 This is our first review of 2020 and I am happy to announce this channel has reached 10,000 subscribers. That means I have finally earned this, my cardboard play button. YouTube doesn't give out anything for 10,000 subscribers. I made it out of a pizza box. This channel was never intended to have a mass appeal. We focus on one thing, GI Joe. And not even all of GI Joe, we focus on vintage GI Joe from the 80s and 90s. This channel was never destined to have 100,000 subscribers. I did believe the channel could reach 10,000 subscribers though. I believed there would be at least that many GI Joe fans who would enjoy the show. And so for the last five years, I've been trying to find them. So if you're watching this, thank you. Thank you for going on this journey with me. I hope you've enjoyed it so far and I hope you enjoy what we have coming up in the future. This is the only play button I'll ever get and it's the only one I'll ever need. I can't think of a better way to start the decade. Now, let's get on with the show. Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. This is the show where we review every vintage GI Joe toy from 1982 to 1994. This is the first review of 2020 and we always start the year by looking at something big, a large vehicle or play set. This year we have the 1992 GI Joe headquarters. If you're a fan of GI Joe from the 1980s, you may not be familiar with this base. My go-to GI Joe headquarters was the 1983 headquarters command center. But fans of 1980s GI Joe, this play set is worth taking a look at. I warn you, you will be seeing a lot of orange. But don't let that put you off. There's a lot to like about this play set. Let's start the decade off on a firm foundation, a solid base, if you will. And let's look at the play set I affectionately call Fort Footpegs. HCC 788 presents the 1992 headquarters. This is the 1992 GI Joe headquarters. This play set was introduced in 1992 and it was also available in 1993. It was reissued in 2001 with different colors. It was also reissued in 1994 as the Street Fighter movie Shadowloo headquarters, again with different colors. It did not include an action figure. This is a very large play set. It doesn't look very large in its compact mode. It folds up so it takes up a lot less space. But I wanted to start with its compact mode so you will be impressed when I open it up. Let's open this guy up so you can see this sprawling headquarters. It has wings on the side that open up like that. So now it's almost three times as wide and this front piece here slides out as well. So now it's deeper. And to fully to open it up, I actually have to turn it around so you can see the back side. In the back, there's another piece that folds out. It won't even fit on my table. When it's fully opened, this thing is huge. This play set has an enormous footprint even by large GI Joe play set standards. Let's compare it with other headquarters play sets from the vintage era. The 1982 Cobra Missile Command headquarters was the first headquarters of any kind in the vintage era. It was made of cardboard and it is not really comparable to the 1992 headquarters. What a difference 10 years makes. In 1983, GI Joe got the headquarters command center. This is the play set that's most comparable to the 1992 headquarters. It has a similar color scheme except for the orange. The 83 headquarters command center was large for the time, but it is dwarfed by the 1992 headquarters. When the 92 headquarters is opened up, the 83 headquarters is still wider. But the 92 version is deeper and much taller. In 1986, it was Cobra's turn to have a new headquarters. They got the Terror Drone. It was much larger than the 1982 entry and it was made of plastic instead of cardboard this time. It included a small aircraft and a pilot. And yes, the Terror Drone is bigger than the 1992 headquarters. Terror Drone is king. It even has a crown. In 1987, GI Joe got the mobile command center. It's a vehicle that folds out into a headquarters mode. It's sort of a hybrid vehicle play set and it has lots of headquarters stuff inside. In 1990, GI Joe got the general, another mobile headquarters with a similar function as the 1987 mobile command center. It was more of a vehicle than a headquarters though. The 1992 play set was the last headquarters in the vintage line. There were other play sets and some vehicles that had emplacement modes like the mobile battle bunker and Fort America, but I wouldn't consider them to be headquarters. I have the box for the headquarters. I don't normally get boxes. So this is a nice bonus. We can get an idea of how this toy was marketed back in 1992. This box is a little beat up, but that's okay. We can still see the artwork. The box art features a lot of 1992 GI Joe characters and the artwork is not bad. It's not quite as good as the artwork we had in the 80s, but it's okay. It certainly does show you a lot of the features and give you an idea of how you could play with this set. The box tells us it has four spring action missile launchers and three targets, electronic light and eight sounds, over 30 inches long, holds over 50 figures, exploding tower action. This play set is officially billed as headquarters, the fully armed multi deployable GI Joe command station. I don't know what they mean by multi deployable, but it is also a fully armed and operational battle station. This box has seen its better days, but it's still mostly intact. There is full color printing on the front of the box and on the bottom of the box, but there is two color printing on the back and the sides. If you can read that upside down, the bottom of the box has five flag points and the back of the box is printed on a white background with just black and red ink, and it has some of the features listed. It's a little redundant and has some of the same things on the back of the box that it had on the front of the box, but it does have this graphic here of the backside of the play set. So you can get an idea of what it looks like inside, but not a bad box. But the important thing is what came in the box. In addition to the box, I also have the instruction sheet and the exceptionally large blueprints. And I'll refer to this when talking about some of the features on the play set. Let's look at the parts and the features of the headquarters. The fold-up feature is a big asset for this play set. The 1983 headquarters could be broken down into its component parts, but those parts could be easily lost or broken. The 1992 headquarters stays together. For such a large play set, its footprint is surprisingly small when closed. And when opened up, it provides a lot of space for play. The base has three major components. It has a centerpiece and it has a wing on each side. And each of those side pieces is held on with a green pin that goes through a hinge. The base is exceptionally tall too. Not only do we have multiple sections to look through, we also have several levels. The face of the headquarters is mostly silver, similar to the 1983 version. It looks like unpainted metal armor, but it includes some silver sandbags at the base. Those would have been better in a different color, but I understand that wouldn't have been cost-effective to make an additional piece to fit on there. So I understand why they did it that way. Let's start on the very front by looking at this amazing big gun that mounts on the brown perimeter piece section on these posts. It can be removed and used as a standalone weapon. The blueprints call this gun a remote liquid cooled eliminator rapid fire cannon with gunner's seat. That seat will fit one action figure, but it does not have a backpack or a seat belt to hold the figure in. It does have two control sticks, but they are too big to fit in the action figure's hand. This big cannon does not traverse. It has no side to side pivot, and it will not elevate any higher than that. That's the highest it will aim. It can tilt downward. In fact, it can go all the way down and lay flat like that. The best part about this gun is the automatic firing feature. You have to see this. You can fire all of these missiles in quick succession just by turning this knob in the back, and the missiles are surprisingly powerful. Let's test it out by taking aim at our favorite target, Dr. Meinbender. And since this is a rapid fire weapon, I think we need more than one target. All I'm going to do is turn the knob clockwise and the missiles should fire. Let's take them out. Here we go. Oh yeah, there's one. Oh, oh, missing. Come on. Oh yeah, there. One more. One more. One more shot. We can get him. We can get him. Oh, that one's tight. Come on. Oh. Oh. All right. There's one Meinbender still standing. I've never been a big fan of these spring-loaded weapons, and this place that has a lot of spring-loaded weapons, but at least they did something creative with it. Let's turn our attention to this perimeter section. It is molded all in brown plastic, and even though it's kind of monochrome, this has the look and feel of something real. It has textured mud, and it has sandbags. These are the posts that the gun attached to. It's got a wood wall here. It's got a ramp. It's got what looks like a metal wall around it. Very realistic-looking and just beautifully detailed. It even has multiple foot pegs, so you can stand to figure up in there, and he can be ready for battle. That was a problem on some earlier GI Joe play sets. They didn't have enough or any foot pegs. This wall looked very familiar to me, so I dug out the wall piece of the 1985 Cobra rifle range because it looks like they used a bit of this play set for this wall in the perimeter section. They did cut it up a little bit, and even though it's very similar, it's not exactly the same. It looks like they may have used this as a base, but they did remold it. At the back of the perimeter section, it has these ramps, and then on the wall directly behind it, it has an orange door that folds down over the ramps, and it almost looks like a vehicle is supposed to fit through there, but this opening is so small that only the smallest of vehicles would fit through there, and there's not really a way to wheel a vehicle into the perimeter section anyway. So this must just be an entrance for personnel. The door has the GI Joe logo on both sides, so that's kind of cool, but of course, I don't love the color. Let's look at the outside of this section. This would be the right side of the base if you were inside and facing the front wall, and on this section we have our armor plate. We have a slot so someone from the inside could fire out. We also have a missile launcher mount. This missile launcher is orange. It has a black trigger, and it fires a green missile. It can rotate, but not all the way because the wall does get in the way, so it can't turn all the way around, and of course that is a spring loaded missile and it will fire if we hit the trigger in the back. I can't traverse the missile launcher enough to hit our surviving Dr. Meinbender, so I'll just fire the missile off to the side here. To fire, you just press down on this black trigger and fire. This missile launcher has another feature. The launcher itself is also on a spring loaded mechanism. The box said this base had targets, and this is one of those targets, this orange section here. If an enemy weapon hits this spot, the launcher will pop up. The missile launcher fits into the spring loaded mechanism on the inside of the wall. To replace it, you just put the black peg in, press down until it clicks, and of course that sets this trigger. This gimmick worked with the trend of giving figures spring loaded missile launchers in the 1990s. I was never a big fan of these missile launchers, but it does add a new play dimension by giving the figures something to shoot at. We're always taking shots at Dr. Meinbender, so let's give this surviving Dr. Meinbender a chance to get revenge by letting him take a shot at this target, and let's see if he can take out this gun. Can you do it, Dr. Meinbender? Fire! So I guess Dr. Meinbender's missile launcher is not powerful enough for the trigger. Let's try it one more time. I just feel like this ought to work. Fire, Dr. Meinbender, fire! That was two direct hits, and it still didn't trigger the targets. We'll see if the other targets work better. Moving over to the other wing, we have more cool features. This one has a rather conspicuous orange panel on this wall, and that's because we have another target. This time the target is this orange barrel that sits on the inside of the wall, but it's elevated enough that you can hit it from the outside. This time, if you hit this target, it causes this wall section to pop out. That allows your Cobra prisoners to escape from the jail cell. We'll take a closer look at the jail cell when we look at the other side of the playset. This wall section looks like just a flat piece with a missile attached. It works exactly the same way as the other missile launchers. To reattach it, you just press this knob into the spring-loaded mechanism, and this one, though, you do have to press it in pretty well to make sure it completely clicks in. The barrel will tilt slightly forward to set the trigger. This is not a bad feature. It gives Cobra an opportunity to rescue Cobra Commander if he gets captured, but that orange wall section is quite conspicuous. It would have looked better if it were silver, the same color as the rest of the wall. Let's give Dr. Meinbender a chance to redeem himself and see if he can hit that barrel and spring Cobra Commander. All right, Meinbender, aim and fire. Okay, I missed that time, but we'll try again. We'll try again. Meinbender, aim and fire. All right, Meinbender, there's a reason why they keep you in the science lab. Hit the damn barrel. You can't really see with that thing over your eye, can you? Hit the barrel. Hit the barrel. We hit the barrel, but it still wasn't enough to trigger the target and pop out that wall. And this is a reasonably powerful spring-loaded missile launcher. It's got a pretty good spring on it, but still not enough to actually work to trigger that. I was really trying to say something nice about these goofy missile launchers, so now let's just turn this base around and look at the backside. This is the backside of the headquarters. There's a lot here. There's so much I can't fit it all in the frame of my camera. It's an open back, similar to the 1983 headquarters command center, which also did not have a back wall. But there is a lot to play with back here. There is so much to inspire the imagination, so let's look at it. Let's start with this service bay that's so large it won't even fit on my table. It folds up for compact mode and it attaches to the main body with a pin that runs through a hinge. It is all in brown plastic. Brown may not have been the best color choice, but it's all right. It is hyper detailed. I mean, there is technical detail on every millimeter of this thing. Tons of amazing sculpted detail on there. It has what looks like platforms for a vehicle, but it has no way for the vehicle to drive up to it. They may have intended you to use this crane to lift a vehicle onto these platforms, but these platforms are also very short, so not very many vehicles would fit it. This service bay has another function that doesn't have anything to do with vehicles. These platforms that look like they should be for a small vehicle also work with this gun turret that we saw on the front of the play set. When it is folded up like this, it will actually fit on those platforms and then the service bay can be folded up. It fits and completely closes with the gun attached. This is an alternate way to store this gun when the base is closed. On the main body near this brown service bay, there is a fuel hose. It attaches here to the main body. The hose has a nozzle and there's a hole in this kind of barrel looking thing that the nozzle will fit in and that you can use to refuel a vehicle and it can kind of reach over to the service bay, so that kind of makes sense. Let's look at the right wing of the headquarters from the backside this time and we have an orange piece with some technical detail, orange for added color interest. We have the spring loaded mechanism for the pop up launcher. We have a sticker control panel. It has stairs, but the stairs are so shallow they couldn't really be used. They're more like the suggestion of stairs rather than actual stairs and we can't forget the foot pegs. This thing has foot pegs everywhere. They did not skimp on foot pegs. Foot pegs. Foot pegs. Foot pegs. Foot pegs. Foot pegs. Broken foot peg. Foot pegs. Foot pegs. Foot pegs. Foot pegs. Foot pegs. Foot pegs. And on the service bay, one single foot peg. Looking at the left wing of the headquarters from the inside, we have the jail cell. A jail cell or a stockade was standard on GI Joe and Cobra headquarters play sets. So this is pretty much a standard feature, but this is more of a cage than a jail cell. I have 1992 Cobra Commander in there right now. You can open the cage by lifting this section up and you can take figure out or put a figure in whatever you please. I'll put Cobra Commander back in there for now. Don't forget this is the side that has the trigger on the barrel. So if a Cobra agent has a lucky enough shot, he can hit that barrel and the outside wall breaks away and Cobra Commander can be free. Taking a look inside that jail cell, we can see there is a tiny bed and a sink far too small for anyone to use. There's also, I don't know if you can see it, but there's a foot peg down on the floor. I'm not sure I can even get it on camera. Yeah, foot peg. So that cell is tiny. The 1983 headquarters had a much roomier jail cell, but it's still more space than the jail cell on the Mobile Command Center. Rounding out our look on this wing of the headquarters, we do have more of those very shallow stairs and, yes, more foot pegs. Let's take a look at the central section of the base. We have a tower to climb, but let's start at the ground floor. It's all in this grayish silver plastic color and there is a massive amount of technical detail molded in. There is a generator over there with two foot pegs, of course. There is some floor space, but a lot of the floor space is taken up with the posts for the tower that are just kind of right there in the center. Some of this space you may find difficult to reach. There is a really cool computer station here and, of course, it has a foot peg. On the left side of the tower, there is an elevator. The elevator platform is orange. It has a green rail and a green elevator shaft. I really like this feature. This is something that some other GI Joe bases didn't think of. If you're going to have multiple levels, you should have a way for your guys to get to those upper levels. I had to turn the base around so you can see how this elevator works. The platform does have a foot peg on the side that faces the front of the base, so you can put a guy on there and then just manually lift the elevator up. The elevator does ratchet, so it will hold into place if you let go of it, or you can move it all the way up to the top. The top of the elevator doesn't go quite to the top level, so there is some climbing involved to get your guys into these upper levels, but that's okay. At least they thought of putting an elevator in at all. It may not be perfect, but it's all right. On the right side of the ground floor, on the opposite side from the elevator, we have extra missile storage. There are eight spaces to store these extra green missiles. These are the green missiles that are fired by the spring-loaded missile launchers like that one, and I think it's really cool that they gave us extra missiles and a way to store them. Really cool feature. Let's go ahead and climb that tower. The next level above the ground floor is this green platform, and there's not much there, not even any footpegs. There's not really enough room to stand to figure up anyway. There is a hole that looks like it's for a peg on the front side of that platform, and I thought it would be useful for an extra one of these orange missile launchers, but that doesn't really work. There is a plate in the way that won't let you peg that in. However, the base does come with an extra one of these green guns, and that will fit in this hole, so you can pop that in and have a little extra firepower. The next level is where the magic happens. This green section here has the controls for the electronic light and sound features. It also has this crane that sort of clamps in between the green section and the black section above it. Before we look at the electronic light and sounds, let's look at this crane, because it's here. It's a large green piece. It has a beam on top. I'm not 100 percent certain of its function. It will swivel. It has a range of motion of a little less than 90 degrees. The crane has a green hook and a black string, a black line, and you can let that line out by turning this wheel, and then you can turn it the other direction to reel it back in. In his review of this playset, FormBX257 noticed this peg on the green hook could sort of be used as a back peg for a figure. I'm not sure it was intended for that purpose. It is a tight fit, but it sort of works. Let's turn our attention to the controls for the light and sound effects. I've never been a big fan of noise making features on toys. I didn't really use them as a kid, but you know if you're going to do a playset with every possible feature thrown in, why not include electronic sounds too? On this green section, we have five orange buttons. You do have to make sure the crane is out of the way so you can access them, and each button makes a separate noise. There's that one. I think that last one is my favorite. It's a pretty good machine gun sound. If you swing the crane around to the other side, you have access to the switch, and this switch controls the rest of the electronic features, including a light feature. I'll have to swing the base around to the other side so you can see it. On the right side of the base, on this black level, there is an electric light bulb covered with a clear plastic housing, and that plastic housing will turn. On the inside of it, there is a black piece over half of it, so when you turn it, you can get a spotlight effect. Reaching back to that switch in the back and moving it to the right one space, the light will turn on. And now the base has a real light up search light. If I move the switch farther to the right, it will activate some electronic sounds, and the electronic sounds are constant. They do not stop until you switch the thing off, and in my opinion, these sounds are pretty annoying, so I'm going to go through them quickly. Okay guys, a slight problem. The sound effects with the switch are not working, the light's working, and they were working when I tested it earlier, so I'm not sure what the problem is now. The buttons on the other side, those still work. Not sure exactly what the problem is, but it looks like I cannot demonstrate to you the sound effects with the switch, so I'm sorry about that. That pretty much ruins the entire review. You should probably unsubscribe now. I'm going to show you how to access the battery compartment. It's in here. They do not make that easy. You have to disassemble pretty much the entire tower. So let's start by removing the elevator. Okay, once you have the elevator out of the way, which itself isn't very easy to do, you need to get this piece off, but you can't always remove that piece very easily on its own. Sometimes you just have to take the entire tower off. Okay, there we go. If I can get this off carefully, you know, it fits on quite snugly, but you want to handle it gently so you don't break it, but there. Now, once I get this off, I can actually get to the battery cover. So here's that battery cover and there's still a screw to remove, so you'll need a screwdriver for that. All right, once the screw is loosened, you should be able to just use this tab to pull the battery cover off, and there are the batteries. It takes five AA batteries, and I've got two different brands in here for some reason, and it has two sections. It has a section for the sounds upside down here, but it says sounds, and it has another section for two batteries. I can get them out. There we go. For the light. So you don't have to power both at the same time. You can power either the light section or the sound section. Okay, guys, after playing with the batteries, I was able to get this sound switch to work. So let's demonstrate. All right, the first switch just turns on the light, but if I move it over more, it should start the first sound. There we go. It's really loud. Okay, so I'll just go cycle through the sounds really quickly here. That was the first one. All right, those are the most annoying sounds in the world, and it will not stop until you switch it off. For those of you who are still subscribed, let's look at another level. There is this black level with molded sandbags and a textured floor, no foot pegs in there, surprisingly. There is this piece here in the center, and that serves as there we go. That serves as the spring loaded mechanism for another target. This big obvious orange piece here is the spring loaded piece that will pop out when you hit the target, but that is not the target. The target is the silver plate with the GI Joe emblem on it. I will show you that after we look at these next two levels, the next level up is this brown level, and it also has some molded in sandbags. This is about a half a level up from the black level, and that does wrap around all the way to the back, and this does have a lot of foot pegs, so that's great. It also has some posts where you can place some weapons here and here. This one has one of these green guns, and this other side here, I can place one of these orange missile launchers. This is not one of the spring loaded pop-up sections, so there's no target to hit that will blow up this turret, but still, you can place this in either one of those slots. There's also black railing around that brown section, so that's a nice touch. They actually thought a little bit about the safety of their personnel. Finally, let's look at the very top level. To me, this looks more like a roof than another floor, but it does have more molded in sandbags, and it has four foot pegs, and it has a flag post. This one is slightly bent, but it has an American flag. The Canadian release of this toy would have had a Canadian flag. Let's demonstrate the last target on this base. This top section here is connected to the black section with hinged posts in the back. If you hit this silver plate target here, this orange piece will pop out and cause that top section to collapse. Here's what that orange piece looks like. It's easy enough to set back up. You just put the post on the orange piece into the spring loaded mechanism, press it back until it clicks, and then just rest this top section on it. Okay, Dr. Meinbender, it's your last chance. Hit that target and take out Storm Shadow. Show us you have what it takes. One shot, one hit. Let's make it right now. This missile hit that target dead center, and it did nothing, and this spring in this launcher is pretty strong. That's not a weak spring in there. Fans of 90s GI Joe who think I'm just too hard on these figures and the gimmicky weapons, I really was trying to find something to praise about it. It would have been really cool if this had actually worked with these targets on this toy, but on every single target, a direct hit did not trip it. You may think we're done looking at features, but there's more. The base comes with this black tripod. It's an extra piece that doesn't connect to anything, but it does give you an option for a standalone weapon. The base gives you an extra orange missile launcher and an extra green gun. This green gun I did place on that green section on the tower. You saw me do that earlier in this video, but another option for this extra green gun is to place it on this tripod, and now you have a machine gun. At least I guess it's a machine gun. It could be a laser gun or whatever, but another option if you pull that out, you can also use it for this last orange spring loaded missile launcher. Looking at how the GI Joe headquarters was used in GI Joe media, well this headquarters wasn't used very much. In the animated series, both the Sunbow and the Deke series, the GI Joe headquarters was a big sprawling complex. It sort of resembled the 1983 headquarters, but it was much bigger. This headquarters did appear in one episode of the Deke series, the episode titled Shadow of a Doubt. Looking at the comic book series published by Marvel Comics, GI Joe's headquarters was the pit, an underground base. There was more than one pit over the years, and sometimes they used the headquarters command center and the mobile command center in the field. I am not aware of any appearances of the 1992 base in the comic book. And now for the least important part of the review, my opinion, looking at the 1992 headquarters overall, this is a great play set. They threw in every possible feature you could imagine. If the bright orange on the vintage play set bothers you, take a look at the 2001 release and the Street Fighter version for some color alternatives. Fans of 1980s GI Joe should take a look at it. It's undeniably from the 90s with the coloring and the shooting missiles and the electronic sounds, but it has something that a lot of 90s toys didn't have. Effort. They pulled out all the stops it is loaded with features. Maybe it's too much, but fine, let it be too much. I'd rather have too much than not enough. If this play set had been released in, say, 1989 with some different colors, I think fans of 1980s GI Joe would have considered it to be a legendary base. It's not perfect. Some parts are clunky. The service bay is not one of its strong points. The targets that blow up certain sections of the base, nice idea, but the spring loaded missile launchers that came with the figures at the time should have been able to set off those triggers and it doesn't work. Despite these problems and a few others, when you have it, it's a lot of fun to play with. There's a lot of space and a lot of things for your action figures to interact with. It supports a wide variety of play patterns. I can see a lot of 80s GI Joe fans, even after watching this review, still preferring the 1983 headquarters command center. I have a lot of nostalgia tied up in that 83 headquarters, so I'm right there with you, but give this one a chance. Maybe it won't surpass the classic 1983 headquarters in your mind, but if you have a chance to play around with it, it may just be on that level. That was my review of the 1992 GI Joe headquarters and the first review of the year 2020. This review also kicks off the theme for this year. The theme for 2020 is the 90s. That's right, we're going to be looking at a lot of stuff from the 90s. Now fans of 80s GI Joe, we're still going to look at some 80s items, but there's still so much from the 90s we need to get through and this is the year we're going to do it. But you know me in these 90s reviews, I try to pick out the best stuff that you might actually like to see. So it won't be all bad, except for next week. That'll be rough. Thank you for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, I'm making more like it. So please give this video a thumbs up on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, hit the notification bell so you don't miss any future videos, and share this video with your friends. That's what helps this channel grow. You can find me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a website, hcc788.com. If you want to know if I've already reviewed a vintage GI Joe item, that's a good place to check. Special thanks to all my supporters on Patreon, including the names you see on the screen now. Support on Patreon helps keep this show going. So if you like this show and you'd like to support this show in that way, please consider checking out Patreon. You can get some special rewards, including early access to reviews, and you can find out how to decode the secret messages you see in these videos. Thank you for joining me on this adventure of collecting vintage GI Joe toys. I'll see you next time, and until then remember, only GI Joe is GI Joe.