 BX257, welcome to Half the Battle. Everybody, put in Cobra Commander 788 here. I know. Joke stolen from Timmer. Cobra Commander 788 here, and Cobra Convergence is here! The Convergence will consist of three parts. Part one, this video, by me. Part two will be presented by Form BX257. Part three will be presented by Half the Battle, and to kick off Cobra Convergence, this review will look at one of the greatest Cobra vehicles of all time. A lot of people have requested this review, but I have been saving it for a special occasion. Is this special enough? HCC788 and Cobra Convergence Part 1 present, the 1985 Cobra Hydrofoil, More and the Driver Lamprey. This is the Cobra Hydrofoil, the More from 1985, and the Driver the Lamprey. The More was introduced in 1985 and was also available in 1986. It was discontinued for the year 1987. The closest replacement for it in 1987 would have been the Cobra Sea Ray. The Lamprey was also available in 1985 and 1986, boxed with the Hydrofoil. It was later available for mail order in 1989 without the vehicle. We will take a closer look at the Lamprey action figure later in this video, so I'm going to set him aside for now. The More was the successor to the 1984 Cobra Water Moccasin, Cobra's first water vehicle. The water moccasin was undersized and underpowered in comparison to GI Joe water vehicles at the time. And here are the GI Joe water vehicles that were available before the Cobra More. There was the 1984 Shark Flying Submarine and the 1984 Killer Whale Hovercraft, which as you can see is huge. Now the Shark is roughly the same size as the water moccasin, but the Shark had the added bonus that it was supposed to fly, and so it could attack from the air like a jet, which of course the water moccasin could not do. So the introduction of the Cobra More in 1985 helped sort of even the odds. The Hydrofoil is a type of boat that uses lifting surfaces to lift the boat's primary hull out of the water. This reduces drag and allows the boat to go faster. The More has retractable foils, and we will take a closer look at those later. The More name comes from the More eel, which is a sea creature that bears some resemblance to a snake with a long slender body, although it is not a snake. It looks like one, and Cobra does like to stick with snake themed names. The More was designed by Ron Ruddad, who was a toy designer at Hasbro, who normally designed action figures, not vehicles. When he did a couple vehicles, the More was one, another one was the Dreadnock Thunder Machine. Mr. Ruddad said his inspiration for the Hydrofoil was the cigarette boats on the television show Miami Vice. Let's take a look at the parts and features of the More, starting at the front as we usually do, and first of all we have this long hull with a pointed bow at a very acute angle, and on either side we have this racing Cobra image here, and I like this a lot. This is a nice alternative to the usual static Cobra emblem, which is not bad, that's a very nice image in itself, but this really adds to the impression of speed and power. There is a variant of the More, some of them had the deck held onto the hull with clips right at the very point of the bow right there, and that actually puts a lot of stress on the plastic there, and as you can see one of my clips is broken off. So if you can see this, the deck doesn't completely mesh perfectly with the hull, there's a little bit of a gap there, so at some point they added additional clips to keep that deck connected to the hull a little bit better. The deck is in red, and I would almost call this a maroon color, and it has some really excellent sculpted detail all over, it's very impressive, but none of that detail breaks up the aerodynamics of the boat, so it still looks like a really fast vehicle, but still has lots of nice detail all over it. About a third of the way back on the deck we have the missile box, and this missile box pops up automatically if you push down on this plunger. Now it doesn't always like to stay up, sometimes it'll pop right back down, but you gotta play with it a little bit and you can keep the missile box up. Now I like this feature because when you're not firing the missiles, you can lower the missile box and it doesn't break up the aerodynamics of the boat. The missile box holds four yellow missiles, I'll just pull one out, they are all identical, and they are small, but even though they're small they have to fit in the missile box at an angle because they're actually kind of too big for the missile box, they're hollow on the underside and actually look a little bit cheap. The blueprints for the Moray call these missiles HEJ-180 Jumpstart Air-to-Water missiles. Now I don't know why it's called air-to-water. An air-to-surface missile means that it's fired from an aircraft. Well maybe these are air-to-surface missiles that have been adapted for surface-to-surface so it would shoot them at another boat. Behind the missile box we have these slotted hatches that are hinged and they swing up like this. We have two of them, one on either side. Way down in the bottom there we have a cub down at the bottom of the hull and a foot peg so you can fit a figure in here. If you put a figure's foot on the foot peg, the figure stands up out of the hatch like this. I'm demonstrating using a couple Cobra Eels which were the Cobra Frogmen released the same year as the Moray. If you want to you can get the figure if you kind of bend his legs and bend his knees to get deeper down in there so you can close the hatch with the figure inside. The Cobra Eel can peer out of the slot looking for his opportunity to pop out and fire at the enemy. I imagine these hatches being used for rapid deployment of Cobra Frogmen to attack GI Joe divers who may be lurking below. Alongside the hatches we have two very large fixed forward-facing guns with some great detail. I can't express to you how impressed I am with these. The blueprints call these Port Slash Starbird Shore Assault 55mm Cannons. These look powerful, they look like they could take on any GI Joe watercraft. So use these when you're being attacked by the GI Joe Killer Whale or maybe the Devil Fish. Next we have the Pilot House with wind screens on both sides divided by this beam here and you can fit two action figures in there, one on the driver's side and one on the passenger's side. We have some instrument panel detail there, very nice with some stickers and we have the Pilot Steering Wheel which does turn. There are no back pegs in there so fitting the pilot in there is very simple, just sit him right down in there and there is enough room that he can keep his submachine guns slung across his body. Both the passenger and the driver can fit that way and he holds in there fairly securely although I think this is one case where a back peg may have helped secure those figures in there just a little bit better. Right in the middle we have this very small gun and the blueprints call this a remote targeting pilot operated 19 millimeter machine gun and it looks like it's supposed to be operated by the passenger. It has a little peg handle in there that sticks through and I guess the passenger could grip that and swing the gun around although it does swivel but really it can only either face forward or swing to the port side just a little bit. Not a great range of motion on that. Also on the passenger side we have the searchlight and this searchlight is what gives collectors nightmares not so much the searchlight but the searchlight lens. The searchlight itself is not really a rare part. You can usually get a more with the searchlight but it's that searchlight lens that is usually missing and can be very difficult and expensive sometimes to replace. There really isn't much to that searchlight lens. It's just a clear piece of plastic with a grid pattern on it but if you want a complete Cobra more with all of its parts that searchlight lens is going to be the hardest one to find. The searchlight has some nice detail on it and it has a handle that sticks out to the side here I guess so the passenger can use it to swing the searchlight around searching for enemy boats on the water. We have a couple more missiles yellow missiles on either side of the pilot house and these missiles peg in to the side using these pegs on the missiles. The blueprints call these HE07A air to ground low flight missiles and again I think these are misnamed. Calling them air to ground implies that they are fired from an aircraft. I can't say I'm a big fan of these missiles. I don't like the way they put the peg on the missiles. I think it would have been better to use the usual universal dumbbell slot on the missiles like most GI Joe missiles do. I think the peg breaks up the aerodynamic shape of the missiles and is not very aesthetically pleasing. On either side we have this sticker with a backward facing R and a 07 and I think this R is a signature of the designer of this toy Ron Rudat R Ron Rudat and I think it's backwards just to kind of make it sort of look Russian. Another vehicle designed by Ron Rudat the Thunder Machine also had a backward facing R. Directly above the pilot house we have what may be my favorite feature the turret and this turret can rotate 180 degrees all the way around although you do have to work with it just a little bit. The gun can elevate with a ratchet click. It can move pretty far up. The blueprints called this a rapid fire 23 millimeter synchronized twin barrel cannon. As for a real world weapon that this might be based on it's possible that it's based on the ZU 23S Sergei Soviet machine gun. It's similar but not identical. The turret fits one figure and I use my extra lamprey figure for it. He sits down in there. I turned the turret around to show this to you. I really like this feature. It has a foot rest and a foot peg and this foot peg really does help keep this figure secure in there if you put the foot on. It really holds the figure in there quite well. You do have to keep the figure's feet in pretty well because if the feet stick out very far they will obstruct the turning of the turret. The machine gun looks great. It looks like it means business and it would work great as an anti-aircraft gun so you can use this to take down GI Joe Jets if they attack the moray from the sky. Next we have a couple large torpedoes, one on each side, and they lock in connecting to this shroud and you take them off by pushing back and then pulling down. The blueprints call these angular launch surface swimming black ray torpedoes. These torpedoes are very large and I think they're very nicely done and I really like the yellow cobra stickers that kind of mirror the cobra image on the side of the boat and again we're using the image of the cobra this long image with the teeth out to imply speed and power. The torpedoes appear to be identical but the stickers are not. There is a left and a right sticker so when you attach the torpedo to the boat the sticker should be on the outside. It's these large torpedoes that you would fire at the USS flag and you could possibly sink that large vessel with a few well placed torpedoes fired from the moray. Behind the pilot house we have another section back here and we have an opening here that works kind of like a door and back there we can see even more impressive detail. I like the details here on the back wall it has like sculpted in tools and things like that just really nicely done. In this back section we have a central engine cover that is removable and if you take that off it reveals a very large very powerful looking engine and so if the rest of the boat didn't give you the impression that it is very fast it has this massive engine to drive home the point. It has a couple large exhaust pipes sticking out the back here and it's in two colors it's in dark gray and black and I think that's a nice touch it probably would have been easier to just stamp these out in all one color plastic but the two colors of plastic I think works very well for it. The engine cover itself doesn't have a lot of detail but it has this vent here. On the floor of this back bay here we have a couple floor coverings and they each have three foot pegs on them and they are removable if you take those out you have underneath them some looks like storage space there's not a lot of storage space down there it's pretty deep you're not going to store anything large you won't store any backpacks in there but you might store an assault rifle or two down there with a little bit of space. Since there are three foot pegs on each side that implies that you should be able to fit three action figures on each side of this back bay and that kind of makes some sense based on the armament that's back here it has a couple machine guns on each side and on each side it has a couple depth charge launchers that is a very narrow space back here though so if you put three action figures on each side that's going to be very crowded here's what it's going to look like if you try to crowd three cobra eels on one side it's very awkward it's very difficult to get the figure's feet on those foot pegs especially the rearmost figure there really just isn't enough room for his feet back there so really if you want to put cobra eels back here i would go with no more than two on each side we have four small machine guns pointed out to the side two on each side and these are very simple in design with a couple grips on each one the blueprints call these lateral 30 caliber machine guns but they look too small to be 30 caliber guns they each peg in on a very small single peg and that peg can break very easily so be careful about that these small machine guns are probably my least favorite feature on this vehicle i don't think the vehicle needs them and if you were to take them off and leave them off completely i think the boat would look just fine without them there are a couple details here on the back on either side there is a fuel port for refueling and this is a detail that started to crop up on a number of vehicles starting in 1985 and i really think they wanted to make this a new thing they wanted to make this a standard feature on vehicles almost like tow hooks were on ground vehicles but at the time there was only one way to use these fuel ports there was only one vehicle that has a fuel line and that came with the gi joe uss flag aircraft carrier the refueling trailer it had a couple of gas nozzles on it and that's all that you had so it looked kind of odd to have a gi joe fuel trailer refueling a cobra vehicle but if you wanted to use the fuel port that's what you had to do we have a couple depth charge launchers which are really pull out trays with two depth charges each you pull out the tray to launch the depth charges they should fall out the back like that and these depth charges are pretty basic minimal detail they have some stickers but other than that there's not a whole lot going on there they're really just basic cylinders the moray would use these depth charges to defend itself from underwater attack from the gi joe shark flying submarine in the very back we have some rear exhaust ports very nicely done but most importantly we have this pull tab which activates the extending hydrofoil when it's pulled out the hydrofoils are up but you push it in to extend the hydrofoils down let's look at that extending motion from a better angle push that tab in to extend the hydrofoils down there is minimal detail on those foils there's not a lot going on there the moray would extend the foils to gain extra speed the moray can rest on the foils so you can display it that way it will set on the foils just fine but those foils are a little bit delicate so you might worry about breaking them so i usually display the moray with the hydrofoils retracted let's look at how they retract by pulling the tab out and the foils pulled back up the moray looks great when it is loaded with cobra eels the eel action figure was released the same year as the moray and i don't think that was an accident it looks like these guys were intended to crew this boat and the eel action figure is a pretty good action figure all on its own so as if there wasn't already a good reason to army build these guys you can get a lot of cobra eels and they look really great displayed on your moray hydrofoil can it float yes it floats remarkably well and you would expect that it would it was advertised as being able to float now there is that gap between the hole and the deck on my moray and so if i were to splash this around a little bit it would take on water and it would probably sink but on its own it floats just fine with the hydrofoils extended it still floats just fine now let's look at the hydrofoil pilot the lamprey and this guy was an army builder meaning this figure didn't represent an individual personality you could get multiples of these and pretend that they're different guys and build up a whole army of them since the lamprey was available for mail order for a short time that would have been a good time to army build the lamprey without having to buy multiple much more expensive hydrofoils let's take a look at the lamprey's accessory he came with a submachine gun and he can hold this weapon in his hand but it has a strap which is nice since he is a vehicle driver he can sling the weapon over his shoulder when he's in the driver seat this is a really cool looking submachine gun and as far as a real world weapon that this might be based on it looks like it is a cross between a british sten submachine gun with its vented barrel here and the side loading magazine but it also looks like it borrows from the design of the m3 submachine gun the submachine gun is molded in silver plastic to match the color of the action figure and it has this very long strap and i like this a lot i don't typically display the lamprey outside of the moray hydrofoil so it's very important to me that he's able to stow his weapon so this strap is my favorite feature on it overall this is a very nice looking accessory and i like it overall i don't think vehicle drivers necessarily need these extra accessories like this but if you're going to have one you might as well have a nice one and this is a good one in fact i think this would have been a nice weapon for the cobra eels if it were molded in black let's take a look at the articulation on the lamprey he had the standard articulation for gi joe figures of 1985 that means he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down he could swing his arm up at the shoulder he could also swivel at the shoulder all the way around he had a hinge at the elbow so he could move at the elbow about 90 degrees he had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around the figure was held together with a rubber o-ring that looped around the inside that allowed him to move at the torso a bit he could move his legs apart about so far he could move his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees let's take a look at the sculpt designing color of the lamprey starting with his head and his head is entirely covered by a helmet you can't see any of his face you have a blue face mask with looks like a a black maybe some kind of visor over the top of his head the blue continues around to the back he's got a lot of silver paint on here and the silver paint tends to wear off pretty easily so that's pretty worn on mine in fact it has a little spot where it has worn through the blue paint as well but otherwise you know his face is entirely covered so we're not looking at an individual here so that makes him really a good army builder and you could pretend that this helmet can be used for like some kind of scuba diving gear or something like that it looks like he's wearing a silver wetsuit with some light blue highlights on his chest he has a light blue life vest with a zipper that continues around to the back and other than the life vest the chest is pretty plain his arms are also silver and he has pockets on his upper arms on his wrists he has zippers for his wetsuit and he has some blue gloves slightly darker blue than the color on his life vest his left arm features this wicked skull patch which i have to assume is a unit insignia for the lamp rays on his waist piece he has a couple blue belts with gold belt buckles and that gold is really the only splash of color on this figure that isn't a silver or blue or black so that's a nice touch a nice little detail his legs continue the silver wetsuit and on his right thigh we have a blue pistol holster that has no pistol in it now this would make sense if the figure came with a pistol accessory but he didn't he came with a submachine gun so instead of a pistol we get a sculpted on empty pistol holster on his lower legs we have more zippers and on his left ankle we have a gold knife in a blue sheath and that's nice it's very well done his boots strike me as kind of funny because to me they don't look like boots they look like a pair of lace up a buster brown shoes and his toes are tilted up slightly when he's standing his toes actually don't touch the ground so to me that gives the impression that his shoes are too big for him so it looks like he's wearing clown shoes the colors on the lamprey contrast with the colors on the moray and hasbro often did this with cobra vehicle drivers giving them colors that contrast with the vehicles that they drive so you can see the figure when it's in the driver's seat let's take a look at the lamprey file card and this file card was not printed on the box for the moray it was an insert inside the box you could cut it out but this one is uncut it is plain on the other side it has its faction as cobra and it has a portrait of the lamprey here and this is from the artwork on the front of the moray box and this is not the best portrait that we've seen we have seen better as kind of minimalist it says he is the cobra hydrofoil pilot codename lamprey's it says file name unknown and since this is an army builder i would prefer that to say file name various that would be more accurate primary military specialty hydrofoil pilot secondary military specialty cobra frogmen in parentheses eels and it elaborates more on this below birthplace various countries that makes sense and his grade is o3 or equivalent and o3 would make him a captain this paragraph says lamprey's are the elite of the cobra sea arm to qualify for lamprey training a candidate must be a cobra trooper in top physical condition who has completed his eel training in parentheses eels are the frogmen underwater demolition specialists of the cobra lesion and has been operational as an eel for more than a year the training is highly selective and more than 50 percent of the applicants wash out before completing the course so the lamprey's come from the ranks of the cobra eels and that is not unique there were a lot of other cobra specialties that required eel training first i have notes what uh he has notes you'll sit there and enjoy it mister in the cobra organization eels are a step above the vipers which are the lowest tier of cobra soldier the eels then branch off into other naval and arctic specialties i've got a list here of all the file cards that mentioned the eels eel straining is required for lamprey's snow serpents sea slugs ice vipers hydro vipers and even bio vipers though i'm not sure you're really need much training to be turned into a monster thank you timber i i'm not done proceed oddly there's no mention of eels training for the sector viper the cobra bugs submarine driver eels may be the most influential army builder since they pop up in file cards throughout the vintage yajo toyline even in years when there was no eels on the retail pegs the lamprey's and snow serpents were the first branches of the eels tree hold on everybody i want to make sure he's done is he done okay moving on in gijo media the lamprey's were not animated for the cartoon series they didn't appear in any episodes of the tv show the moray however did appear but it was driven by other cobra troopers it was shown being driven by a viper in the episode raised the flag in the gijo comic book series the hydrofoil first appeared in issue number 36 but it was miscolored and it was not driven by the lamprey it was driven by cobra troopers some may feel that the blue coloring in the hydrofoil's first comic book appearance is more appropriate for a naval vessel the moray appears again in issue number 40 and this time it is toy accurate both in detail and coloring we also get our first look at the lamprey's as the hydrofoil pilots oddly when the moray pops up in that issue it does not appear to be driven by a lamprey it has some mystery trooper in the pilot seat issues feature my favorite sea battles in the entire marvel comics run the moray makes a couple other notable appearances in the comic book in issue number 47 snake eyes and storm shadow attempt to steal a moray to escape from cobra island that escape attempt fails for storm shadow and leads to his demise in issue number 77 following the cobra civil war fred seven a crimson guardsman disguised as cobra commander gives a hydrofoil to captain min captain min was an old fisherman who knew fred seven's real identity the boat was a bribe to get the captain off of cobra island and preserve a fred's secrets imagine being given your own real cobra moray looking at these toys overall both the vehicle and the figure are great but the vehicle is a little greater i think anyone would consider this to be a top tier vehicle the long sleek hull gives the impression of speed and the big engine and the weapons give the impression of power this vehicle may be even more intimidating than its rival the killer whale the extending hydrofoil feature is cool as is the pop-up missile box the missile box could have been engineered a bit better but i like the way it closes up for display so it doesn't break up the deck as cool as this vehicle is it does have a few problems primarily that search light lens which is very easily lost and can be very expensive to replace the missile box can come off the hinges and that's very frustrating the side missiles and the small guns can break off at the peg i don't even like those small machine guns i would do away with those all together the aft area around the engines is too small and gets very crowded if you put too many figures there it seems like if they just narrowed the engine just by a fraction of an inch they could have made that area much more usable not everybody loves the lamprey and i think it's because of that silver wet suit that he wears but i kind of like the silver suit those shiny metallic colors tended to be associated with special figures either figures that came with great vehicles or important characters that was the cobra moray and part one of cobra convergence proceed to part two presented by form bx257 and part three presented by half the battle thanks for watching this is hooded cobra commander remember only cobra is cobra talking about somebody