© 2025
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

60th anniversary of G.I. Joe celebrated at Empire State Aerosciences Museum

Tearle Ashby has been collecting G.I. Joe action figures for more than 30 years. He got is first when he was two in 1966.
Aaron Shellow-Lavine
/
WAMC
Tearle Ashby has been collecting G.I. Joe action figures for more than 30 years. He got is first when he was two in 1966.

The Empire State Aerosciences Museum has a new exhibit that displays the history of American armed service but at 1/6th the scale.

The Empire State Aerosciences Museum, or ESAM, can be found on the perimeter of the Schenectady County Airport. Or just look for the massive British Airways Concord jet on display between Saratoga Road and the museum.

Kevin Millington has been volunteering here for 25 years.

“I've always been an avid aviation fan. So, this is a wonderful place to volunteer. You know, we conduct a variety of education programs. We have some extraordinary exhibits, a lot of hands-on exhibits. You know, we usually keep, for example, we usually keep a couple of the planes open for people to hop in. So, when I'm doing a class on the physics of flight, you can hop in and see how the control surfaces work, and you know, so it's a really, really unique museum,” said Millington.

A dozen aircraft are on display in the museum’s hangar from a Bell U-H1 helicopter synonymous with the Vietnam War to an F5 jet used in the original “Top Gun” movie. Then, there’s Millington’s personal favorite—a retired F-15 on loan from the Navy.

“This is like a perfect fighter. It's the perfect combination of power, you know, speed, rate of climb, but at the same time, it's extraordinarily maneuverable, really agile. Has a great range weapon system and radar. So, it's like the perfect combination,” said Millington.

The F-15 may be the star of the museum’s tours and educational programs. But there’s a new exhibit on display: about 40 G.I. Joe action figures that all came from one man.

“My name is Tearle Ashby, and I've been a G.I. Joe collector, and 1/6th military figured collector since 1991 so we're about 34 years into it and still going,” said Ashby.

The figures on display make up a fraction of Ashby's 15,000-piece collection. He says it’s important to honor the history of America’s military service members. G.I. Joe was first produced in 1964, and the exhibit celebrates 60 years of the “figures in flight.”

Ashby, a Ballston Spa resident, got his first Joe when he was 2 years old in 1966.

“I must have seen a commercial for the space capsule and astronaut. My dad worked for Boeing aircraft and worked on projects collaboratively with NASA for the space program. Worked on the Saturn five rocket. He worked on we moved all over the place as a result, but we lived in Cocoa Beach, and he worked on Apollo 9, 10, 11, 12. But I literally got to see, you know, Apollo 11 go off in my backyard. So, space was always a big thing. So, because my dad worked in aerospace, I always got the pilot figures and the scuba divers that would rescue the capsules and the astronaut, tons of astronauts,” said Ashby.

The figures on display span decades of military history from American, Japanese, and German troops from World War II including two Tuskegee Airmen signed by their real-life counterparts. There’s also American soldiers from the Vietnam War, the 1980s, and a handful of astronauts.

“You know this was really a landmark toy and a concept, because it changed the whole landscape. So, I mean, if you look at action figures today, and action figures like the Star Wars toys that kind of put an end to the 12-inch G.I. Joes that was as a result of this, because back then, you know, they were trying to sell the idea. And the response was, you know, nobody in the right mind—no parent in their right mind is gonna buy their son a doll. It's a doll, you know. So they went, they called it a movable fighting man that was their way around it. And then that later translated into action figure. So, it kind of took the whole gender thing out of it,” said Ashby.

Ashby’s G.I. Joe collection will remain on display through 2025.