kilómetros de aquella bañera. Es increíble la bendita facilidad que tienen los niños para involucrarse en sus fantasías, así como la lógica y la crueldad con la que llevan a cabo sus argumentos.

Supongo que es típico que los niños jueguen a las guerras... ¿Cuantos de ustedes no han jugado con aquellos muñecos de acción llamados GI Joe?. Si no es así, igual hayan conocido a alguno de sus primos hermanos: los Geyperman en España, los Action Man en Inglaterra, los Cobra Comander, los Iron Army, etc. Todos ellos nacieron gracias a la compañía juguetera Hasbro, que adaptó la idea originaria de David Breger con su cómic para los soldados de Estados Unidos y creó unas figuras de unos 30 centímetros, que representaban al héroe americano de la gran conflagración contra la Alemania nazi.

Vuelvo a repetir que los muñecos de trapo no entendemos de vencedores, ni vencidos, de héroes, ni de verdugos... por lo que jamás podré entender que se elabore con fines comerciales una figura que conmemora una de las mayores lacras del ser humano. Menos aún cuando esto va dirigidos a niños. Es curioso pensar que se lanzaron hacía la población infantil masculina, con el objetivo de emular el éxito de las Barbies con las chicas.

La cosa no quedó ahí, y cada vez fue desvirtuando más... crearon El Sargento Savage, un héroe de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y sus hombres "las Águilas Aulladoras"; y fabricaron, como no, a sus enemigos "El Ejército de hierro" inspirados en el ejército nazi. Por si esto fuera poco, tambien lanzaron a la venta un comando terrorista llamado "cobra" en los que cada personaje viene con su ficha personal delictiva.

Actualmente, he leído que en Ucrania salió a la venta un muñeco que ha despertado la polémica en toda Europa. Se trata del muñeco del dictador nazi Adolf Hitler, que cuenta, además, con todos los accesorios elaborados al detalle y el vestuario más utilizado por el líder del tercer Reich. Parece que el ser humano sigue en su empeño de hacer negocio con la sangre derramada por millones de personas.

Solo soy un muñeco... frío, estático, sin derecho a sonreír, caminar, preguntar, sin derecho a nada. Tan solo debería ser una máquina receptora de sentimientos ajenos que reacciona impasible ante cualquier suceso. Sin embargo, no puedo evitar poner el grito en el cielo cuando observo ciertas cosas, como por ejemplo, que la gente se espante al ver un personaje conocido desnudándose para la portada de una revista, pero no se inmute cuando observan a un niño jugar a las guerras o le escuchan decir a un compañero "te voy a matar"... parece que el ser humano cada vez de un paso más para convertirse en lo que soy yo, un simple muñeco de trapo...

He had blonde scrubby hair in a crew cut, blue eyes, shiny tanned skin, pouting lips and a scar on his cheek.

He was very muscled and spent most of his time naked, or at least with his top off.

I think he had a scar on his smooth manly chest as well. Apart from the plastic pants he was anatomically correct with all the muscle definition I could hope for.

In retrospect, I think he was probably the reason I tend to fall for gay men. My sisters used to steal him sometimes to be the boyfriend of their Cindy dolls but he wasn’t interested in that, only in playing in the mud with me.

The eagle eyes mechanism was at the back of his head, just above his neck. It was a little black lever which you pushed to and fro to make his eyes look left and right. If you pushed the lever left, the eyes looked right etc.

I loved my Action Man to absolute bits. He came with a camp bed, a rifle, plastic boots and combat clothes (I so wanted a pair of boots like that, and I got some when I was older, oh yes!). I remember playing with him in the living room on my birthday morning. It’s the first time I remember being entirely happy with a present that I was given. I played and played and played with him like nothing I’d played with before.

I’m not sure why my parents didn’t buy me the Action Man earlier. I’ve concluded that it could only be the embarrassment factor. They just didn’t want people knowing that I was a boy at heart, as it would mean that they had somehow failed as parents. I wish I could have told them that in not giving me the thing I had asked for and wanted, they were failing me every single birthday and Christmas.

I’m not embarrassed about wanting an Action Man, or about playing with one. I’m proud that I finally beat my parents into submission on this point and that I had an Action Man in time to play with him before I grew up. Even though I wasn't allowed to talk about him or have any photos with him. Photos from that year stand out in my memory, not because of what is in the photo but because of what is missing, shoved to one side just out of the camera angle: my personality.

I still play with Action Men, as my son has got a fair few, plus various vehicles. He has helped me to relearn how to play with them. This involves setting up scenarios of battles, making them crash into each other and making the explosive noises when they do. I also get given boys’ toys for Christmas now, as well as girly and unisex things, which is a bonus. Christmas 2006 I got a real tank. Actually, it was a day of driving tanks, which is better because I didn’t have to think about where I was going to park it overnight. And I even got to dress up like Action Man.

Can anyone tell me WHY the nauseating Little Kevvy Rudd(tm) is going to East Timor? Is he bored with The Lodge already (who could blame him)? Does he want to get under everyones feet in Dili, distract the attention and resourses of the military, and look important? Or, as I suspect, is it that the prat rather fancies himself in a flak jacket and helmet, a la Action Man.

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It’s not that men’s underpants here are horrendous, or anything like that, in fact like the bulk of Spanish fashion, they’re actually quite stylish. The problem is that, like the ubiquitous Blackpool guest house, there’s no ballroom.

Nada, zilch…no extra little pouch, nothing. They seem to have been designed for men who have the biological build of an action man figure. Now, although I haven’t made a study of this, I don’t believe I’m particularly unusual in the old ‘two boiled eggs in a silk purse’ department. I’m certainly no Nick Nolte (I read that a few years ago he had to have a nip and tuck to stop him from sitting on his…ouch). So I’ve no idea why many underpants in Spain have this design flaw.

A friend had her own theory. “Well Spanish men don’t have much down there, do they,” she said with the confidence of someone who had first hand knowledge; although I didn’t press her for information on how she knew this.

Some underpants are actually better than others and do have a little bit of ‘give’, but I’ve reached the point where I’ve graded mine according to what I plan to do on any particular day.

• If I’m going to be walking a lot, then it’s got to be a pair bought in the UK; sensible, comfortable and loads of room for manoeuvre.
• If there’s a limited amount of walking then one of the Spanish pairs with slight give can usually get me through, albeit with the occasional uncomfortable slippage.
• If I’m working at home then the ballroom-ess pairs can come off the subs bench.

If I mix these basic rules up, it’s a disaster which isn’t pleasant for me or anyone else in the vicinity. There’ll be an almost audible ‘pop’ as ‘the lads’ make their great escape, followed by a descent into the ministry of funny walks as I try to manoeuvre things back into a more comfortable position (under the completely misguided impression that by not using my hands I’m not attracting attention to my predicament), followed by a last resort, hand down the trousers and manual realignment. Like I said not pleasant and akin to a living hell.

These Spanish underpants may look stylish on a model on a billboard when everything’s where it should be, but when there’s a pair of testicles hanging out of one leg looking as though they’re in the grip of the Boston Strangler, it kind of ruins the effect don’t you think?

Books (not surprisingly), board games and quiz shows (perhaps more surprisingly) played a big part in my education. There were always books to read – history books (ancient picture books in their own right, handed down through the generations), story books, albums as stocking fillers (Beano and Dandy eventually gave way to Battle and the Fantastic Four), comics (I had a favourite uncle who had travelled the world as a Royal Marine Commando, via the Korean War, who gifted me his collection of American Marvel Comics – Daredevil, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, Hercules, Spiderman – they were all there), and, of course, my sister and I had our own library cards if we ever ran out of things to read. We never did. Admittedly, J’s choice of reading matter was always a little more high brow or grown up than mine. She was reading James Harriet (and always laughing out loud, which I found very, very irritating) while I would be helping Spiderman in his battles with the Green Goblin.

Incidentally, my classic collection of comics – which included a first edition of the original Batman series and must have numbered several hundred in total – failed to survive one of my mom’s tidying sprees in my early teens. They were thrown away. I imagine that they would have been worth a small fortune to a collector today. Thanks mom! Pay heed all teenage boys - tidy your own room!

Comics always did seem to get me into trouble. At the age of 11 I was caught shoplifting comics from our local paper shop by the owner. It was one of the most humiliating and devastating experiences of my early years. My mom cried. My dad cried. My grandma looked at me disapprovingly. This was further evidence, if my parents needed any, of how carefully balanced I was on that tightrope walk between a career in Middle Management and a life of crime. Nowadays, my comic is FHM (For Him Magazine). Ah, Kylie……………

Sunday Quiz shows. Sunday lunchtime meant roast meat, roast potatoes and parsnips, two veg, gravy, mint sauce for lamb, horseradish or mustard for beef, apple sauce for pork, stuffing or cranberry for poultry, all washed down with a glass of lager and lime, often home-brewed by my dad in a big yellow plastic bucket, or, in latter years, a bottle of Blue Nun or Black Tower. Sophisticated, eh? Anyhow Sunday lunchtime was interrupted by the 1.30 showing of ‘University Challenge’. The original and best ‘University Challenge’ that is, with Bamber “bouffant” Gascoigne. Sunday teatimes turned into ‘Sale of the Century’ with Nicholas Parsons. My sister and I often did better than the contestants. How different our lives could have been if kids like us had been able to take part in the actual quiz . We would now be surrounded by caravans, fondue sets, fridge freezers, drinks cabinets, juicers, stereos, and, brand new cars……………

Later, in the evening, came ‘Mastermind’. The original and best with Magnus Magnusson. Boy, were his parents imaginative when it came to choosing names or what! I enjoyed the general knowledge sections much more than the specialist topics in things such as “Outer Mongolian Floral Exhibitions of the Late Eighteenth Century.”

‘Ask The Family’, ‘Blockbusters’, ‘Blankety Blank’ (I know, I know). The 1970s and 80s were a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of quiz-show opportunity to test a developing mind such as mine. And, when they brought out ‘Trivial Pursuit’ I thought I had found absolute heaven. It has got to the point that family and friends refuse to play ‘Triv’ with me now unless it is a new edition and they are able to witness its removal from the cellophane. This is because I would spend many a happy hour in my youth, card by card, question by question, learning and memorising the answers. I am still pretty damn useful in a Pub Quiz!

Intelligence is often born of imagination. Well, I think so at least. Or, I imagine so. We had lots of opportunity to exercise our imagination as children. Unlike today, batteries were rarely a requirement on Christmas mornings in our house. We got toys that you played with and which required imagination. And, they were proper toys too, unlike today’s namby-pamby, left-wing-politically correct, toys. Girls got dolls, dressing-up things and making-up things. Boys got guns and plastic soldiers by the bucket-full, cars, and Action Man. Admittedly, Action Man often got called upon for a date or game of “Happy Families” with my sister’s Barbie or Cindy until such time as Ken arrived on the scene. But, he didn’t seem to mind quite so much as I did at the time.

And then there was the computer printer paper – the old green, striped stuff with perforations at the edges. Dad used to bring tonnes of it back with him from work as a treat. Whole evenings would be spent drawing on the stuff. Matchstick soldiers would be lined up against each other (Brits and Yanks versus Germans and Japs – very xenophobic), alongside planes, cannons and tanks. Guns would have dotted lines protruding from barrels to indicate being fired and to identify a hit on their target. A veritable Lowry's Apocalypse. My side always won.

“Connect 4”, “Mastermind”, “Battleships”, “Scrabble”, draughts, chess. Ours was a home full of toys of a sensible and educational nature. They helped to stretch a developing mind and to nurture an intelligence in its infancy. They were helped, no doubt, by oily fish in regular doses and sheep’s brains – one of the less pleasant side effects of the arrival of our first chest freezer in the 1980s and the “economic good sense” of buying a whole lamb from the butcher! As a child you just have to trust your mom about such things. Either that or grandma’s threat of serving leftovers up cold for breakfast. I was never very sympathetic towards the one about feeding the starving children of Africa for a week on my scraps from just one meal though. I would have sent my scraps to them, gladly.

And sleep. Lot’s of sleep. We were children with a regimented bed-time triggered by the end of various TV programmes – a particularly sly ploy from our parents to avoid the usual pleas of “just another 5 minutes!”. We were allowed an extra 30 minutes or an hour at weekends and during school holidays but, otherwise, it was off to bed early and “don’t you come down stairs again or there’ll be trouble!” Sleep, apparently, is an essential ingredient to nurturing intelligence. Of course there were times when I would sneak to the top of the stairs and catch glimpses of illegal TV shows through an ajar door and the bars of the stair banisters. Yes, there were summer evenings spent with my head peeking through bedroom curtains watching the world go by. But, generally, as a young child at least (when it is most important I am told), I got plenty of sleep.

Many a summer day was spent re-enacting the “Battle of Britain”. This game involved chasing my cousins around the streets of Erdington (home) or Pype Hayes Park on our bikes, or, doing a whirling figure of eight in front of the paper shop and the greengrocers. Or, many a pistol made out of two fingers was used in a game of “war” fought in a series of back gardens. As boys we were fairly proficient at mimicking the different sounds of rifles, pistols, exploding grenades and machine-gun fire: “Ra ta tat ta”, or “Brrrbrrb”, or “Ch ch ch ch”. We were the kings of onomatopoeia. My cousins lived just up the road from us and their back garden was separated from grandma and granddad’s garden by the garden of a friendly neighbour who either didn’t care or couldn’t stop us from climbing over her fence as we invaded one or the other of the families’ gardens. It was a very safe outdoor environment in which to play. That is not to say that paedophiles and child-snatchers did not exist on the streets of Birmingham back in the 1970s and 80s. We just never knew about them. There was not the same media hype or attention as today. Of course there was poor old Mad Ernie. Rumour was that Mad Ernie had suffered shell shock (whatever that was!) back in the war. Small children would chase poor Ernie down the street shouting: “The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming!”. Ernie would turn on the kids and throw stones at them. Hence the nickname. Sorry Ernie.

Latino Review's got a look at the latest G.I. Joe film script, and it ain't pretty...

When Dark Horizons reported back in March that Lorenzo Di Bonaventura would begin work on a G.I. JOE movie once TRANSFORMERS wrapped, I was pretty damn excited. As a kid, JOE was probably my second favorite toy line, outside STAR WARS. I devoured the comics, watched the cartoon every morning, and got my hands on every action figure and vehicle my parents would allow. So, like a lot of you, I'm pretty invested in seeing these great characters find new life on the big screen.

And when I heard MARK WAHLBERG was being cast as DUKE, I was pretty happy. I mean, Wahlberg can play a tough military strike team leader as well as anyone, he's a great action star, and perfect for this kind of movie. Now, granted, he looks a little more like FLINT (how could would it be to have Wahlberg as Flint and THOMAS JANE as Duke-- that would kick ass!), but still-- I could see it working.

Then, I started hearing word of a different direction for the film... that it would be a "buddy flick" teaming DUKE with Alex Mann AKA ACTION MAN, a British property that has ZERO relation to JOE. That sounded spectacularly lame to my ears, but still... I wanted to believe it could work...

But when I first heard that the movie wouldn't feature COBRA as the villain, I just threw my hands up and said WTF?!!

Hey, let's do a JOE movie that DOESN'T feature the only prominent enemy they've ever faced!!

Stupid, stupid, stupid...

Now Latino Review has even worse news. No SNAKE EYES (well, not really). No COBRA COMMANDER. No DESTRO. No STORM SHADOW. No ZARTAN. Just some guy named...

COOL DUDE.

I'll pause to let you get that out of your system. I know, it takes a while.

Oh, and they kill SCARLETT halfway through.

You see where this one's going. If this script happens, the G.I. JOE Movie-- which some of us have waited DECADES for-- is going to flat out suck. Its not going to resemble, in most any way, the story we all grew up enjoying. This is a complete slap in the face to Joe fans everywhere. Not only that, but even if the name of the film WASN'T G.I. Joe, and it was just some army fighter pic, it STILL sounds like it would suck. Why even waste the money on buying the rights if what you develop bears ZERO resemblance to the property at the end of the day?

And its such a cop-out to say the current world sentiment towards the States won't allow a true G.I. Joe flick to get made. Please. This doesn't need to be a political movie, in fact, it shouldn't be. COBRA isn't IRAQ. This is like saying people won't go to a JAMES BOND movie because they don't agree with something Tony Blair is doing. Weak.

Its ESCAPIST FANTASY. Tone the flag-waving down a bit, include some international Joes, and you won't have any problems. Or if you really, truly do... hey, DON'T MAKE A MOVIE. Most of us would rather wait another ten years than see this get filmed.