At the International G.I. Joe Convention, thousands of grown men play with little dolls

No one experiences this crowd like Jamie Sanders does.

Across the street from the Hyatt Regency Crown Center, on a Friday morning in August, his helmet muffles nearby parents' warnings to their children about running across the busy street. It also distorts jokes made by middle-aged men with snake tattoos. The helmet ensures that when Sanders does speak, his own voice echoes back to him, but no one else can hear.

Vision is also a problem. The visor lets him look out while hiding his face behind a mirror, but the plastic sheath makes everything darker and fogs up from his breath. And the full-body uniform of the Cobra soldier makes the morning's heat even worse. When he finally does remove the helmet, Sanders' hair is slick with sweat and clings to his scalp in unruly tangles.

He loves moments like these. Some of the parents bring their kids over to take pictures with him. Sanders dutifully stands with each one, sometimes posing with a fake grenade in one hand, the other hand on the pin.

Finally, the staffers who are working this year's International G.I. Joe Convention begin moving people away from the base of the Hyatt hotel. A countdown begins, and as the screaming crescendos at number one, someone throws a dark object from the roof more than 40 floors above.

At first, the object is hard to see in the sunlight reflecting off the glass building. But the floating thing becomes clearer against the cloudless blue sky as its parachute catches a gust of wind. In less than a minute, it reaches the ground. Children and grown men swarm over it, and a pair of adult hands raises it: a gray capsule holding a small plastic man in a yellow jumpsuit.

"Get back, please!" one of the staffers yells. "People, we need you to get back!"

Everyone steps back, and another countdown begins. Those at the front of the crowd look as if they're poised at starting blocks, their muscles tense, their grimaces determined.

The screaming starts again when the first specks are visible in the sky. For the next few minutes, someone atop the Hyatt will launch 300 12-inch dolls above the ravenous masses.

"Children first!" staffers yell, but no one can hear them. Kids trip over their own feet and each other and fall to the pavement crying. Men in their 40s jump to grab toys before they land and then run from the crowd.

Television news crews are interviewing bystanders. One G.I. Joe fan removes his shirt to expose tattooed snake heads — the insignia of the fictional Cobra terrorist organization — across the chubby plane of his torso.

To Sanders' left, a man wearing a JoeCon access badge snags a doll from the air while, beneath his arm, a small boy jumps and misses. The man hands over the toy, and the boy runs off.

Other kids have a harder time.

"Sir! Sir! Sir! Sir!" shouts a heavy woman dragging a crying child by one arm behind her. She's chasing a doughy man with a white handlebar mustache and a convention tag around his neck. "Sir! It's kids first! It's kids first!"

The man does not turn around. Instead, he walks with a quick, purposeful stride away from the mother chasing him and calling "Sir! Sir! Sir!" with the same inflection with which someone would say Asshole! Asshole! Asshole!

A woman from the JoeCon staff moves in between them. The angry mother is shouting now, pointing to a cluster of children standing empty-handed across the street.

"If you don't give him the G.I. Joe, I will take away your convention pass," the staffer tells the man with the handlebar mustache. Then she plucks the paratrooper from his hands, bends over and hands it to the sniffling boy.

"Thank you," the mother says and walks away, still pulling the child.

The man stands there for a moment, mouth open, watching his lost prize disappear. The staffer moves on to make sure other adults give the toys to children.

"I'm a collector!" the man bleats suddenly, before walking away in stunned confusion.

The crowd begins to thin, but the G.I. Joe frenzy isn't over.

Two dolls have landed in the branches of a tree, about 8 feet higher than any of the remaining men can reach.

At first they throw shoes, hoping to dislodge the toys, but that doesn't work. The average G.I. Joe fan here is not in any shape to climb a tree, so after the sneakers stop flying, they just stand around staring at the tiny plastic people. Eventually, a pair of brave, lean men attempt a rescue mission. They're about halfway up the branches when a police officer arrives.

"Get down right now," the officer says in a voice quieter and deeper than the angry mother's but with the same tone.

G.I. Joe fans respect the authority of law. The two men in the tree jump down. "If the cops are here, it's time to go," one says to the other.

Sanders, who has been watching from below the tree, leaves with nothing in hand.