title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: She is also known for film roles that include Vivian in "Midnight Offerings" (1981), Ginny in the slasher film "Happy Birthday to Me" (1981), and Alex in the "ABC Afterschool Special", "Which Mother Is Mine?" (1979).


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: Anderson became a naturalized citizen of Canada in 2007. In 2010, she published "The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House", an autobiographical account of her years acting in "Little House on the Prairie".


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: Anderson was born on September 26, 1962, in Berkeley, California, the second of two daughters, to James and Marion Anderson. Her sister, Maureen, is twelve years her senior. When she was seven years old, Anderson's family relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles. Her parents divorced when she was thirteen years old, and she was raised Roman Catholic by her mother. As a young child, Anderson appeared in commercials for Mattel and Sears.


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: Anderson's show business career began when a dance teacher urged her parents to find an agent for her. After appearing in commercials, she was soon in demand for television roles. Her first came in a 1972 episode of "Bewitched" titled "Tabitha's First Day of School". Another memorable early role was as Millicent, a girl who kissed Bobby in "The Brady Bunch". She also appeared in an episode of "Shaft" the same year.


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: At the age of eleven, Anderson landed the role of Mary Ingalls in "Little House on the Prairie". She would go on to star in the series for eight seasons, beginning in 1974, and leaving after season seven; she later appeared in three episodes of season eight in late 1981.


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: In 1976, Michael Landon asked Anderson if she would appear in his autobiographical film "The Loneliest Runner". Anderson agreed to play Nancy Rizzi, the first girlfriend of John Curtis (based on Landon and played by Lance Kerwin), saying she was very thrilled to have been asked. In 1977, she once again co-starred as the love interest opposite Kerwin in the television film "James at 15".


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: She was nominated for a 1978 Primetime Emmy Award for Best Leading Actress in a Drama Series for her work on "Little House on the Prairie" and won the Emmy Award for her performance in "Which Mother Is Mine?", which aired as an "ABC Afterschool Special" in 1979. Also in 1979, she played the title role of Dana Lee Gilbert, a North Dakota transfer student to Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley in CBS's television film "Survival of Dana".


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: In 1980, Anderson earned a 'TP de Oro' Award (considered to be Spain's most prestigious award for television) for 'Best Foreign Actress' for her role in "Little House on the Prairie". This followed a successful visit to Spain in 1979 to appear as a guest on RTVE's program, "625 Lineas". In 1981, she earned a Young Artist Award nomination for her performance in the Canadian slasher film "Happy Birthday to Me". After leaving "Little House", she continued acting in television series like "The Equalizer", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "CHiPs" and "Murder, She Wrote", and was the associate producer for the next-to-last television project Michael Landon made before dying: "Where Pigeons Go to Die" (1990).


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: In 1998, she was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 1999, she starred alongside Heather Langenkamp in the short-lived television series "Partners". In 2014, Anderson had an uncredited appearance as Stosh's mother in the neo-noir mystery comedy drama film "Veronica Mars" (2014).


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: In 2010, Anderson released an autobiography titled "The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House". The book, which is primarily based on her life during her years as a child star in "Little House on the Prairie", contains behind-the-scenes stories and anecdotes about the show itself, its stars, guest stars, and crew members. The autobiography also covers her pre- and post-"Little House" career, her side-projects during the "Little House" years and how her personal life was affected by her career.


title: Melissa Sue Anderson

text: Anderson married television writer and producer Michael Sloan ("The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries", "The Equalizer" and others) in 1990. The couple has two children, daughter Piper and son Griffin. The family moved to Montreal in 2002 and became naturalized Canadians on Canada Day in 2007.


title: Genevieve Cortese

text: Genevieve Nicole Padalecki (née Cortese) (born January 8, 1981) is an American actress. She appeared in the television series "Wildfire" as Kris Furillo and had a recurring role in "Supernatural" as the demon Ruby.


title: Genevieve Cortese

text: Cortese was born in San Francisco, California. She has two brothers, Johnny and Ben, and a sister, Sarah. At the age of 13, she moved to Montana, and later to Sun Valley, Idaho. She holds a BA in English and a BFA degree in drama from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.


title: Genevieve Cortese

text: Before making her television debut as Kris Furillo, she performed in regional theater productions of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "Crimes of the Heart", and "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat".


title: Genevieve Cortese

text: On September 14, 2020, it was announced that Cortese was cast in a recurring role in The CW's crime drama series "Walker", a reboot of the original television show of "Walker, Texas Ranger", and will play the role Emily Walker, the late wife of Cordell Walker (who is played by her husband Jared Padalecki). The series premiered on January 21, 2021.


title: Genevieve Cortese

text: Cortese met actor Jared Padalecki when she had a recurring role on the show "Supernatural" during its fourth season, replacing Katie Cassidy, who previously played the role. She went on to make a guest appearance in the sixth season as a fictionalized version of herself. Padalecki proposed to her in front of their favorite painting, "Joan of Arc" by French realist Jules Bastien-Lepage, at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 2009. The engagement was announced in January 2010. The pair married on February 27, 2010, in Cortese's hometown of Sun Valley, Idaho. On October 10, 2011, the couple announced that they were expecting their first child together. Their son was born on March 19, 2012. On December 22, 2013, Cortese gave birth to their second son. Their daughter was born on March 17, 2017. The couple resides in Austin, Texas, with their three children.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon is a series of military tactical shooter video games published by Ubisoft. In the series, the player is in charge of a fictional, newly conceived squad of U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers from Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group (5th SFG) stationed at Fort Bragg. Except for the "1st Battalion, 5th SFG" designation, this reconnaissance unit is entirely fictional, as Special Forces Battalions currently only support three Companies (A, B and C). They are often referred to as "the Ghosts". Their role is like other real world special operations forces, in that their operations are kept highly classified. In "", it is shown that the Ghost's unit has multiple designations and is part of JSOC; they are also known as the Group for Specialized Tactics (or GST—where the term "Ghost" comes from), much like real JSOC units such as Delta Force (1st SFOD-D or CAG) and SEAL Team Six (or DEVGRU). "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" has also been novelized by Grant Blackwood under the pseudonym David Michaels.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" begins in April 2008, with civil unrest taking place in Russia. Ultra-nationalists have seized power with plans to rebuild the Soviet Union. Their first step is clandestine support of rebel forces in Georgia and the Baltic states. Alarmed by the threat, the U.S. deploys the Ghosts into Georgia to stop the Russians. Over the course of the campaign, the Ghosts take the fight to the ultra-nationalists, with a final showdown in Moscow's Red Square.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: Set in 2009, after the first game, "Tom Clancy's Desert Siege" features a new campaign in East Africa, where the Ghosts have been deployed to stop Ethiopian army Colonel Tesfaye Wolde's plans to invade Eritrea. He executes his plan through arms sales with the same Russian ultra-nationalists who launched the coup the previous year.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: The second expansion set to "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon", "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder" takes place in Cuba in 2010. Its plot revolves around Cuba's first democratic elections since the 1950s, but an anti-American faction named the FDP ("El Frente Democratico del Pueblo" or People's Democratic Front), secretly terrorizes election outlets during the campaign while fielding their own presidential candidate. The Ghosts, who are sent to ensure order during the elections, discover that the FDP is a shell organization run by a Colombian drug cartel that needs the island as a transit point to the United States.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: Taking place in Bogotá, Colombia just after the events of "Island Thunder", the drug cartel that had aided and financed the FDP in their efforts in Cuba has initiated a number of terrorist attacks against the Colombian government, who have allied themselves with the United States. After Colombia's call for help following an attack on a U.S. embassy, America responds by deploying the Ghosts to restore order and put the cartel out of business.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2" is set in the Korean Peninsula. The settings of the PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions (both of which are labeled 2007: First Contact) are linked with , particularly the sinking of the fictional intelligence-gathering vessel Clarence E. Walsh. They depict a new Korean War brought about by a renegade Korean People's Army general, Jung Chong-sun, who launches a coup against the North Korean government. The Xbox version is the direct sequel of the two games, in which Jung plots revenge against NATO and South Korea. Ghost Recon 2 also marks the debut of the series' main character, Capt Scott Mitchell.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: An Afghan Uzbak warlord and arms dealer named Rahil carries out an assassination of Kazakshtan's president and Security Council, triggering a crisis where the Kazakh military splinters and vies for control. The U.S. sends the Ghosts to aid UN troops and loyalist Kazakh forces to restore order and capture Rahil.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: Often identified by the acronym GRAW, the game takes place over the course of 72 hours in 2013, beginning in Mexico City. The plot revolves around Mitchell's efforts to rescue U.S. President Ballantine from Mexican rebels, destroy a secret communications device that they captured, and prevent a launch of the United States' nuclear arsenal. The game is mostly known for its new combat mechanics, new weapons, and next-generation graphics.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: The game is again set south of the United States border in 2014, immediately after the events of "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter" and again deals with the conflict between a Mexican rebel group, Mexican loyalists, and the U.S. Army for a time span of 72 hours. A wide array of location types are included, featuring mountains, small towns, urban environments, and a large hydro-electric dam just north of the U.S.-Mexico border. This game, as well as , has been noted for rectifying squad artificial intelligence problems that the series has been afflicted with.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: Released for the PlayStation Portable, Predator takes place in Sri Lanka, which is the target of a U.S. invasion force aiming to destroy a rebel group. The plot focuses on the Ghosts being sent to uncover and stop a plot to draw the U.S. into a larger war.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: Created for the Nintendo 3DS, Shadow Wars is a turn-based tactics game featuring various soldier classes on different battlefields.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: Set in 2024, Future Soldier features a new team of Ghosts taking on a Russian criminal syndicate that takes power in Russia. Players will also have a chance to use advanced near-future military technology such as optic camouflage and also customize their weapons to a greater degree than the system in GRAW.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Commander" is a Facebook game developed by Loot Drop and designed by John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite. The game was cancelled only five months after launch. This resulted in that development team being laid off.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: A defunct multiplayer-only free-to-play game, "Phantoms" did feature third-person combat between teams of players using one of three soldier classes. It was originally designed for Windows and the Wii U, but development issues prompted an exclusive focus for the PC platform.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands" is an open world tactical shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Paris. It is the tenth installment in the "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" franchise and is the first "Ghost Recon" game to feature an open world environment. The game moves away from the futuristic setting introduced in "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter" and instead feature a setting similar to the original "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon". Ubisoft described it as one of the biggest open world games that they have ever published, with the game world including a wide variety of environments such as mountains, forests, deserts and salt flats. The game was released in 2017 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint" is a tactical shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Paris. It is the eleventh installment in the "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" franchise and a sequel to "Wildlands". Unlike previous mainline entries, this game requires a constant online connection.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Frontline" is a free-to-play, tactical-action, massive PVP shooter grounded in the "Ghost Recon" universe. "Frontline" would have featured an advanced class system and large set of tactical support tools allowing for complete freedom in strategic gameplay, with multiple ways to outsmart enemy teams and win every fight. The game would have been available to play on Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Stadia, and Luna, with crossplay enabled between all platforms.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: The novel by David Michaels follows CPT Scott Mitchell and Ghost team on a mission in China. Their task is to search for the "Spring Tiger Group"—a band of rogue Chinese military officers—and put an end to its attempt at seizing control of Taiwan and sparking a massive armed conflict in the Pacific Ocean. The novel was released on 4 November 2008 by Berkley Books.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: A short film based on the series, titled "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: ALPHA" aired on G4 on 3 May 2012. The short film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on 22 May 2012.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

text: Ubisoft has confirmed that a "Ghost Recon" film is planned as are films based on "Assassin's Creed" and "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell". On 11 June 2013, it was reported that Warner Bros. and Platinum Dunes will be making the film and Michael Bay will produce and direct the film, written by Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia.


title: G.I. Joe

text: G.I. Joe is an American media franchise and a line of action figures owned and produced by the toy company Hasbro. The initial product offering represented four of the branches of the U.S. armed forces with the Action Soldier (U.S. Army), Action Sailor (U.S. Navy), Action Pilot (U.S. Air Force), Action Marine (U.S. Marine Corps) and later on, the Action Nurse. The name is derived from the usage of "G.I. Joe" for the generic U.S. soldier, itself derived from the more general term "G.I.". The development of G.I. Joe led to the coining of the term "action figure". G.I. Joe's appeal to children has made it an American icon among toys.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The "G.I. Joe" trademark has been used by Hasbro for several different toy lines, although only two have been successful. The original line introduced on February 2, 1964, centered on realistic action figures. In the United Kingdom, this line was licensed to Palitoy and known as Action Man. In 1982 the line was relaunched in a scale complete with vehicles, playsets, and a complex background story involving an ongoing struggle between the G.I. Joe Team and the evil Cobra organization which seeks to take over the Free World through terrorism. As the American line evolved into the Real American Hero series, Action Man also changed, by using the same molds and being renamed as Action Force. Although the members of the G.I. Joe team are not superheroes, they all had expertise in areas such as martial arts, weapons, and explosives.


title: G.I. Joe

text: G.I. Joe was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York, in 2004 and into the Pop Culture Hall of Fame in 2017.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The original idea for the action figure that would become G.I. Joe was developed in 1963 by Stanley Weston (inventor), a Manhattan licensing agent. Weston made rudimentary prototypes of the figure and basic marketing materials that showed the sales potential of a military action figure. When he showed these materials to Donald Levine, a Hasbro executive, Levine told Weston: "You will make a fortune with these". Weston subsequently licensed the entire concept to Hasbro for US$100,000.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The conventional marketing wisdom of the early 1960s was that boys would not play with dolls and parents would not buy their sons dolls, which have been traditionally a girl's toy; thus the word "doll" was never used by Hasbro or anyone involved in the development or marketing of G.I. Joe. "Action figure" was the only acceptable term, and has since become the generic description for any poseable doll intended for boys. "America's movable fighting man" is a registered trademark of Hasbro, and was prominently displayed on every boxed figure package.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The Hasbro prototypes were originally named "Rocky" (marine/soldier) "Skip" (sailor) and "Ace" (pilot), before the more universal name G.I. Joe was adopted. One of the prototypes would later sell in a Heritage auction in 2003 for $200,001. An African-American figure was introduced in 1965, though it was simply the same face as the white figure, painted brown.


title: G.I. Joe

text: Aside from the obvious trademarking on the right buttock, other aspects of the figure were copyrighted features that allowed Hasbro to successfully pursue cases against producers of cheap imitations, since the human figure itself cannot be copyrighted or trademarked. The scar on the right cheek was one; another, unintentional at first, was the . Early trademarking, with "G.I. Joe™", was used through some point in 1965; the markings changed once G.I. Joe was a registered trademark; "G.I. Joe®" now appears on the first line. Subsequently, the stamped trademarking was altered after the patent was granted (in late 1966), and assigned a number; 3,277,602. Figures with this marking would have entered the retail market during 1967.


title: G.I. Joe

text: By the late 1960s, in the wake of the Vietnam War, Hasbro sought to downplay the war theme that had initially defined "G.I. Joe". The line became known as "The Adventures of G.I. Joe". In 1970, Hasbro settled on the name "Adventure Team". Highlights of the line included:


title: G.I. Joe

text: For its first ten years, G.I. Joe was a generic soldier/adventurer with only the slightest hints of a team concept existing. In 1975, after a failed bid to purchase the toy rights to the "Six Million Dollar Man", Hasbro issued a bionic warrior figure: Mike Power, Atomic Man. One million units were sold. Also added to the Adventure Team was a superhero, Bullet Man. This character had recurring enemies, The Intruders – Strongmen from Another World. Comics included with figures at the time featured "Eagle Eye" Joe, Atomic Man, and Bullet Man operating together; the Adventure Team was finally an actual team. The original G.I. Joe line ended in America in 1976. At this time, Hasbro released a line of inexpensive, rotationally molded mannequins in the G.I. Joe style called The Defenders. Hasbro published comic book advertisements starring the Adventure Team, featuring the original G.I. Joe, Atomic Man and Bulletman as members.


title: G.I. Joe

text: From 1966 through 1984, Palitoy Ltd. produced a British version of the G.I. Joe line, under the Action Man name for the UK market. Initially, these were exactly the same designs as the American figures, and at first the same military theme which included figures from World War II. The line later expanded to include all men of action, like football players and other sports figures. In the early 1980s, Palitoy responded to falling sales of Action Man by launching "Action Force", a new range of smaller military-themed figures in the style of the then-popular "Star Wars" line from Kenner. Later, when the U.S. Real American Hero line was released in the UK, they were released under the 'Action Force' title, since the term "G.I." is not in common use in Britain. The figures had the same appearance and code names as the American G.I. Joes, but their identities and histories were international rather than purely American or British. The range was later renamed G.I. Joe to bring it into line with international markets; however, the Action Man line retained its original name when it was revived in the early 1990s.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The G.I. Joe line was also licensed to Germany under the Action Team name. In Spain, Geyperman was the Hasbro licensee, although the products were more based on Palitoy's line, down to the logo design. In France the name was Action Joe, in Japan, Takara and Tsukuda licensed the figures under the names "G.I. Joe" and "Combat Man". In Italy, Polistil licensed the figures under the Action Team name. In Australia, the line was released as "G.I. Joe" by Kenbrite; Palitoy also licensed their "ActionMan" line to TolToys. In Brazil, it was licensed to Brinquedos Estrela; the line was called "Falcon" and the figures were called "Comandos em Ação" ("Commandos in Action"). In Argentina, the G.I. Joe figures were licensed by Veri-li enterprises under the name "Joe Super Temerario", and "Los Temerarios". The G.I. Joe toy line was produced in India under the Funskool brand. In Mexico, G.I. Joe was licensed to Lili-Ledy and were named "Hombres de Acción" (Men of Action).


title: G.I. Joe

text: Hasbro began releasing new G.I. Joe figures in 1991. The first figure, Duke, was marketed exclusively to Target retail stores.


title: G.I. Joe

text: Based on the Real American Hero toyline, the Hall of Fame series featured Mission Gear Outfits, vehicles, and featured popular characters like Snake-Eyes, Stalker, Gung-Ho, Cobra Commander, Destro, and Storm Shadow among others.


title: G.I. Joe

text: This was followed by an anniversary series based on the 1960s line and was followed by the Hall of Fame Limited Editions, also based on 60s releases.


title: G.I. Joe

text: G.I. Janes were introduced in a series called the Classic Collection, the first female dolls in the G.I. Joe line-up since 1967; this doll was a helicopter pilot. The Classic Collection hearkened back to the original all military theme of G.I. Joe with fairly realistic uniforms and gear. Soldiers from Australia, Britain, and other nations, as well as United States forces were featured. The line also presented an all-new articulated G.I. Joe figure that formed the basis of many offerings until the line was discontinued in the new millennium.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2000, a "Navajo Code Talker" was introduced, one of only two G.I. Joe talking figures (until this time) since the 1970s.the other being the WW2 Military Police figure.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2001, G.I. Joe honored the events of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by releasing a line of Pearl Harbor figures. In 2003 Hasbro announced the release of the 40th Anniversary G.I. Joe line. This line featured reproductions of the earliest G.I. Joe figures and accessories originally made in 1964.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In November 2006 a reproduction Land Adventurer G.I. Joe figure was released as an exclusive to Hot Topic stores. The figure was a reproduction of the Land Adventurer with the Kung-Fu Grip and came in the "Coffin" style box. A reproduction Talking Adventure Team Commander was also released in a limited run of 1,970 issues.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 1997, the original G.I. Joe figure returned via the G.I. Joe Masterpiece Edition, a unique book-and-figure product created by Chronicle Books with assistance from Don Levine, former creative director of Hasbro Toys and the driving force behind the original Joe concept.


title: G.I. Joe

text: During the late 1990s Hasbro built on the renewed interest in authentic reproductions of G.I. Joe established by the Masterpiece Edition reproduction book/figure set; they bought the rights to the ME figure and released a range of store exclusive reproduction figure sets, with the character of the sixties G.I. Joe boxed sets.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The year 1982 saw the highly successful relaunch of the G.I. Joe product line in a smaller, scale. The scale was the same scale used by the Kenner's "Star Wars" figures, but with many more points of articulation much like the 1970s Mego's "Micronauts" toy line which itself was licensed directly from Takara's "Microman" toy line.


title: G.I. Joe

text: This relaunch pioneered several tactics in toy marketing, combining traditional advertising with an and an . The decision to use a smaller scale for the figures also made it possible for Hasbro to produce a variety of matching vehicles and playsets that further expanded the appeal and commercial potential of the line.


title: G.I. Joe

text: G.I. Joe's increasing popularity supported an array of spin-off merchandising that included posters, t-shirts, video games, board games, and kites. In 1985, both "Toy & Lamp" and "Hobby World" magazines ranked "G.I. Joe" as the top-selling American toy.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The line was canceled at the end of 1994. This was also the 30th anniversary of G.I. Joe and accordingly, Hasbro released a series of and figures based on the Original Action Team figures from 1964.


title: G.I. Joe

text: A select assortment of figures from the "Real American Hero" line were released as Toys "R" Us exclusives to celebrate the 15th anniversary. A second assortment followed in 1998.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2000, Hasbro re-released a selection of G.I. Joe figures and vehicles. This line lasted until 2002. The figures were sold in packs of two and consisted of repainted versions of figures from the Real American Hero line. Some of these repainted figures were assigned new identities: for example, the Baroness figure was repainted and sold as a new character called Chameleon, described on the packaging as "the illegitimate half sister of Baroness".


title: G.I. Joe

text: Beginning in 2002, newly designed collections of G.I. Joe figures and vehicles were released. Each collection centered on a storyline or theme, such as "Spy Troops" and "Valor vs. Venom".


title: G.I. Joe

text: Direct-to-DVD features were animated for both the "" and "" collections, as well as a new trading card game based on the G.I. Joe vs. Cobra storyline. Both the and lines were put on hiatus prior to the release of the Sigma 6 line in 2005.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The line was reintroduced after a very brief hiatus via Hasbro's direct-to-consumer website HasbroToyShop.com and various online retailers. As a result of the line's success, some figures also became available at certain retailers, such as Toys "R" Us.


title: G.I. Joe

text: To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the "Real American Hero" line in 2007, Hasbro released a collection of newly sculpted figures (as opposed to the scale of the RAH line) based on classic and new designs of many of the line's best known and most popular characters. The 25th-anniversary figures replaced the classic O-ring construction with a swivel chest feature and increased points of articulation beyond the standard shoulder, elbow and knees to swivel wrists, ankles and double-hinged knees. The 25th-anniversary figures also include "Specialist Trakker", otherwise known as Matt Trakker the leader of M.A.S.K.


title: G.I. Joe

text: Originally planned to consist of only two sets of five figures each (one G.I. Joe and one Cobra), the "25th Anniversary" collection was well received by retailers and collectors and was expanded by Hasbro into a full-fledged toyline that ran through 2009. The most recent releases in this line do not include the "25th Anniversary" branding, but in all other respects constitute a continuation of the "25th Anniversary" collection. Other waves released in 2009 include the figures, which were introduced in wave 13, and had an animated feature premiere in April 2009.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The "25th Anniversary" line was later canceled, in favor of releasing figures for the upcoming live-action movie. Some of the planned figures from canceled waves, totaling 14 figures, were instead released as two 7-figure exclusive packs. Entitled "Defense of Cobra Island" and "Attack on Cobra Island", each set contained figures from one opposing side. The canceled future waves included Night Force Falcon, the Python Patrol Trooper and Tele-Viper, and an Iron Klaw/Resolute Crimson Guard Trooper Comic Pack.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In July 2009, a series of figures based on the "" movie was released in the United States and Australia. The line was a mixture of the Rise of Cobra movie designs, some G.I. Joe vs Cobra designs, some 25th anniversary figure molds and new molds.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2010, a new series of figures was released, based on four battlegrounds: Desert, City, Jungle and Arctic. The packaging was an update to the 25th anniversary design.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2011, a new series of figures was released, including characters from both G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and the "" cartoon series. This series was continued through 2012.


title: G.I. Joe

text: A series of figures based on the movie "" was confirmed by Hasbro in February 2012. Despite the movie's release being moved from June 2012 to March 2013, the initial assortments of figures, vehicles, and role-play items were shipped to retailers, and appeared on store shelves in May 2012. A "Variety" article was published stating that the already released figures had been pulled from the shelves and recalled by Hasbro, although the companies official statement indicated that existing product would be sold through. New product shipments were halted by Hasbro, but existing Retaliation figures were available in Target, Wal-Mart, and Toys R Us as late as December 2012. The toyline was re-released in the United States in February 2013.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2014, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of G.I. Joe, a new line of figures was released, using characters from the "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero" cartoon series. This series ended in 2016.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2020, Hasbro released a new line of super-articulated figures and vehicles, similar to the Star Wars The Vintage Collection, utilizing retro-themed packaging from the 1980s.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 1977, Hasbro released the Super Joe Adventure Team, and took the battle between good and evil to the stars. The figures were scaled down to 8 inches, similar in size to Mego's Superheroes line of action figures. The line was a hybrid of superhero and space action figures with new features incorporated such as battery powered back-pack lights and motorized accessories. The hero Super Joe characters, Super Joe Commander (Caucasian/African American) and Super Joe (Caucasian/African American) had a "One-Two Punch" that could be activated by pressing panels on the figure's back. The majority of these figures used Kung-Fu grip style plastic in the joints and hands. But with age, the material degrades, leaving even unopened figures missing limbs and hands.


title: G.I. Joe

text: Unlike the original G.I. Joe collection, the Super Joe collection was developed from the start with a play-pattern of Good vs Evil. Super Joe Commander and the Adventure Team (Man of Action, and Adventurer) with their alien comrades "The Night Fighters", Luminos and The Shield, fight against the evil Gor, King of the Terrons, Terron, The Beast from Beyond, and his orange-eyed ally Darkon, the half-man half-monster (the action figure was the same as the Super Joe Commander, but molded in dark green plastic and with a different set of accessories.)


title: G.I. Joe

text: As with the previous series, various accessory/costume packs were sold for the Super Joe line (including several that were powered by the Commander's light vest via a jack to the battery pack.) Most of the non-powered packs were updated versions of previous GI Joe packs - some of which simply used the same accessories without scaling them down for the smaller figure. (The Sears exclusive "Avenger Pursuit Craft" was the same as a prior GI Joe vehicle, molded in a different color and with different decals.)


title: G.I. Joe

text: Super Joe was discontinued by the end of 1978. The same basic body molds were used later by a subsidiary of Hasbro to produce a line of action figures based on the TV series "Space Academy."


title: G.I. Joe

text: As a follow-up to the Real American Hero toyline, "Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles" figures debuted in late 1994. It was canceled after only two waves of figures were released, due to a combination of scarce marketing and, therefore, low sales.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 1995, "G.I. Joe Extreme" figures were introduced by Kenner Toys (who had merged with Hasbro in late 1994, taking over their boys toys production). Along with the release of toys, "G.I. Joe Extreme" featured a comic book, published by Dark Horse Comics, and a Gunther-Wahl-produced cartoon series which ran for two seasons.


title: G.I. Joe

text: 2005 saw the introduction of a new line called "", consisting initially of an 8" scale selection of action figures distinguished by their extensive articulation and accessories. Sigma 6 combined entirely new characters with already familiar characters from the "Real American Hero" line. Its release was accompanied by a television series produced by the Japanese animation studio GONZO, and a comic book mini-series published by Devil's Due. Hasbro also expanded the Sigma 6 line to include a 2" scale selection of vehicles, play sets, and figurines with limited articulation.


title: G.I. Joe

text: 2007 saw the re-branding of the 8" line. The "Sigma Six" branding was dropped in the spring of 2007. Subsequent 8" figures were branded simply as "G.I. Joe" action figures and divided into differently packaged sub-groups such as "Combat Squad", "Commandos", and "Adventure Team". The entire 8" product line was canceled by the end of 2007, although Hasbro considers the 8" figures a success and may revisit the scale in the future.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2009, Sideshow Collectibles began releasing its own line of G.I. Joe figures under license from Hasbro. These highly detailed figures offer new looks at key characters. In addition, Sideshow also created "Figure Environments", which are small diorama pieces intended to enhance the display of their figures. A line of figures was featured at Comic-Con 2012.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The G.I. Joe brand has made promotional action figures based on real-life persons, both military and civilian, that the company deems "Real American Heroes".


title: G.I. Joe

text: In the second quarter of 2020, Hasbro announced the new release of the G.I. Joe Classified Series. It was announced as a new line of highly articulated 6-inch scale action figures that included prominent characters like Snake Eyes, Scarlett, Roadblock, Duke, and Destro in the first wave. A deluxe edition Snake Eyes (version 00) was released before Wave 1 as an exclusive from Hasbro direct. Cobra Commander, Gung Ho and Red Ninja were included in the second wave. Many repaint releases of the previous figures and also the characters from the 2021 film Snake Eyes were included in this series. There have been more than 50 figures of the famous G.I. Joe characters as of 2022 with news of even more characters to be released in the future, including the return of Sgt. Slaughter to the series, and the announcement of his sub team, the Marauders returning in 2023.


title: G.I. Joe

text: There have been a few vehicles released as part of deluxe figures, including a Cobra motorcycle, the C.O.I.L., the G.I. Joe R.A.M., and a repaint of the G. I. Joe R.A.M. in the Tiger Force line.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In July 2022, fans successfully funded the first HasLab vehicle for this line, a H.I.S.S. tank with 4 exclusive figures and accessories. A tiered method of crowdfunding was used to provide the total number of figures.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2021, the toy company Super7 started producing two lines of G.I. Joe figures. One is part of their ReAction line of 3.75" figures, with figures inspired from classic episodes of the Animated Series. They have also started releasing figures in their Ultimate's 7 inch line, that include multiple head designs, hands, and accessories.


title: G.I. Joe

text: G.I. Joe originated from a comic strip in the 1940s called "Private Breger". As a licensed property by Hasbro, "G.I. Joe" comics have been released from 1967 to present. G.I. Joe re-appeared in the 1980s as a promotional comic book, produced by Marvel Comics. The success of the main title led Marvel Comics to produce a secondary title, "G.I. Joe: Special Missions" which lasted 28 issues. The main series released its final issue #155 in December 1994, coinciding with the end of the "Real American Hero" toy line.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In July 2001, Devil's Due Publishing acquired the rights to "G.I. Joe" and released a four-issue limited series entitled "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Reinstated)". The new series picked up seven years after the end of the Marvel Comics series, and also used elements from the animated TV series. Strong sales led to "Reinstated" being upgraded to ongoing, and DDP also published other "G.I. Joe" titles outside the existing continuity. DDP's license with Hasbro expired in 2008 and was not renewed.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2009, IDW Publishing began to publish the series again. IDW's G.I. Joe series is a complete reboot of the property, ignoring the continuity from the Marvel and Devil's Due incarnations of the comic. However, the "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero" series originally published by Marvel Comics in the 1980s and 1990s was revived as an ongoing series in May 2010 with a special #155 issue, and followed by #156 onwards in July 2010. The series directly picks up from the end of the Marvel Comics series and ignores the Devil's Due continuity completely. In 2022 it was announced that IDW lost the rights to G.I Joe.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 1966, Hanna-Barbera Records was the first label to produce a G.I. Joe album, titled "The Story of the Green Beret." In the 1970s, four Book and Record 45 rpm sets were released by Peter Pan Records, which tied into accessory packages. Three of these were combined into an LP. The art of the original Peter Pan book and record sets was created by Carl Pfeufer. The same recordings were also repackaged as material for .


title: G.I. Joe

text: Many movies have been made based upon G.I. Joe and the toy lines that developed from the action figure. The "G.I. Joe: Real American Hero" cartoon series was followed up by "". The film had been released direct-to-video in 1987 because of the perceived box office failure of another animated movie – "The Transformers: The Movie". Inspired by viewers' reaction to Optimus Prime's death, "G.I. Joe: The Movie" was re-dubbed, cutting out the death of one of the main characters, Duke. Instead, he falls into a coma and recovers (unseen) at the movie's end. Also, the main villain, Cobra Commander, met his own demise when he was turned into a living snake by mutant spores created by a new enemy, Cobra-La.


title: G.I. Joe

text: Filmmaker Gregory P. Grant made a film using old GI Joe figurines simply called "Ode to GI Joe" which played at film festivals and earned him a Student Academy Award.


title: G.I. Joe

text: A direct to video animated series was created for the Sgt. Savage line, packaged with an exclusive Sgt. Savage figure in 1994. Next in the G.I. Joe-based line of movies was the 2003 release of "", Hasbro's first computer animated feature which coincided with the release of its "Spy Troops" header line. It is followed by "" (2004), in response to sales from "Spy Troops". This was Hasbro's second commissioned feature using computer graphics to coincide with the line of the same name. By 2005, Hasbro had entered into an exclusive agreement with Paramount Pictures to have them distribute any future features based on the "Real American Heroes" line, but by the time a third movie was to be created, this time called, "Attack of the BATS", Hasbro's sales on the "Real American Heroes" line had once again slumped, and the project was scrapped.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2009 Stephen Sommers directed a big budget Hollywood live-action movie based on G.I. Joe. The first film in what is intended to be a franchise, is "", stars Channing Tatum as Duke, Ray Park as Snake-Eyes, Christopher Eccleston as Destro, Jonathan Pryce in the role of the President of the United States, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander. Tatum describes the film as being a cross between X-Men, Transformers and "": "It's a huge $170 million movie. It's just a big kid sort of driven film". The movie showcased the main members of G.I. Joe and Cobra. While some characters held true to the cartoon adaptations, others differed markedly in significant respects. As well, the storyline gave a different foundation for the battle between G.I. Joe and Cobra. The movie is based in present time (however at the beginning of the movie it states "In the not too distant future") and shows glimpses of each character's history. In the movie, Cobra sets out to cause destruction using high tech weapons and sell them to ruthless terrorists. The G.I. Joe members join to stop Cobra from becoming a global terrorist organization.


title: G.I. Joe

text: To promote the film, "" was produced as a viral campaign. The short animated two-parter used stop motion and puppet animation utilizing Hasbro's toy line, and was produced by R.M. Productions Ltd.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The sequel "" starring Dwayne Johnson as Roadblock was scheduled to be released in June 2012 but was delayed until March 2013. In the film, the Joes are framed as traitors by Zartan, who is still impersonating the President of the United States, and Cobra Commander now has all the world leaders under Cobra's control, with their advanced warheads aimed at innocent populaces around the world. Outnumbered and out gunned, the Joes form a plan with the original G.I. Joe General Joseph Colton to overthrow the Cobra Commander and his allies Zartan, Storm Shadow and Firefly.


title: G.I. Joe

text: Marvel Productions and Sunbow Productions released "" to promote the 3.75 inch (9.5 cm) toyline. The premise was "good vs. evil" as explained in the show's opening theme song, provided by Jackson Beck (previously known for his work as Popeye's nemesis Bluto): "'G.I. Joe' is the code name for America's daring, highly trained special mission force. Its purpose: to defend human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world".


title: G.I. Joe

text: The show featured physical fighting and high-tech weapons as a way to compensate for toned-down violence and lack of bullets in what was intended to be a children's program. The show also featured public service announcements placed at the end of each show. These PSAs ended with the phrase: "Now I know!" or "And knowing is half the battle". The series ran for a total of 95 episodes, from 1985 to 1986.


title: G.I. Joe

text: The animated series was canceled after the release of "", but made a significant return with the animation company DiC taking over where Sunbow/Marvel left off, and ran from 1989 to 1991. DiC released a 5-part mini-series entitled "Operation: Dragonfire", in which the Joes faced off once again against Cobra as they tried to take control of an energy source known only as 'dragonfire'. In this mini-series, Cobra Commander was also returned to a semi-human state by the energy itself while Serpentor, the Cobra emperor, was turned into an iguana by the dragonfire. This mini-series was successful enough for DiC to produce .


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 1995, Sunbow returned to produce "G.I. Joe Extreme" an animated series based upon the namesake toy line. This series, along with the toy line, was canceled after 2 seasons, broadcast from 1995 to 1997.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In the 2000s, a new interest in the "Real American Hero" toy line brought about new lines, including "Spy Troops" (2003), "Valor vs. Venom" (2004), and "" (2005-2007). In 2009, "" was launched. This new series was more realistic and contained graphic violence and dark themes, with Cobra portrayed as a serious threat, a sharp contrast to the relatively lighter-toned animated series that proceeded it. "Resolute" was originally released as mini webisodes, with the full series later broadcast on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2010, The Hub launched "", in which the Joes became fugitives seeking to clear their names while Cobra worked towards world domination under the guise of a pharmaceutical company. The series' last episode aired 2011.


title: G.I. Joe

text: It has also been spoofed by the cult animated sci-fi series "Futurama" in the episode "Saturday Morning Fun Pit".


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2014, the American sitcom "Community" featured an episode ("G.I. Jeff") where one of the main characters dreams that he and his friends are characters in the 1983 cartoon series. The episode was animated in the same style and featured some of the same voice actors as the cartoon. The episode also features scenes where the character's mind is trying to get back to reality, but keeps getting caught in G.I. Joe commercials.


title: G.I. Joe

text: In 2021, Paramount TV Studios, eOne, Skydance and Amazon Prime Video are developing the first live action G.I. Joe TV series that will focus on Lady Jaye with Erik Oleson serving as the creator and showrunner.


title: G.I. Joe

text: There were several video game adaptations of G.I. Joe, including "" by Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision (1983), "" by Epyx for the Apple II and the Commodore 64 (1985), "Action Force" by Virgin Games for the Commodore 64 (1987), a "G.I. Joe" video game by Taxan for the Nintendo Entertainment System (1991), a "G.I. Joe" arcade game by Konami for arcades (1992), and "" by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System (1992). for Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PSP and Nintendo DS was released to coincide with the first live-action G.I. Joe film, "". Another video game, "", was released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2020.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Phyllis Ada Diller (née Driver; July 17, 1917 – August 20, 2012) was an American stand-up comedian, actress, author, musician, and visual artist, best known for her eccentric stage persona, self-deprecating humor, wild hair and clothes, and exaggerated, cackling laugh.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller was one of the first female comics to become a household name in the U.S., credited as an influence by Joan Rivers, Roseanne Barr, and Ellen DeGeneres, among others. She had a large gay following and is considered a gay icon. She was also one of the first celebrities to openly champion plastic surgery, for which she was recognized by the cosmetic surgery industry.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller contributed to more than 40 films, beginning with 1961's "Splendor in the Grass". She appeared in many television series, featuring in numerous cameos as well as her own short-lived sitcom and variety show. Some of her credits include "Night Gallery, The Muppet Show, The Love Boat, Cybill", and "Boston Legal", plus 11 seasons of "The Bold and the Beautiful". Her voice-acting roles included the monster's wife in "Mad Monster Party", the Queen in "A Bug's Life", Granny Neutron in "", and Thelma Griffin in "Family Guy".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller was born Phyllis Ada Driver in Lima, Ohio on July 17, 1917, the only child of Perry Marcus Driver, an insurance agent, and Frances Ada (née Romshe). She had German and Irish ancestry (the surname "Driver" had been changed from "Treiber" several generations earlier). She was raised Methodist but later became an atheist. Her father and mother were older than most when she was born (55 and 36, respectively) and Diller attended several funerals while growing up. The exposure to death at a young age led her to an early appreciation for life and she later realized that her comedy was a form of therapy.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: She attended Lima's Central High School and discovered she had the gift of humor early on. Although she wasn't a class clown, calling herself a "quiet and dedicated" student, she enjoyed making people laugh once school was out. Diller studied piano for three years at the Sherwood Music Conservatory of Columbia College Chicago but decided against a music career and transferred to Bluffton College where she studied literature, history, psychology, and philosophy. She met Sherwood Diller at Bluffton and they married in 1939. Diller did not finish school and was primarily a housewife, taking care of their five children (a sixth child died in infancy).


title: Phyllis Diller

text: After moving to Alameda, California, Diller began working in broadcasting in 1952 at KROW radio in Oakland, California. In November of that year, she filmed several 15-minute segments for the Bay Area television series "Phyllis Dillis, the Homely Friendmaker"—dressed in a housecoat to offer absurd "advice" to homemakers. Diller also worked as a copywriter at KSFO radio in San Francisco and a vocalist for a music-review TV show called "Pop Club", hosted by Don Sherwood.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: With the encouragement of her husband, Diller made her debut as a stand-up comedian at age 37 in the basement of the San Francisco North Beach club, The Purple Onion, on March 7, 1955. Up until then, she had only tried out her jokes for fellow PTA members at nearby Edison Elementary School. Maya Angelou, who was already performing at the club, wrote that Diller “would not change her name because when she became successful she wanted everyone to know it was, indeed, her herself”. Her first professional show was a success and the two-week booking stretched out to 89 consecutive weeks. Diller had found her calling and eventual financial success while her husband's business career failed. She explained, "I became a stand-up comedienne because I had a sit-down husband."


title: Phyllis Diller

text: In a 1986 NPR interview, Diller said she had no idea what she was doing when she started playing clubs and in the beginning, she never saw another woman on the comedy circuit. With no female role models in a male-dominated industry, she initially used props and drew from her educational and work background as a basis for satire, spoofing classical music concerts and advice columns. She wrote her own material and kept a file cabinet full of her gags, honing her nightclub act. Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, and Jonathan Winters were early influences, but Diller developed a singular comedic persona — a surreal version of femininity. This absurd caricature with garish baggy dresses and gigantic, clownish hair made fun of her lack of sex appeal while brandishing a cigarette holder (with a wooden cigarette because she didn't smoke), punctuating the humor with a hearty cackle to show she was in on the joke. At the time, Diller said, "They had no idea what I was. It was like—'Get a stick and kill it before it multiplies!'"


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Her first national television appearance was as a contestant on Groucho Marx's quiz show "You Bet Your Life" in 1958. Multiple bookings on the Jack Paar "Tonight Show" led to an appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show", which brought her national prominence as she continued to perform stand-up throughout the U.S.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Starting in 1959 and throughout the 1960s, she released multiple comedy albums, including the titles "Wet Toe in a Hot Socket!", "Laughs", "Are You Ready for Phyllis Diller?", and "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: In the early '60s, Diller performed at the Bon Soir in Greenwich Village, where an up-and-coming Barbra Streisand was her opening act. She was offered film work and became famous after co-starring with her mentor Bob Hope, who described her as "a Warhol mobile of spare parts picked up along a freeway." They worked together in films such as "Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!", "Eight on the Lam", and "The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell", all critically panned, but "Boy..." did well at the box office. Diller accompanied Hope to Vietnam in 1966 with his USO troupe near the height of the Vietnam War.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: She appeared regularly as a special guest on many television programs, including "The Andy Williams Show"; What's My Line?" Mystery Guests. The blindfolded panel on that evening's broadcast included Sammy Davis, Jr., and they were able to discern Diller's identity in three guesses. Diller made regular cameo appearances, making her trademark wisecracks on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In". Self-deprecating to a fault, a typical Diller joke had her running after a garbage truck pulling away from her curb. "Am I too late for the trash?" she'd yell. The driver's reply: "No, jump right in!" She became a semi-regular on "The Hollywood Squares", starting in 1967, appearing in 28 episodes until 1980.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller continued to work in film, making an appearance as Texas Guinan, the wisecracking nightclub hostess in "Splendor in the Grass". Throughout the 1960s, she appeared in more than a dozen, usually low-budget, films. She also began a career in voice work, providing the voice of the Monster's Mate in "Mad Monster Party" (1967).


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller also starred in the short-lived TV series "The Pruitts of Southampton" (1966–1967); later retitled "The Phyllis Diller Show", a half-hour sitcom on ABC. She received a Golden Globe nomination in 1967 for her role in "Pruitts". Diller hosted a variety show in 1968 titled "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Beginning December 26, 1969, she had a three-month run in "Hello, Dolly!" (opposite Richard Deacon), as the second to last in a succession of replacements for Carol Channing in the title role, which included Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, and Pearl Bailey. After Diller's stint, Ethel Merman took over the role until the end of the show's run in December 1970.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller continued working in television throughout the '70s and '80s, appearing as a judge on premiere and subsequent episodes of "The Gong Show" and as a panelist on the "Match Game PM" show. She also guest-starred in "The Mouse Factory", "Night Gallery", "Love American Style", "The Muppet Show", "CHiPs" and "The Love Boat". Between 1999 and 2003 she played roles in "7th Heaven" and "The Drew Carey Show".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Her successful career as a voice actor continued when Diller guested as herself in "A Good Medium is Rare," a 1972 episode of "The New Scooby-Doo Movies". In 1998, Diller provided the voice of the Queen in "A Bug's Life". Among her other animated films are "The Nutcracker Prince" (1990, as Mousequeen), "Happily Ever After" (1990, as Mother Nature), and "Casper's Scare School" (2006, as Aunt Spitzy).


title: Phyllis Diller

text: She voiced characters in several television series, including "Robot Chicken", "Family Guy", "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home", "Captain Planet", "Cow and Chicken", "Hey Arnold!" as Arnold's grandpa's sister Mitzi, "The Powerpuff Girls", "Animaniacs", "" as Jimmy's grandmother, "The Wild Thornberrys", and "King of the Hill". She also played Peter Griffin's mother, Thelma, on "Family Guy" in 2006.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Citing advanced age and a lack of "lasting energy," Diller retired from stand-up in 2002. Her final performance was at the Suncoast that year in Las Vegas, Nevada. At the time she stated, "If you can't dance to comedy, forget it. It's music." The 2004 documentary "Goodnight, We Love You: The Life and Legend of Phyllis Diller", directed by Gregg Barson, was shot on the night of her last performance. It follows Diller to a press conference, backstage, and into her home, to cover the story of her career. Rip Taylor, Don Rickles, Roseanne Barr, Red Buttons, Jo Anne Worley and Lily Tomlin are featured, discussing Diller's comedy legacy.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Although retired from the stand-up circuit, Diller never fully left the entertainment industry. In 2005, she was featured as one of many contemporary comics in "The Aristocrats". Diller, who avoided blue comedy, did a version of an old, risqué vaudeville routine, in which she describes herself passing out when she first heard the joke, forgetting the actual content of the joke.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: On January 24, 2007, Diller appeared on "The Tonight Show" and performed stand-up before chatting with Jay Leno. Leno has stated that Diller would infrequently call him to contribute jokes during his time as the host of "The Tonight Show". The same year she had a cameo appearance portraying herself in an episode of "Boston Legal". In 2011, she appeared in an episode of her friend Roseanne Barr's reality show "Roseanne's Nuts".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: In January 2012, she recorded a version of Charlie Chaplin's song "Smile" with Pink Martini's Thomas Lauderdale for the album "Get Happy".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Publishing her first best seller in 1966 and releasing more throughout the decade, Diller's books on domestic life featured her self-deprecating humor. The titles include "Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints", "Phyllis Diller's Marriage Manual", and "The Complete Mother". In 1981 she published "The Joys of Aging & How to Avoid Them".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Her autobiography, "Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse – My Life in Comedy", co-written with Richard Buskin, was published in 2006. In it, Diller told of an unhappy childhood with undemonstrative, emotionally withholding parents, and an equally unhappy first marriage. From these beginnings, her performing style—telling rapid-fire jokes—emerged, which she compared to music: "One joke followed the other with a flow and a rhythm. ... Everything had a natural feel to it."


title: Phyllis Diller

text: In the early 1990s, Diller had many short, humorous pieces published in "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller had studied the piano for many years and was an accomplished player but decided against a career in music after hearing her teachers and mentors play with much more skill than she thought that she would be able to achieve. She still played in her private life, however, and owned a custom-made harpsichord.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Between 1971 and 1981, Diller appeared as a piano soloist with symphony orchestras across the country under the stage name Dame Illya Dillya. Her performances were spiced with humor, but she took the music seriously. A review of one of her concerts in "The San Francisco Examiner" called her "a fine concert pianist with a firm touch."


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller, a self-taught artist, began painting in 1963. She worked in acrylics, watercolors, and oils throughout the 1970s and filled her Brentwood, California home with her portraits and still lifes. In 2003, at age 86, she held the first of several "art parties," selling her artwork along with her stage clothes and costume jewelry.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller credited much of her success to a motivational book, "The Magic of Believing" (1948) by Claude M. Bristol, which gave her confidence at the start of her career. She was married and divorced twice. She had six children from her marriage with her first husband Sherwood Anderson Diller, and she outlived two of her grown children.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller's second husband was actor Warde Donovan, whom she married on October 7, 1965. She filed for divorce three months later, having found him to be bisexual and alcoholic, though they reconciled on the day before the divorce was to become final. She divorced him in 1975. Robert P. Hastings was her partner from 1985 until his death on May 23, 1996. In a 2000 interview, she called him the love of her life, saying that he admired her for being an independent person.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: The character of "Fang," the husband, who she frequently mentioned in her act, sprang from an appropriation of elements of the comic strip The Lockhorns. Diller portrayed herself as a horrible cook in her stand-up routines, but she was reputed to be an excellent cook. She licensed her recipe for chili and sold it nationally as "Phyllis Diller Chili". Diller candidly discussed her plastic surgery, a series of procedures first undertaken when she was 55, and she wrote that she had undergone 15 procedures. Her numerous surgeries were the subject of a "20/20" segment on February 12, 1993.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: By 1997, as she passed her 80th birthday, Diller began to suffer from various ailments. In 1999, her heart stopped during a hospital stay. She was fitted with a pacemaker but had a bad drug reaction and became paralyzed. Through physical therapy, she was able to walk again. Approaching age 90, Diller retired from stand-up comedy appearances.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: On July 11, 2007, "USA Today" reported that she had fractured her back and had to cancel an appearance on "The Tonight Show", during which she had planned to celebrate her 90th birthday. On May 15, 2012, Diller conducted her final interview accepting the “Lifetime Achievement” award from her hometown of Lima, Ohio, as part of a panel of comedians.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller died at her home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on the morning of August 20, 2012, at the age of 95. She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered at sea.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller was one of the first solo female comedians in the U.S. to become a household name. She stated that making people laugh is a powerful art form. As a pioneering woman in the stand-up field, she inspired many female comedians including Joan Rivers, Lily Tomlin, Ellen DeGeneres, Margaret Cho and Roseanne Barr. Diller herself was influenced by comedy books and appropriated from sources like "The Lockhorns".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Barr, who listened to Diller's records as a child, called her a true artist and revolutionary, saying, "It was timeless, that wacky, tacky character she created; the cigarette holder was genius, paradoxically regal. She was a victorious loser hero, the female iteration of Chaplin's Little Tramp."


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Fellow comic Joan Rivers paid tribute to Diller's early-career woman's point of view, saying, "She was the first one that there was such rage and such anger in her comedy. She had the anger that is now in all of us. And that's what made it so funny because she spoke for all these women that were sitting home with five children and a husband that didn't work."


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller had a large gay following from the beginning of her career, once saying, "My first audience were gay people because they have a great sense of humor." An obituary in Queerty noted her popularity with gay audiences calling her a "strong-willed entertainer who challenged the status quo regarding gender and sexuality." She enjoyed the company of gay men, writing in her memoir, "Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy": "Gay men have the most wonderful sense of humor. And they are willing to laugh. They appeal to me and I appeal to them." In 2021, Ginger Minj portrayed Diller in the Snatch Game of Love on the sixth season of "RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars".


title: Phyllis Diller

text: A "New York Times" remembrance noted that Diller's flamboyant look is echoed in Lady Gaga's concert attire and that Eddie Murphy also punctuated jokes with a loud laugh, in a style reminiscent of Diller's persona.


title: Phyllis Diller

text: Diller was an outspoken proponent of plastic surgery at a time when cosmetic procedures were secretive. Her public admission to having several facelifts, nose jobs and other procedures added promotional and comedic value to her act. She told Bob Hope in 1971 that she had had a facelift because "I got sick and tired of having the dog drag me out to the yard and bury me." The American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery gave her an award for bringing plastic surgery "out of the closet."


title: Phyllis Diller

text: In 2003, after hearing of the donation of Archie Bunker's chair to the Smithsonian Institution, Diller opened her doors to the National Museum of American History. She offered them some of her most iconic costume pieces, as well as her gag file, a steel cabinet with 48 file drawers with more than 50,000 jokes she had written on index cards during her career. In 2011, the Albert H. Small Documents Gallery at the National Museum of American History displayed Diller's file and some of the objects that became synonymous with her comedic persona—an unkempt wig, wrist-length gloves, cloth-covered ankle boots, and a bejeweled cigarette holder.


title: French Armed Forces

text: The French Armed Forces () encompass the Army, the Navy, the Air and Space Force and the Gendarmerie of the French Republic. The President of France heads the armed forces as Chief of the Armed Forces.


title: French Armed Forces

text: France has the sixth largest defence budget in the world and the first in the European Union (EU). It has the largest armed forces in size in the European Union. According to Credit Suisse, the French Armed Forces are ranked as the world's sixth-most powerful military.


title: French Armed Forces

text: The military history of France encompasses an immense panorama of conflicts and struggles extending for more than 2,000 years across areas, including modern France, greater Europe, and French territorial possessions overseas. According to British historian Niall Ferguson, the French participated in 50 of the 125 major European wars that have been fought since 1495; more than any other European state. They are followed by the Austrians who fought in 47 of them, the Spanish in 44 and the English (and later British) who were involved in 43. In addition, out of all recorded conflicts which occurred since the year 387 BC, France has fought in 168 of them, won 109, lost 49 and drawn 10.


title: French Armed Forces

text: The Gallo-Roman conflict predominated from 60 BC to 50 BC, with the Romans emerging victorious in the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar. After the decline of the Roman Empire, a Germanic tribe known as the Franks took control of Gaul by defeating competing tribes. The "land of Francia," from which France gets its name, had high points of expansion under kings Clovis I and Charlemagne. In the Middle Ages, rivalries with England and the Holy Roman Empire prompted major conflicts such as the Norman Conquest and the Hundred Years' War. With an increasingly centralized monarchy, the first standing army since Roman times, and the use of artillery, France expelled the English from its territory and came out of the Middle Ages as the most powerful nation in Europe, only to lose that status to Spain following defeat in the Italian Wars. The Wars of Religion crippled France in the late 16th century, but a major victory over Spain in the Thirty Years' War made France the most powerful nation on the continent once more. In parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, and in the Americas. Under Louis XIV, France achieved military supremacy over its rivals, but escalating conflicts against increasingly powerful enemy coalitions checked French ambitions and left the kingdom bankrupt at the opening of the 18th century.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Resurgent French armies secured victories in dynastic conflicts against the Spanish, Polish, and Austrian crowns. At the same time, France was fending off attacks on its colonies. As the 18th century advanced, global competition with Great Britain led to the Seven Years' War, where France lost its North American holdings. Consolation came in the form of dominance in Europe and the American Revolutionary War, where extensive French aid in the form of money and arms, and the direct participation of its army and navy led to America's independence. Internal political upheaval eventually led to 23 years of nearly continuous conflict in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. France reached the zenith of its power during this period, dominating the European continent in an unprecedented fashion under Napoleon Bonaparte, but by 1815 it had been restored to its pre-Revolutionary borders. The rest of the 19th century witnessed the growth of the Second French colonial empire as well as French interventions in Belgium, Spain, and Mexico. Other major wars were fought against Russia in the Crimea, Austria in Italy, and Prussia within France itself.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Franco-German rivalry erupted again in the First World War. France and its allies were victorious this time. Social, political, and economic upheaval in the wake of the conflict led to the Second World War, in which the Allies were defeated in the Battle of France and the French government surrendered and was replaced with an authoritarian regime. The Allies, including the government in exile's Free French Forces and later a liberated French nation, eventually emerged victorious over the Axis powers. As a result, France secured an occupation zone in Germany and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.


title: French Armed Forces

text: The imperative of avoiding a third Franco-German conflict on the scale of those of two world wars paved the way for European integration starting in the 1950s. France became a nuclear power with its first test of an atomic bomb in Algeria in 1960 Since the 1990s its military action is most often seen in cooperation with NATO and its European partners.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Today, French military doctrine is based on the concepts of national independence, nuclear deterrence ("see Force de frappe"), and military self-sufficiency. France is a charter member of NATO, and has worked actively with its allies to adapt NATO—internally and externally—to the post-Cold War environment. In December 1995, France announced that it would increase its participation in NATO's military wing, including the Military Committee (France withdrew from NATO's military bodies in 1966 whilst remaining full participants in the Organisation's political Councils). France remains a firm supporter of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and other cooperative efforts. Paris hosted the May 1997 NATO-Russia Summit which sought the signing of the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security. Outside of NATO, France has actively and heavily participated in both coalition and unilateral peacekeeping efforts in Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans, frequently taking a lead role in these operations. France has undertaken a major restructuring to develop a professional military that will be smaller, more rapidly deployable, and better tailored for operations outside of mainland France. Key elements of the restructuring include: reducing personnel, bases and headquarters, and rationalisation of equipment and the armaments industry.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Since the end of the Cold War, France has placed a high priority on arms control and non-proliferation. French Nuclear testing in the Pacific, and the sinking of the "Rainbow Warrior" strained French relations with its Allies, South Pacific states (namely New Zealand), and world opinion. France agreed to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1992 and supported its indefinite extension in 1995. After conducting a controversial final series of six nuclear tests on Mururoa in the South Pacific, the French signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. Since then, France has implemented a moratorium on the production, export, and use of anti-personnel landmines and supports negotiations leading toward a universal ban. The French are key players in the adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe to the new strategic environment. France remains an active participant in: the major programs to restrict the transfer of technologies that could lead to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Australia Group (for chemical and biological weapons), and the Missile Technology Control Regime. France has also signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.


title: French Armed Forces

text: On 31 July 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered M. Jean-Claude Mallet, a member of the Council of State, to head up a thirty-five member commission charged with a wide-ranging review of French defence. The commission issued its White Paper in early 2008. Acting upon its recommendations, President Sarkozy began making radical changes in French defense policy and structures starting in the summer of 2008. In keeping with post-Cold War changes in European politics and power structures, the French military's traditional focus on territorial defence will be redirected to meet the challenges of a global threat environment. Under the reorganisation, the identification and destruction of terrorist networks both in metropolitan France and in francophone Africa will be the primary task of the French military. Redundant military bases will be closed and new weapons systems projects put on hold to finance the restructuring and global deployment of intervention forces. In a historic change, Sarkozy furthermore has declared that France "will now participate fully in NATO," four decades after former French president General Charles de Gaulle withdrew from the alliance's command structure and ordered American troops off French soil.


title: French Armed Forces

text: In May 2014, high ranking defence chiefs of the French Armed Forces threatened to resign if the defence budget received further cuts on top of those already announced in the 2013 White Paper. They warned that further cuts would leave the armed forces unable to support operations abroad.


title: French Armed Forces

text: There are currently 36,000 French troops deployed in foreign territories—such operations are known as "OPEX" for "Opérations Extérieures" ("External Operations"). Among other countries, France provides troops for the United Nations force stationed in Haiti following the 2004 Haiti rebellion. France has sent troops, especially special forces, into Afghanistan to help the United States and NATO forces fight the remains of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In Opération Licorne a force of a few thousand French soldiers is stationed in Ivory Coast on a UN peacekeeping mission. These troops were initially sent under the terms of a mutual protection pact between France and the Ivory Coast, but the mission has since evolved into the current UN peacekeeping operation. The French Armed Forces have also played a leading role in the ongoing UN peacekeeping mission along the Lebanon-Israel border as part of the cease-fire agreement that brought the 2006 Lebanon War to an end. Currently, France has 2,000 army personnel deployed along the border, including infantry, armour, artillery and air defence. There are also naval and air personnel deployed offshore.


title: French Armed Forces

text: The French Joint Force and Training Headquarters (État-Major Interarmées de Force et d'Entraînement) at Air Base 110 near Creil maintains the ability to command a medium or large-scale international operation, and runs exercises . In 2011, from 19 March, France participated in the enforcement of a no-fly zone over northern Libya, during the Libyan Civil war, in order to prevent forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi from carrying out air attacks on Anti-Gaddafi forces. This operation was known as Opération Harmattan and was part of France's involvement in the conflict in the NATO-led coalition, enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1973. On 11 January 2013 France begun Operation Serval to fight Islamists in Mali and the Sahal Region with African support but without NATO involvement and launched Operation Barkhane to combat terror in African Sahal from 2014 to 2022.


title: French Armed Forces

text: In 2023, Exercise Orion, the largest in decades, is to be held in the Champagne-Ardenne region. About 10,000 soldiers are expected to take part, along with the French navy and possibly forces from Belgium, Britain, and the United States.


title: French Armed Forces

text: The head of the French armed forces is the President of the Republic, in his role as "chef des armées". However, the Constitution puts civil and military government forces at the disposal of the "gouvernement" (the executive cabinet of ministers chaired by the Prime Minister, who are not necessarily of the same political side as the president). The Minister of the Armed Forces (as of 2022, the incumbent Sébastien Lecornu) oversees the military's funding, procurement and operations. Historically, France relied a great deal on conscription to provide manpower for its military, in addition to a minority of professional career soldiers. Following the Algerian War, the use of non-volunteer draftees in foreign operations was ended; if their unit was called up for duty in war zones, draftees were offered the choice between requesting a transfer to another unit or volunteering for the active mission. In 1996, President Jacques Chirac's government announced the end of conscription and in 2001, conscription formally was ended. Young people must still, however, register for possible conscription (should the situation call for it). As of 2017 the French Armed Forces have total manpower of 426,265, and has an active personnel of 368,962 (with the Gendarmerie Nationale).


title: French Armed Forces

text: The reserve element of the French Armed Forces consists of two structures; the Operational Reserve and the Citizens Reserve. As of 2022 the strength of the Operational Reserve is 25,785 personnel.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Apart from the three main service branches, the French Armed Forces also includes a fourth military branch called the National Gendarmerie. It had a reported strength of 103,000 active personnel and 25,000 reserve personnel in 2018. They are used in everyday law enforcement, and also form a coast guard formation under the command of the French Navy. There are however some elements of the Gendarmerie that participate in French external operations, providing specialised law enforcement and supporting roles.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Historically the National Guard functioned as the Army's reserve national defense and law enforcement militia. After 145 years since its disbandment, due to the risk of terrorist attacks in the country, the Guard was officially reactivated, this time as a service branch of the Armed Forces, on 12 October 2016.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Since 2019 young French citizens can fulfill the mandatory service "Service national universel (SNU)" within the Armed Forces in the service branch of their choice.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Placed under the command of the staffs, the French armed forces include the four service branches, the Army, the National Navy, the Air and Space Force and the National Gendarmerie, as well as the support services and joint organizations:


title: French Armed Forces

text: In addition, the National Gendarmerie form a Coast Guard force called the Gendarmerie Maritime which is commanded by the French Navy.


title: French Armed Forces

text: The National Gendarmerie is primarily a military and airborne capable police force which serves as a rural and general purpose police force.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Reactivated in 2016, the National Guard serves as the official primary military and police reserve service of the Armed Forces. It is placed under the jurisdiction of Ministry of the Armed Forces and serves as a reserve force. It also doubles as a force multiplier for law enforcement personnel during contingencies and to reinforce military personnel whenever being deployed within France and abroad.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Bastille Day Parade 2017, VBCI of the 16th battalion of chasseurs.jpg|Bastille Day military parade in Paris, 2017.


title: French Armed Forces

text: Collins class submarine with the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in May 2019.jpg|The aircraft carrier "Charles de Gaulle" (R91).


title: French Armed Forces

text: VBCI, nouvelles couleurs Armée de Terre (14 juillet 2021) (4).jpg|Véhicule blindé de combat d'infanterie.


title: French Armed Forces

text: A French air force Rafale aircraft breaks formation after refueling from a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft assigned to the 351st Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron (EARS) over an undisclosed 130317-F-BY961-185.jpg|A Rafale-B multirole fighter aircraft.


title: Education in Japan

text: Education in Japan is managed by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan. Education is compulsory at the elementary and lower secondary levels. Most students attend public schools through the lower secondary level, but private education is popular at the upper secondary and university levels. Education prior to elementary school is provided at kindergartens and day-care centres. The programmes for those children aged 3–5 resemble those at kindergartens. The educational approach at kindergartens varies greatly from unstructured environments that emphasize play to highly structured environments that are focused on having the child pass the entrance exam at a private elementary school. The academic year starts from April and ends in March, having summer vacation in August and winter vacation in the end of December to the beginning of January.


title: Education in Japan

text: Japanese students consistently rank highly among OECD students in terms of quality and performance in reading literacy, mathematics, and sciences. Japan is one of the top-performing OECD countries in reading literacy, mathematics and sciences on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests with the average student scoring 520, compared with the OECD average of 488, placing it eighth in the world in the 2018 ranking. Japan's populace is well educated and its society highly values education as a platform for socioeconomic mobility and for gaining employment in the country's high-tech economy. The country's large pool of highly educated and skilled individuals is largely responsible for ushering Japan's post-war economic growth. Tertiary-educated adults in Japan, particularly graduates in sciences and engineering, benefit economically and socially from their education and skills in the country's high tech economy.


title: Education in Japan

text: Spending on education as a proportion of GDP is 4.1 percent, which is below the OECD average of 5 percent. Although expenditure per student is comparatively high in Japan, total expenditure relative to GDP remains small. In 2020, the country ranked third for the percentage of 25-to-64-year-olds that have attained tertiary education with 52.7 percent. In addition, 61.5 percent of Japanese aged 25 to 34 have attained some form tertiary education and bachelor's degrees are held by 31.3 percent of Japanese aged 25 to 64, the second most in the OECD after South Korea. Japanese females are more highly educated compared to their Japanese male counterparts as 59 percent of Japanese women possess a university degree, compared to 52 percent of Japanese men. As the Japanese economy is largely scientifically and technologically based, its labor market demands people who have achieved some form of higher education, particularly related to science and engineering in order to gain a competitive edge when searching for employment opportunities. According to the MEXT, the percentage of Japanese going on to any higher education institution in the eighteen-year-old cohort was 80.6 percent, with 52.6 percent of students going on to a university, 4.7 percent to a junior college, 0.9 percent to a college of technology and the remaining 22.4 percent attending a correspondence school, the University of the Air or a specialized training college. Japan's education system played a central part in Japan's recovery and rapid economic growth in the decades following the end of World War II.


title: Education in Japan

text: Formal education in Japan began with the adoption of Chinese culture, in the 6th century AD. Buddhist and Confucian teachings as well as sciences, calligraphy, divination and literature were taught at the courts of Asuka, Nara and Heian. Scholar officials were chosen through an Imperial examination system. But contrary to China, the system never fully took hold and titles and posts at the court remained hereditary family possessions. The rise of the "bushi", the military class, during the Kamakura period ended the influence of scholar officials, but Buddhist monasteries remained influential centers of learning.


title: Education in Japan

text: In the Edo period, the Yushima Seidō in Edo was the chief educational institution of the state; and at its head was the "Daigaku-no-kami", a title which identified the leader of the Tokugawa training school for shogunate bureaucrats.


title: Education in Japan

text: Under the Tokugawa shogunate, the daimyō vied for power in the largely pacified country. Since their influence could not be raised through war, they competed on the economic field. Their warrior-turned-bureaucrat Samurai elite had to be educated not only in military strategy and the martial arts, but also agriculture and accounting. Likewise, the wealthy merchant class needed education for their daily business, and their wealth allowed them to be patrons of arts and science. But temple schools (terakoya) educated peasants too, and it is estimated that at the end of the Edo period 50% of the male and 20% of the female population possessed some degree of literacy. Even though contact with foreign countries was restricted, books from China and Europe were eagerly imported and Rangaku ("Dutch studies") became a popular area of scholarly interest.


title: Education in Japan

text: There were facilities that were created to specifically educate samurai and their children to perpetuate morality and mindfulness of their class. These schools, hanko schools, were where scholars would bring together samurai to listen to lectures on Confucianism, military arts, and other subjects. Samurai would then attempt to teach villagers what they had learned, "proper guidance to the common people's spirit and manners", by posting flyers and creating handbooks, Some Shōgun and Daimyō were also interested in spreading education throughout their protected land with the target audience as adult commoners and children. Elementary education was imparted as well as writing and morality lessons. The Shirakawa Village School's town bulletin explains the point of education for the commoners, "If not only the important people of the village but also the lesser people have continuous teaching from the appointed village schools, they will gain understanding".


title: Education in Japan

text: 'Commoners' would also form many communal gatherings to attempt and Englishmen themselves with the help of a scholar. To name one, Baigan Ishida, who was a great orator and writer that reached the outcropping of the merchant class. There were wakashu-gumi, or youth groups, that consisted of young men ages fourteen to seventeen, who at these groups learned about ceremonies, cooperative living, language, manners, marriage, straw weaving, and world information, not to mention talking and singing. Japan was thriving with the want for enlightenment. One may say the need for more education is one of the reasons why the Tokugawa Shogunate failed in 1868.


title: Education in Japan

text: In 1858 Fukuzawa Yukichi founded a private school of Western studies which then became Keio University, known as a leading institute in Japanese higher education.


title: Education in Japan

text: After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the methods and structures of Western learning were adopted as a means to make Japan a strong, modern nation. Students and even high-ranking government officials were sent abroad to study, such as the Iwakura mission. Foreign scholars, the so-called "o-yatoi gaikokujin", were invited to teach at newly founded universities and military academies. Compulsory education was introduced, mainly after the Prussian model. In order to aid in the modernization the country, the Meiji government built a public library in 1872. The Japan Library Association (or the JLA) was founded in 1892 to promote the library. However, public education became the main focus of the Meiji government before they could strengthen the


title: Education in Japan

text: 0 years after the resumption of full international relations, Japan discontinued employment of the foreign consultants.


title: Education in Japan

text: After the defeat in World War II, the Allied occupation government set education reform as one of its primary goals, to eradicate militarist teachings and convert Japan into a pacifist democracy. Nine years of education was made mandatory, with six years in elementary education and three in junior high as an emulation of the American educational system. A number of reforms were carried out in the post-war period that aimed at easing the burden of entrance examinations, promoting internationalization and information technologies, diversifying education and supporting lifelong learning.


title: Education in Japan

text: In an effort to ease Japanese postwar sentiments, any nationalistic, militaristic, authoritarian, or anti-American content was blackened from learning materials. This practice was known as "suminuru", and was used as the primary method of educational reform until newly fashioned texts, Kuni no ayumi (Footsteps of the Nation), Nihon rekishi (Japanese History), and Minshushugi (Democracy) were written by the Ministry of Education and Civil Information and Education Section. The Ministry of Education is now known as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and is responsible for educational administration.


title: Education in Japan

text: In successive international assessment tests, Japan's fourth- and eighth-grade students have consistently ranked in the top five globally in both mathematics and science (see TIMSS).


title: Education in Japan

text: Despite concerns that academic skills for Japanese students may have declined since the mid-1990s, Japan's students showed a significant improvement in math and science scores in the 2011 TIMSS survey, compared to the 2007 scores.


title: Education in Japan

text: The school year in Japan begins in April and classes are held from Monday to either Friday or Saturday, depending on the school. The school year consists of two or three terms, which are separated by short holidays in spring and winter, and a six-week-long summer break.


title: Education in Japan

text: Lower secondary school covers grades seven through nine, with children typically aged twelve through fifteen. There are 3.5 million primary school students in Japan as of 2012, down from over 5.3 million in 1991. However, the number of junior high schools has remained relatively static, falling from 11,275 in 1993 to 10,699 in 2012. The number of junior high school teachers has also changed little, with 257,605 junior high school teachers in 1996, and 253,753 in 2012). Approximately 8% of junior high students attend a private junior high school (accounting for 7% of all junior high schools). Private schools are considerably more expensive: as of 2013, the average annual cost of private primary school attendance was ¥1,295,156 per student, roughly thrice the ¥450,340 cost for a public school. Japan's compulsory education ends at grade nine, but less than 2% drop out; 60% of students advanced to senior education as of 1960, increasing rapidly to over 90% by 1980, rising further each year until reaching 98.3% as of 2012.


title: Education in Japan

text: Teachers often major in their respective subjects, and more than 79% graduate from a four-year college. Classes are large, with an average of thirty-eight students per class, and each class is assigned a homeroom teacher, doubling as a counselor. Unlike kindergarten students, primary school students have different teachers for different subjects. However, the teacher changes rooms for each period, rather than the students.


title: Education in Japan

text: Instruction in primary schools is often in the form of lectures. Teachers also use other Media, such as television and Radio, and there is some laboratory work. By 1989 about 45% of all public primary schools had computers, including schools that used them only for administrative purposes. All course contents are specified in the Course of Study for Lower-Secondary Schools. Some subjects, such as Japanese language and mathematics, are coordinated with the elementary curriculum. Others, such as foreign-language study, begin at this level, though from April 2011, English became a compulsory part of the elementary school curriculum. The junior school curriculum covers Japanese language, social studies, mathematics, science, music, fine arts, health, and physical education. All students are also exposed to industrial arts and homemaking. Moral education and special activities continue to receive attention. Most students also participate in one of a range of school clubs that occupy them until around 6 p.m. most weekdays (including weekends and often before school as well), as part of an effort to address juvenile delinquency..


title: Education in Japan

text: A growing number of primary school students also attend "juku", private extracurricular study schools, in the evenings and on weekends. A focus by students upon these other studies and the increasingly structured demands upon students' time have been criticized by teachers and in the media for contributing to a decline in classroom standards and student performance in recent years.


title: Education in Japan

text: The ministry recognizes a need to improve the teaching of all foreign languages, especially English. To improve instruction in spoken English, the government invites many young native speakers of English to Japan to serve as assistants to school boards and prefectures under its Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET). Beginning with 848 participants in 1987, the program grew to a high of 6,273 participants in 2002. The program was in a decline in recent years due to several factors, including shrinking local school budgets funding the program, as well as an increasing number of school boards hiring their foreign native speakers directly or through lower-paying, private agencies. Today, the program is again growing due to English becoming a compulsory part of the elementary school curriculum in 2011/21**.


title: Education in Japan

text: Though upper-secondary school is not compulsory in Japan, 94% of all junior high school graduates enrolled as of 2005. Upper secondary consists of three years. Private upper-secondary schools account for about 55% of all upper-secondary schools, and neither public nor private schools are free. The Ministry of Education estimated that annual family expenses for the education of a child in a public upper-secondary school were about ¥300,000 in the 1980s and that private upper-secondary schools were about twice as expensive.


title: Education in Japan

text: The most common type of upper-secondary school has a full-time, general program that offered academic courses for students preparing for higher education as well as technical and vocational courses for students expecting to find employment after graduation. More than 70% of upper-secondary school students were enrolled in the general academic program in the late 1980s. A small number of schools offer part-time programs, evening courses, or correspondence education.


title: Education in Japan

text: The first-year programs for students in both academic and commercial courses are similar. They include basic academic courses, such as Japanese language, English, mathematics, and science. In upper-secondary school, differences in ability are first publicly acknowledged, and course content and course selection are far more individualized in the second year. However, there is a core of academic material throughout all programs.


title: Education in Japan

text: Vocational-technical programs includes several hundred specialized courses, such as information processing, navigation, fish farming, business, English, and ceramics. Business and industrial courses are the most popular, accounting for 72% of all students in full-time vocational programs in 1989.