Don Levine

Donald Levine was born in Elmhurst, New York, on 1 April 1928 to Ralph and Mildred Levine, and died in Providence, Rhode Island, on 22 May 2014; his funeral was held at Temple Beth-El in Providence. As head of research and development at Hasbro he took a proposal for a military toy and solved the problem that boys would not play with a doll: he and his team built an eleven-and-a-half-inch figure with twenty-one moving parts, gave it interchangeable uniforms and equipment, and called it an action figure — a category that had not existed before. G.I. Joe reached the shops for Christmas 1964 and accounted for two-thirds of Hasbro's sales within a year. Every action figure since is descended from that decision. He had served in the US Army in Korea, and said he wanted the figure to honour veterans.