 Hello everybody, HoodedCobraCommander788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe Toy review. And this time by special request we are looking at the 1982 GI Joe Flak. Flak was an acronym that stood for Field Light Attack Cannon. It was worth two flag points and it did not come with an action figure. It was sold in 1982. It was also sold in 1983. It was discontinued in 1984, but it was available as a mail away from 1985 to 1990. So this was available for a really long time, so there should be a lot of these floating around out there. Despite the fact that the Flak was still on the shelves in 1983, its role was somewhat replaced by the 1983 whirlwind twin battle gun, which was another gun, an anti-aircraft gun like the Flak that did not come with an action figure. In 1984, we got the Cobra ASP, which was an anti-aircraft gun that fit the role of both the whirlwind and the Flak, but this time for Cobra. The blueprints called this gun a 105mm howitzer, which is definitely what this gun is not. A howitzer is a relatively short barreled gun that is intended to fire shells at high trajectories for a steep angle of descent, so it's designed to lob shells down on the heads of the enemy. This is an anti-aircraft gun, and in case there was any doubt as to whether or not this was an anti-aircraft gun, there's a sticker here indicating the number of kills that this gun has had, and of course it's all aircraft. Also on the sticker for the control panel, we see the gun targeting an aircraft. The Flak borrows design cues and its name from a series of German anti-aircraft guns from World War II. This I think most closely fits the German Flak 39. Main differences really, the Flak 39 did not have the seat like this. The Flak 39 was a 105mm gun, so the blueprints did have that part right. Let's look at the parts of the Flak, and it's a short list. It has three support legs and they all fold it in like this, you fold them out to place it on the ground for support. It had a seat in the back which came out really easily, just very easily pop it out like that, and for that reason these Flaks are often missing the seat. Also, the bar that supports the seat is pretty thin and these break off very easily, so you see a lot of Flaks out there without the seat and sometimes without this entire bar. The seat just kind of snaps in there like that, and you can tell when you snap it in that it's not going to stay in very firmly. The Flak did not come with an action figure, but the box art featured rock and roll in the gunner seat, and I think he's appropriate as the GI Joe machine gunner, and this is how I always display my Flak. There are two control joysticks here that the figures can kind of put their hands on. They're a bit thick, so I wouldn't try to force the figures' hands all the way on them, but they can just kind of hold onto the edge there, and that's really the only means of support for keeping the action figure in. There's no back peg on the seat, so that would go in the back of the action figure, and there is no foot peg here on the foot supports, which would have gone into the holes in the bottom of the feet of the action figure to help hold them in. And I think that that's a missed opportunity. Honestly, I mean he does stay in there fairly well, but I would have preferred something more for support, something else to try to keep the action figure in, just keep him from falling out. Let's look at the features of the Flak, and again it's a short list. It will rotate all the way around on its base, and it can move, it can move down, it can elevate. It elevates up to the point where the foot rests hit against the supporting bar here, so that's about as high up as it goes, and that's about it as far as features go, but I think one of the main features really is not what the Flak does, but how it looks. I mean it has a ton of really impressive details. It looks kind of hyper realistic. The control panel there has some stickers with some gauges, the sides of the gun just have a lot of detail. The stickers have a very nice military look to them. It's really an impressive looking gun. The 1983 GI Joe Headquarters Command Center had a special emplacement just for the Flak that had these indentions here, one right there, and another one up here and here, and those exactly fit the footprint of the Flak. They're not very deep, so they don't hold the Flak in very well, but they were designed for the Flak, and they fit perfectly. The Flak as a standalone toy is fine, but it's not one of my favorites, mainly because there are some missed opportunities with this toy, and I think the main one, the most obvious one, is wheels. Just give the thing some wheels. Giving this some wheels and making it a towed vehicle like the whirlwind, I think would have made a huge difference. There's actually no way to pull this thing and get it on the battlefield. It's actually a pretty static stationary toy, but if you had slapped some wheels on it and put a tow hook on it, it could have been towed by another GI Joe vehicle, and that I think would have made it look really cool. Alternatively, if there were at least some kind of loop or cleat on here that would have fit the 1983 Dragonfly's winch, then it could have been airlifted into position, but there's not really anything like that on there either. Now, to be fair, this came out in 1982, and the 1983 Dragonfly didn't exist at the time. Maybe if this were designed in 1983, they would have thought of that, but unfortunately, it just doesn't have anything to hook onto, really. Now, you can still airlift this thing in here by just playing out the Dragonfly's winch and looping it around the body there and then hooking the hook there to the rope, and then it can be carried that way, which I guess is fine. The fact that the flak did not have wheels means that it didn't have a way to move it onto the battlefield, unless you just picked it up and carried it and who would do something crazy like that? If the flak had wheels, it would have been a nice, less expensive alternative to the 1982 and 1983 HAL laser cannon, which, as you can see, was bigger. It came with an action figure, Grand Slam, and it had wheels, so it was a towed weapon, and so if you're a kid and you only have so much allowance money to spend, and you have the more expensive HAL in the store, and on the same shelf you have the flak, and the flak could do everything that the HAL could do. It could be towed and it could shoot, it just didn't have an action figure. You might pick up the flak just because it's cheaper and your allowance money would go farther. That was my review of the 1982 G.I. Joe Flak. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, go ahead and give this video a thumbs up. If you didn't, go ahead and give the video a thumbs down. That's what it's there for. But whatever you do, make sure you subscribe to the hooded Cobra Commander 788 YouTube channel, because I've got a lot of great new G.I. Joe action figure, vehicle, and comic book reviews coming up, you do not want to miss them. In fact, the next review is kind of special. It's one that I've been working on for quite a while, and I'm really psyched to actually be able to do it. So you do not want to miss it, so make sure you're subscribed. I'll talk to you all later.