I am pretty sure I had been into Joes for some years before anyone even told me the franchise began in the 60s with larger scale dolls. It became clearer to me that most, if not all references to GI Joe in films and tv refer to the tall dudes, at least up through the early 90s. That is confusing, and it is still confusing because people like Conan O'brien continue to perpetuate the knowledge of GI Joe as 12" dolls. That's cool, but the two lines are pretty far afield from one another in their appeal.
Actually, they are all technically "dolls"--because at the time of the debut of RAH, there was no legal definition for action figure. It was only after about 1996, iirc, that Toybiz got a court ruling that defined their X-men toys as "action figures" to sidestep import duties. They succeeded because it was shown to the courts that the figures depicted a slate of characters of "mutants" with inhuman features.
Up until that time, the term was only marketing jargon, and had no legal bearing on the classification of toys.
The definition of a doll was a realistic depiction of a human being in toy form. IIRC, as long as the toy-line featured ONE character with an inhuman aspect, the whole line ( and each individual character) could fall under the "action figure" description, and thus avoid the import duties. That pretty much describes EVERY action figure line made since the mid-90's.
I do not know if the import duties on dolls were rescinded entirely after that.
And as an aside,there used to be debates about the 12" Joe being "dolls" because they featured fabric clothing and could be undressed. It still bears pointing out that 3 3/4" GIJOE ALSO occasionally featured cloth items, such as capes, and could also be "undressed" ( removable helmets, harnesses, and such), making them dolls as well.
