 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review. This time we'll be looking at the 1984 Cobra Stinger. I'm really looking forward to this. This is one of my favorite vehicles from 1984 so this is going to be a lot of fun. Before we get started though I just want to remind everybody to smash that subscribe button and if you like this video go ahead and give it a thumbs up. If you don't like the video just give it a thumbs down, either way I'm good with that. If you're watching this video from some website other than YouTube I would greatly appreciate it if you would take a little trip over to the hooded Cobra Commander 788 YouTube channel and go ahead and subscribe. I've got a lot more GI Joe toy reviews coming and you don't want to miss out on them. I've got some really great stuff coming up. So let's go ahead and get started on this review of the 1984 Cobra Stinger. This vehicle was released in 1984. It was also sold in 1985. It was discontinued in 1986 when it was replaced by the Cobra Stun. The Cobra Stun is more of a fantasy vehicle as opposed to this more realistic looking Cobra Stinger. The Stinger was worth three flag points which is the same flag point value as the 1983 Wolverine. The Wolverine I think was actually a slightly larger vehicle than the Stinger but they were both worth the same flag points. Of course like the Wolverine the Stinger came with an action figure, a driver and I'm going to go ahead and take him out. The easiest way to get the driver out is to remove this canopy. I will take a closer look at the action figure and the canopy itself as well here in a moment so I'm just going to set him aside for now. Now the Stinger is almost entirely a recycled vehicle from the main body to the missiles and even the action figure is a recycled action figure from an earlier product in the G.I. Joe toy line. Of course the Stinger is a copy of the G.I. Joe vamp Jeep that came out in 1982 and 1983 and you can see the undeniable similarities. Basically the Stinger is a black version of the vamp with a few other things added on. Now normally I don't go in for these recycled vehicles and figures especially when they take a G.I. Joe vehicle and give it to Cobra. I kind of feel like G.I. Joe and Cobra should have different technologies and different approaches to military armaments but in this case I don't really mind and that's because the Stinger is just such a logical vehicle for Cobra to have and the his tanks are great and all but they really need in their arsenal a general purpose wheeled vehicle like this. So I'm perfectly happy with this Stinger plus the black just really looks cool. I really like black as a vehicle color for Cobra. They used it several times and it just I think just looks gorgeous every time. Let's look at the parts of the Stinger. Here in the front we have what the blueprints call a ram bar which is much larger than what appeared on the on the vamp. Vamp has a much more modest bar there. Of course we've got some additional details molded on to the front. The vamp had this kind of machine gun looking thing but otherwise it was pretty plain. The Stinger has this kind of shovel molded on here and this refueling canister I think is what the blueprints call it. In the back we have another improvement on the original vamp this platform and this bar here and we've got two foot pegs where you can carry action figures and I think really that's a major improvement on the original vamp we had fuel tanks or fuel canisters and you know honestly I never really had much use for those fuel canisters but this is useful. It means that you can carry an additional two action figures on this vehicle meaning that you know with the two inside you've got four action figures that can ride on this Stinger that really I think improves the play value of this toy. Here on the back it has a missile rack. The missile rack does turn all the way around as well as elevates. On the original vamp of course we had a machine gun so there's not an anti-personnel weapon on this vehicle. These missiles are referred to in the blueprints as ground to air missiles so these are intended to take out aircraft. Let's take a look at the missiles themselves and these missiles like the body of the Stinger are recycled. They are recycled from the 1983 PacRat missiles of course the PacRat missiles were a little bit different. PacRat missiles were in two parts and the Stinger missiles are one solid piece but otherwise they're pretty much the same. There is a difference in where the slot is where they fit into the missile rack. On the PacRat missile it's farther forward and on the Stinger it's a bit farther back. Now you can put the PacRat missile on the Stinger missile rack and I don't think it looks too bad if you were to replace all four red missiles with the PacRat missiles not too shabby. The Stinger missiles have eight very small thin fins for front and for back and these are subject to breakage so be careful with those. I actually have one here with some fins broken off so you can see what happens to them. They are pretty thin and they can just snap right off. So do have some care when you're putting these missiles on the Stinger and removing them. These just don't get too much stress because they will break off on you. I haven't been able to nail down exactly what real world missile these might be based off of but they look a little bit like the AGM-88-Harm high-speed anti-radiation missile. But those are not ground to air missiles, they're actually air to ground missiles. But they do have a similar look and so that they might be a little bit based on that particular weapon. Another improvement that the Stinger makes on the original VAMP is that it has a closed cab. It's not completely open like the VAMP was. It has a canopy here on top and it has doors, opening doors on either side. Doors swing open like this. This canopy does come off and the easiest way to get the action figure in and out is to go ahead and take the canopy off and put them in from the top. I'm going to take this off now. As you take it off, have a care. It clips onto this horizontal bar here and there is a weak point in the structure here where the roll bar meets the body of the Jeep. That can break. These can break fairly easily. So when you're taking this off, try not to put too much stress on these bars. It clips in here and it has kind of a lip here that goes under the back there. With some nice inch and detail in the interior, that looks pretty cool. Some seats. The doors can come off as well. They clip on in much the same way as the canopy does. Let me take the doors off so you can see what it looks like without the doors. There we go. Let's look at the inside. We have a little bit of detail here. We have some mulled-on instruments, some gauges, and I think that looks really cool. This is an example of Hasbro going the extra mile with these because if that had just been a plain dashboard in there, you probably wouldn't have noticed. But they went ahead and gave us some gauges and some instruments there, and that looks really nice. These steering wheels are removable. I'm not going to take this one out, but it can come out. Those are easily lost. If you have a stinger without the steering wheel, you may have a heck of a time finding one. One of the reasons I was happy to jump on this one is because it still had that steering wheel. Let's look at the body of the stinger. Let's look at some of these molded-on parts. We looked at the shovel, this refueling tank, some other details that the vamp does not have. The vamp looks a bit plain in comparison. I do like the additional details on the stinger. It has, like the vamp, what is referred to as a heavy-duty winch, which is just molded on there. Really, why not make this a real winch? There are other GI Joe vehicles, particularly the helicopters, that actually had working winches. That would have been really cool if they had just gone ahead and made this a working winch for the vamp and the stinger jeeps. I think that would have been a really nice play feature. But unfortunately, it just is kind of molded on there. I have reproduction stickers on this, which I don't mind. I know some collectors don't like that. But when I got this, it was naked. It had no stickers at all. So I really don't mind the reproduction stickers on here. I think they look really nice. Underneath, we have metal bars for axles, and that makes this a really durable toy. You don't see too many of these with the wheels broken. I have seen a few, and honestly, I don't know what kind of abuse you have to inflict on this thing to break these wheels off, because they're on there pretty solidly. That's one thing that I really like about the vamp and the stinger and all the other vehicles that were modeled off of this design is the axles, the metal bar axles are quite sturdy. It has plastic wheels. It would have been nice to have rubber wheels, but honestly, the metal axles make up for that. It makes it a really solid vehicle. Again, the main weak point is here and here, where the roll bars meet the body of the vehicle, those can break. Now you can re-glue those. They're really not bad if they're re-glued. You can really hardly tell, but if you're handling one, if you're packing one to ship it, or if you're putting the canopy on or taking it off, try not to put too much stress on those points just to make sure that it doesn't break on you. The stinger is, of course, black, and I love black as a color for Cobra vehicles. We've used black several times, including, of course, the original His Tank and the Fang helicopter. These three together just look, I think, beautiful. They're menacing, they're scary, they look, I don't know, high-tech but realistic at the same time. These look like vehicles that Cobra would bring into battle with them. If you saw an army of these coming at you, you'd be intimidated, that'd be pretty scary. It just looks sleek, and I love displaying all three of these together, I think they just go great together, and really, the more black vehicles that Cobra can use, the better. I'm all for the black Cobra vehicles. This basic design for the stinger was re-used in 1998 for the Cobra Rattler four-wheel drive, which I really don't understand the name change because calling it the Rattler means that it has the same name as the 1984 Cobra Jet, so that gets a little bit confusing. I will always know it as the stinger. Let's go ahead and take a look at the action figure that came with the stinger, the Stinger Driver. I said before that the Stinger Driver was a recycle of an earlier action figure, and that earlier action figure was, of course, the 1983 version of the Cobra Officer. 1983, because it had the swivel arm battle grip, as the 1983 version of the Cobra Officer did, and it is exactly the same figure, except instead of using blue plastic, as the original did, they used this light gray plastic. Now the light gray plastic is an excellent choice with the stinger because it gives a nice contrast between the dark colored vehicle and the lighter colored figure. I think if you used a Cobra Officer for the driver of the stinger, the darker blue would not stand out enough inside. You wouldn't really even be able to tell that there was a figure inside the vehicle with this darker blue. But with the light gray, you know, he does stand out in there. You can see him, and I think it really works well. Some other Cobra vehicles use that dark vehicle, light colored figure contrast, and I think it's a really good effect. The His Tank Driver, for instance, wears a red uniform, and the His Tank, of course, is black, and that makes the driver of the His Tank kind of stand out. So I do understand what Hasbro is doing here with these color schemes. And I do think it works. I actually like that very much. This light gray color, unfortunately, is subject to yellowing, as really all of the light colored GI Joe action figures are. This one does have some yellowing, unfortunately, and quite a bit of wear on the paint. So I will eventually replace this guy with a better version, one that's in better condition. But otherwise, you know, it's not too bad. I'm happy to have a driver for my Stinger. Let's take a closer look at the action figure. Of course he has the typical 1983 GI Joe action figure articulation, even though he's a 1984 figure. Really, mainly the 1984 figures had the same articulation as 1983. It wasn't, I think, until 1985 when the next changed to the ball joint. The older figures could move their heads side to side like that. But later figures had the ball joint and they could also look up and down. His arms could swing out like that and could rotate at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow, so he could bend at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had what they referred to as swivel arm battle grip, which is this extra swivel at the bicep that allows his arm to swing in and out all the way around like that. That's a nice feature. It allows the figures to hold their weapons with a two-handed grip, not that the Cobra Stinger driver had any weapons. He actually had no accessories. The figure is held together with a rubber O-ring that loops around on the inside and allows his torso to move around a little bit. His legs could swing out about that far and they could move about 90 degrees at the hip. And of course his knee could bend about 90 degrees. And that's about it for articulation on this action figure. As I said, he came with no accessories and he's not really very rare, so really it's not very hard to find this action figure. It may be a bit harder to find him in better shape without the yellowing, without the paint wear. But if you're not too concerned about that, you can find one of these pretty easily on eBay or elsewhere. Let's take a look at the file card. This file card came on the back of the box that the Stinger came in. There's nothing on the other side of it. It was just the back of a box. You were encouraged to cut these out as it has some information about the character represented by this action figure. Now the file card for the Cobra Stinger driver is almost identical to the file card for the Cobra officer. They really didn't make up anything. Not only did they copy the actual mold for the action figure, they copied the file card almost entirely as well. The differences between the Cobra Stinger driver file card and the Cobra officer's file card are of course the art, which shows the Stinger driver. This is the art that would have appeared on the front of the box for the Stinger. Of course it says Cobra Stinger driver instead of Cobra officer. It's under primary military specialty. It includes Stinger driver and infantry, whereas for the Cobra officer it just said infantry. And there's an additional line here in the body of the file card where it says graduated Cobra Stinger driver's school. That line was not in the Cobra officer's file card, obviously. Other than that, everything else is the same. The card says Cobra Stinger driver codenamed the enemy, of course that's not a codename, but whatever. File name unknown. Of course this is not supposed to be an individual. Cobra would have many stingers and many Stinger drivers. So you're intended to army build these, that is buy multiples and pretend that they are all members of the Cobra army. Primary military specialty as we noted, Stinger driver and infantry. Secondary military specialty, artillery and intelligence. Birthplace, various countries as we noted, this is not an individual. His grade is 04 or equivalent. Here it says Cobra officers are front line fighters who lead Cobra attack units into battle. Even here it talks about Cobra officers. So this is a Cobra officer who has been specifically trained to drive the Stinger Jeep. Many are also believed to be operating as spies at defense plants, nuclear power facilities, etc. All are martial arts experts, masters of disguise, deceit and demolitions. Again graduated Cobra Stinger driver's school. You need to be an officer in Cobra in order to have a driver's license. Qualified expert, AK-47 assault rifle, PM-63 machine pistol, M16, Ingram M11 submachine gun. Down here in this quote it says Cobra officers are dedicated to destroying GI Joe and the American way of life. Beware they are extremely dangerous enemies, exclamation point. That is pretty scary. He's an extremely dangerous enemy and he has a Jeep now with missiles on it. So you better watch out. To put the driver in the Stinger as I noted it is easier to go through the top, take the canopy off, but it's really possible to slide him in here from the side, kind of squeeze his head inside until he goes in and there you go. It's easier to get him in from the side door than to get him out. Once he's in it's really tough to get him at the right angle to pull him out. So if you're going to pull him out as I did earlier go ahead and pop the canopy off being careful not to break these bars and take him out that way. So there you have it, the 1984 Cobra Stinger with its driver. I hope you enjoyed this video. Don't forget to smash that subscribe button and give this video the thumbs up if you liked it. Give it the thumbs down if you hated it. Either way I'm happy to find out what you thought of it. So thanks again for watching and watch for more GI Joe vehicle and figure reviews. I got some great stuff coming up soon so you don't want to miss it. You definitely want to subscribe and catch you all later.