As payment, Hasbro offered him $75,000 or a tiny royalty fee that was below the industry norm because he was new to the toy business, his daughter said. Eventually, he asked for $100,000, and Hasbro agreed.

“When he saw the line at the 1964 Toy Fair,” she said, “he knew he had made a mistake.”

Mr. Levine, a Korean War veteran, told NPR that he named the doll after watching the 1945 film “The Story of G.I. Joe,” and that it was his way to honor the armed forces. Manufacturing of the G.I. Joe figures, 12 inches tall, began in 1964, before American involvement in Vietnam had swelled and public faith in the government and the military had begun eroding.

Hasbro advertised G.I. Joe in a commercial with a martial-sounding song with the lyrics, “G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe, fighting man from head to toe, on the land, on the sea, in the air.”

Vincent Santelmo, who has written several books about G.I. Joe, recalled seeing displays of the action figure in a toy store in the Bronx when he was growing up. “My mother wasn’t fond of the war-toy thing, but she let me have them, and after that, my relatives purchased anything that had to do with Joe for me as gifts,” he said in a telephone interview. “Once in a while, an unsuspecting aunt would slip in a Ken. I could just tell by the style of the book that he wasn’t a G.I. Joe, and I put him to the side someplace.”

G.I. Joe was a breakthrough: a boy’s doll, only in battle dress, with a footlocker full of accessories that kept young fans hungry for more. More than 400 million G.I. Joe action figures had been sold in the United States by 2009, according to Toys and American Culture: An Encyclopedia (2010). And hundreds of G.I. Joe characters have been produced by Hasbro.

“It defined the beginning of the action figure category,” said Steve Pasierb, president and chief executive of the Toy Association, the trade group for manufacturers.