 Hello and welcome to the show. Let's talk about Larry Hama. Larry Hama is the reason we are all here. He's the reason I'm making this video, and he's the reason you're watching this video. Larry Hama wrote the G.I. Joe comic book series for Marvel Comics, and he wrote most of the file cards. In terms of the creation of the G.I. Joe universe, there is no one more influential than Larry Hama. Without Larry's input at the very beginning of the toy line, G.I. Joe in the 1980s would probably have been considered a pretty cool military toy line that would have lasted two or three years and would probably be forgotten about today. Larry took the basic concepts that Hasbro came up with and crafted something memorable out of them. Obviously we're still talking about them today. In 1987, Hasbro honored Larry Hama's contribution to the brand by sculpting a G.I. Joe action figure to look like him. Is the action figure made in Larry Hama's likeness worthy of the person that inspired it? Let's find out. Let's look at Tunnel Rat. Ladies and gentlemen, Tunnel Rat. This is Tunnel Rat from 1987. This figure was first available in 1987 and was also sold in 1988 and was discontinued for the year 1989. Tunnel Rat's specialty is EOD, which stands for Explosive Ordinance Disposal. This refers to the bomb disposal specialists in the US Army. EOD specialists use a variety of equipment to do their job, including protective suits, portable X-rays, and robots. Tunnel Rat doesn't have any of that stuff, but he could perhaps take advantage of the pre-existing G.I. Joe robots, the pack rats. The pack rats were not made for bomb disposal, but they could be repurposed for that. G.I. Joe did have specialized equipment for EOD, the bomb disposal vehicle from 1985. Tunnel Rat plays both sides of the explosives game. As an EOD, he would be tasked with defusing bombs. As a Tunnel Rat, he would set explosives to blow things up. Tunnel Rat takes his name from the Vietnam era soldiers who entered and demolished Viet Cong tunnel networks. When US troops uncovered a tunnel, the Tunnel Rat would go in, kill any enemy soldiers he found there, and set explosives to collapse the underground network. Tunnel Rat would work hand in hand with G.I. Joe's other EOD specialist, Tripwire, from 1983. There were two other versions of Tunnel Rat in the vintage G.I. Joe toy line, both of which just reused the mold from version one. There was Night Force Tunnel Rat in 1988, and Sonic Fighter's Tunnel Rat in 1990. I don't have the Night Force version, but I have seen it. Usually, I like Night Force figures, but I prefer the colors on version one over the Night Force version. Version three is just okay, not exceptional. The colors are definitely not as good. Let's look at Tunnel Rat's accessories, and first I have to say G.I. Joe's Tunnel Rat is not equipped as a tunnel rat. A real tunnel rat would enter a tunnel armed with a pistol, a bayonet, and a flashlight. In tight spaces, a huge backpack and a long machine gun would be impractical. Here's a video of real tunnel rats in Vietnam to give you an idea of how they did their job. When a tunnel entrance shaft goes vertically into the ground, as here, the first man to enter it should be slowly lowered into the shaft head first to permit him to thoroughly check the entrance walls and floor for booby traps or mines as he moves into the tunnel. When the shaft is over eight feet deep, the point man should be secured with a rope so that he can be quickly pulled to safety in case of emergency. Tunnel Rat's accessories still makes sense though. He's equipped as a squad machine gunner. His large backpack probably has extra ammunition. He would leave his machine gun and backpack behind when he enters a tunnel. He has a bag of TNT so he can set his charges once the tunnel is clear. It's easy enough to get Tunnel Rat ready to clear a tunnel. Just give him a pistol and a knife. It's unfortunate there isn't a flashlight that will fit in the figure's hand. Tunnel Rat came with a machine gun. The card on which the figure was packaged calls this an air-cooled 7.62 caliber machine gun with infrared scope. That means this machine gun fires a 7.62 millimeter NATO round. 7.62 millimeter is also known as 30 caliber. This isn't a direct copy of a real weapon as far as I know but there are other air-cooled 30 caliber machine guns. One famous one is the M1919 Browning. The long barrel features a barrel shroud and a folded up bipod. I'm glad they didn't make that bipod removable. The back half of the weapon looks a lot like an M60 but the front half does not. The machine gun has a large infrared scope mounted on it. This makes it an active night vision device in contrast to the starlight scope on low light sniper rifle which is passive. I don't know if telescopic night vision scopes are normally mounted on machine guns but I guess it's possible. His next accessory is what the card contents call a satchel charge. A satchel charge is exactly what it sounds like. It's an explosive device in a satchel badge. This one is marked TNT so kids would understand what it's supposed to be. It would probably be filled with C4 rather than TNT. This strap along with the rest of it is made of hard plastic and does not flex very much. I cannot get this strap across the chest of my action figure which is how I would prefer to display it. The strap just doesn't flex enough. It already has some white plastic stress marks so I either have to have him holding it in his hand or I drape it across one of his backpack flashlights. Next we have his backpack. The card contents call this a tunnel floodlight system with two detachable halogen hand lamps. Based on the description you could imagine the backpack itself being placed at the opening of a tunnel with the floodlights shining inward to give tunnel rats some illumination. And even though on the underside it has a rolled up tarp or a bed roll or something like that, it can actually stand on that end so the backpack could be used for that purpose. These hand lamps are removable. I usually only take out the one on this side though. This other one is in there too firmly. It doesn't like to come out so I just leave that one in there. These hand lamps do not fit in the figure's hand despite what they are called. They are tiny and they are the most frequently missing accessory for this figure. It would almost be better to have them permanently affixed to the backpack than to make them removable. They're just asking to get lost. I like the idea of tunnel rat being a machine gunner when not searching tunnels. What I don't like is the fact that his equipment doesn't fit his job. Yes you can give him a pistol and a knife but you have to borrow them from somebody else. It doesn't seem like a fair criticism to ask for more accessories when tunnel rats accessories are already numerous and substantial. But he had a massive backpack that could have accommodated a knife and a pistol and the flashlights could have been sculpted with handles that would fit the figure's hands. Let's take a look at the articulation on tunnel rat. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures at the time. So he'd turn his head from left to right and look up and down, swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel 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 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 little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of tunnel rat starting with his head. He has a dark gray cloth tied around his head. He has black hair and he has face paint for camouflage. This face sculpt is based on Larry Hama, the writer of the GI Joe comic book and file cards. The Larry Hama likeness is the anecdote you will most often hear about this figure. I don't think the likeness is very good. The sculpt is excellent. This is a great head, but this doesn't look like Larry Hama to me. Am I the only one that sees that? There is a lot going on with his chest. He has an ammunition belt over his shoulder in silver and gray paint that goes all the way around his back. He has an olive drab green colored shirt and a silver pistol in a brown pistol holster. He has an unpainted smoke grenade and he has an unpainted strap that goes over his left shoulder. This strap would be for his backpack. There is a strap on the other side. It goes under his arm. It is subtle because it's unpainted, but it is there. The arms feature rolled up green sleeves and a red patch on the left sleeve. JoeCustoms.com says this is the crest of the US Army 354 civil affairs brigade. The details don't come through very well, so it's impossible to know for sure. His arms also have camouflage paint marks and black gloves. He has a green watch on his left wrist. On his waist he has a gray belt with a silver belt buckle. On his legs he has black trousers. He has a brown knife on his left leg. He has brown boots and the trouser legs cover the boots. We don't get well sculpted boots on this figure, but I can't complain. The black just looks great and I'll take as much of that as I can get. Let's take a look at Tunnel Rat's file card. This file card has his factionist G.I. Joe and a portrait of Tunnel Rat here. And this looks more like Larry Hama to me than the figure does. His code name is Tunnel Rat. His specialty is EOD. His file name is Nicky Lee. Nicky Lee is the pen name of Lee Chung Ping, a Taiwanese comic book writer who writes primarily for the teenage girl market. Tunnel Rat is not named after that person. Google just turns up some funny facts when you research G.I. Joe. Primary military specialty is EOD, explosive ordinance disposal. Secondary military specialty is combat engineer. Birthplace is Brooklyn, New York. Grade is E5. His top paragraph says Tunnel Rat's family tree is Trinidadian Chinese with branches of Irish, Spanish and Indian thrown in. I think Tunnel Rat's Trinidadian Chinese and Brooklyn origins are a reference to the Caribbean Chinese fusion cuisine that can be found in Brooklyn. Trinidadian Chinese restaurants can be found there. Tunnel Rat is about as ethnically mixed as you can get. G.I. Joe gets a lot of credit for being more diverse than many other toy lines of the time. There's a lot of diversity in just this one character. He grew up on the mean streets of Brooklyn, got tough on the ranger course at Fort Benning, and honed his skills in Granada. The U.S. Army's ranger school is located at Fort Benning, Georgia. Granada is referring to Operation Urgent Fury, the U.S. invasion of Granada in 1983. That operation was over pretty quickly, so he didn't have much time to hone his skills there. This bottom paragraph has a quote. It says, Tunnel Rat believes that anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Well that's not true. His feeling about crawling into an enemy tunnel with a knife in one hand, a pistol in the other, and a flashlight in his mouth is simple. He can shoot straighter, bite harder and run faster than anything he's ever encountered in a tunnel. So why worry? What? Me worry? Based on this file card, it's clear Tunnel Rat is not based on Larry Hama. Larry Hama is not Trinidadian Chinese, for one thing. Larry has said the character is based on a friend and former bandmate named Charlie Chin. The only similarity between Larry Hama and Tunnel Rat is the face. Looking at how Tunnel Rat was used in G.I. Joe Media, in the vintage era, he appeared animated only in the 1987 G.I. Joe movie. He appeared in later incarnations, though. In his movie appearance, they gave him an accent that I guess was supposed to be Brooklyn. He was in a group of new recruits that was being trained by Beachhead. In the comic book series published by Marvel Comics, he first appeared in issue number 59. In that issue, he's with a few other Joes returning from a field test of the new Slam Cannon when they're attacked by Raptor, Cobra Commander, and the Pogo Ballistic Battle Ball. That fight doesn't last too long because, come on, it's Raptor and the Pogo. Tunnel Rat really gets a chance to shine in the Cobra Civil War story arc, starting in issue number 73. He's part of the initial recon team on Cobra Island. He gets to put his tunnel crawling skills to the test as the team crawls through the drainage pipes under the airport. He has a few appearances later in the series. He's on the cover of issue number 113, and he has a little to do in that issue. That was the issue where Battle Force 2000 died, but Tunnel Rat didn't have anything directly to do with that. He was in issues 140 and 141. Those issues had transformers. No kidding. He appears a few other times, but they don't give him very much to do. Looking at Tunnel Rat overall, I love me some Tunnel Rats. To say this is a top tier figure is to state the obvious. This figure came from 1987. The same year they gave us an SNM Boxer, a Birdman, and a Crocodile Tamer. They were still able to give us a couple realistic military figures. Is there anything I would do differently on this figure? Maybe, but I don't think it would necessarily make the figure better, so I probably wouldn't change anything. It would be nice to have a pistol and a knife for Tunnel Exploring, but I always enjoyed using him as a machine gunner, so I'm fine with the accessories he came with. The sculpting is great. The colors are great. The character is great. The card art is great. The history is great. I love Tunnel Rat. Love. Love, love, love, love, love, love. Love, love, love, love, love, love, Tunnel Rat. I love Tunnel Rat. Love, love, love, love, love. This figure, Falcon, and Outback are the reasons I didn't get out of GI Joe in 1987. Even with the introduction of more silliness, Tunnel Rat proves they still understood what GI Joe was about. I had a chance to meet Larry Hama at Joe Con this year. I even got a sketch from him of Stalker, my favorite GI Joe character. Honestly, that's something I had dreamed of doing since I was a kid. Even back then, I noticed Larry Hama's name on all the comic books and I appreciated his contribution to what GI Joe was. The kid me always wondered what this guy was like and the adult me got to meet him, so I can die happy now. Hey, that doesn't mean I want to die right now. Put those knives away. That was my review of Tunnel Rat. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don't miss any videos. I will be taking next week off. No new review next week, but I may cook up something else for you. I have a website, hcc788.com. You can find all my GI Joe reviews there. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon. Thank you all for watching. I'll see you in a couple weeks with another vintage GI Joe Twitter review, and until then, remember only GI Joe is GI Joe. It's the Joe who swears the new