 Dusty, what can I say about Dusty? He's a great action figure, great action figure. I can't just say he's a great action figure. That's not a review, that's a comment. There's always something more that can be said about any action figure. So what can I say about Dusty? What's special about Dusty? What is the essence of Dusty? What is the essence of Dusty? Why am I asking you? Hey, what do you think about Dusty? Dusty, he's a desert trooper, he's codenamed Dusty. As a completely non-biased person, what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear Dusty? He needs a bath, dirt cloud, follow him around like a pig. It's actually easier to review a terrible action figure than it is to review a great figure because when an action figure is terrible, there's always plenty to say about it. But when a figure is great, there are only so many ways to say that it's great, at least it'd make it interesting. And this week, we're gonna look at a great action figure. It's a figure that I have always loved. It is a much requested review. But what's special about this figure? What sets it apart from the others? What makes it so great? Well, let's look at it and try to figure it out together. HCC788 presents the 1985 G.I. Joe Desert Trooper, Dusty. This is Dusty, G.I. Joe's Desert Trooper. He was first introduced in 1985 and was also available in 1986. He was discontinued for the year 1987. In 1988, we got version two of Dusty and he was in the subteam Tiger Force. And version two of Dusty is based on the same mold as version one, but in different colors. There was a third version of Dusty in the vintage line introduced in 1991. And that version of Dusty was quite different from these first two versions. He had a beret and he had an animal companion. Let's take a look at Dusty's accessories starting with his weapon. And the contents of the card on which he was packaged call this a FAMAS. That's F-A-M-A-S. The card is right. This is a French FAMAS F1. And it is a remarkably good replica of that real world weapon. This is a very distinctive weapon in that it has this large loop on top and it has the magazine behind the grip rather than in front of it. Attached to the gun is this bipod and it can swing and it is removable. And that's the problem with this thing. It pops off very easily. It is very tiny. It is very easy to lose and very hard to replace. G.I. Joe bipods are somewhat notorious and here are a couple of the worst ones. We've got Rock and Roll from 1982. We've got Lowlight from 1986. And these bipods, they're always small. They're always removable and they can be very frustrating to collect. If you wanna get a figure that has an accessory that includes a bipod, my suggestion would be go ahead and find one that is complete and that already has the bipod. Because if you get one that doesn't have the bipod and you wanna track down the bipod, finding a loose bipod on its own is kind of like finding a virgin at Charlie Sheen's house. Dusty's next accessory is his backpack. And this backpack is in a tan color that pretty closely matches the base plastic color of the figure. This backpack is pretty simple, but it's also pretty cool. This is a nice appropriate backpack for a desert trooper, not just because of the color, but because it has two canteens sculpted on it so Dusty can have plenty of water with him on his desert missions. You might say Dusty is a little short on accessories but the accessories he did come with are appropriate and well done. Let's look at the articulation on Dusty. He had the standard articulation for 1985 G.I. Joe action figures. That means he could turn his head from left to right. He could also look up and down. His neck was on a ball joint. He could move his arm up at the shoulder about so far and he could 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 little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could move his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of Dusty starting with his head and there is a lot going on with this head. First of all, we have camouflage face paint and this is the first time a G.I. Joe figure had this kind of camouflage paint on his face. In addition to the face paint, we have this non-removable helmet and we have black goggles up here on the top and they wrap around the back and this helmet probably has to be non-removable because it has a special feature. It has this soft goods cloth Havilok. Havilok is the strip of cloth on the back of the helmet that protects the neck from the sun. It's named after Henry Havilok, a 19th century British general in India. In case you're wondering, this is what Dusty has under his skirt. His chest looks very simple but it really has a lot going on here. He has a camouflage pattern that is probably meant to mimic the US Army camouflage pattern it had at the time. He has black straps for his backpack and those straps continue around to the back as does the camouflage pattern. He's wearing a black undershirt which has got to get really hot in the desert. Then he has this US Army parachutist jump wings patch. He has an American flag tampo unfortunately in just two colors instead of three, red and white. The field that would normally be blue is red and that stamp partially goes over his collar. They just didn't have quite enough room to do that American flag patch properly but still it's a very nice and very small detail. He has these two white patches here and although they are blank, the patch on this side would have his last name and that is reflected on the file card. The patch on the other side would normally say US Army but according to the cover of a GI Joe special missions that featured Dusty, that patch says GI Joe. On his arms, the camouflage pattern continues and he has long sleeves that are cinched at the cuffs probably to prevent sand from getting in his uniform. On his left arm, if you look very closely, he has a red patch and this one is a little bit worn but you can see that is a red palm tree inside a shield and that looks really good. It looks appropriate for Dusty and it looks like this is probably based on some real world unit insignia but I have not been able to find the real world equivalent. So if you know what patch this is a reference to and please leave a comment on this video because I would like to know. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place but I'm not finding it. On his waist piece, that camouflage pattern continues and we have this black belt with some very nice detail that goes all the way around and his BDU jacket is tucked under that belt. His legs are fairly simple but it has that camouflage pattern so that camo pattern covers his entire uniform. He has a couple large pockets on his sides. He has some black boots with some very interesting buckles and then on his left boot, he has a knife. Everything on this figure is exactly as it should be. It has a beautiful full camouflage uniform. The details are appropriate without being excessive and distracting and the colors are right. You have these great browns and blacks. It's a subdued, realistic military uniform with just little pops of color. Just enough, not too much. Let's take a look at Dusty's file card and this file card was printed on the back of the card on which the action figure was packaged and it's a little bit unusual but I have actually a cut out portion of the rest of the card. It's the file card placed back where it was cut out. We can see the price sticker from Toys R Us. It was $2.97. We can see this excellent painted artwork of Dusty in this action pose and carrying his weapon and I think this pose is very reminiscent of the card art for the 1982 Infantry Trooper grunt. It has this factionist GI Joe. It has a portrait of Dusty here and that comes straight from that artwork on the front of the card. It says he is the Desert Trooper and his codename is Dusty. It has his file name as Ronald W. Tater. Tater salad. That name Ronald W. Tater has some significance. Tater is Rudat spelled backwards. Dusty is named after Ron Rudat who was a designer at Hasbro and he designed almost all of the early GI Joe action figures. He's probably the single person most responsible for the look of the GI Joe toy line in those early years. There's a very small chance that Mr. Rudat is watching this video but if he is, Ron, thanks. His primary military specialty is infantry, secondary military specialty is refrigeration and air conditioning maintenance and that may seem kind of weird but that is explained in his background. His birthplace is Las Vegas, Nevada, the desert and his grade is E4. This section says Dusty loves the desert. It is clean, pure and unforgiving, unlike Vegas which is always willing to give you a second chance. Dusty was working as a refrigerator repairman and studying desert ecology at night when his pre-enlistment application for the GI Joe team was approved. He took basic at Fort Bliss, Texas and loved every minute of it. I think the contrast between the purity of the desert and the implied raunchy artifice of Vegas is nicely done. This also implies that Dusty applied directly to the GI Joe team but then went through normal Army basic training before joining the team. In the GI Joe comic book, the GI Joe team was a secret unit. Most people didn't even know it existed. In the GI Joe cartoon, however, it was publicly known. This says he's a qualified expert with the M16, M14, M1911A1 and M60 and oddly the weapon that he comes with is not listed here. This bottom section has a quote. It says, it's not enough nowadays to have a rapid reaction force responsive instantaneously to explosive situations in far flung corners of the globe. That force must be capable of surviving in a diverse array of hostile environments to accomplish its objectives. If that means having one expert for every type of environment on every team to take on survival responsibilities on that terrain, then so be it. Then so be it. That is an oddly dismissive phrase. It's almost like the writer was not enthusiastic about having a desert trooper on the team. Like a desert trooper would be a unit asker and you only have one just well because you need one of everything, I guess. General Hawk, here's the file on the new desert trooper. A desert trooper. Are we getting too specialized? This guy only fights in the desert. So do I have to check the humidity before I deploy him? So be it. Sergeant, continue to bring me every conceivable specialty whether it makes any sense or not. Oh, don't forget to find us an ice cream soldier. I'm sure we'll need one of those. Yes, sir, general, I hate my job. Dusty was well used in GI Joe media. He featured prominently in several episodes of the cartoon series. He's probably best known for his role in the two-parter entitled The Trader. In those episodes, Dusty needs funds to help his ailing mother and Cobra offers him payments if he will give them GI Joe's secrets. He does, but he is found out and he ends up leaving the GI Joe team and joining Cobra. It's all a trick though. He and Duke worked up a scheme together. He would infiltrate Cobra and sabotage their efforts to create a mind control gas. Unfortunately, Duke is wounded on a mission and falls into a coma for the first time. The second time he fell into a coma was in the 1987 GI Joe animated movie when they were trying to reassure kids that Duke didn't die. One odd thing in the cartoon series they refer to him as Dusty Rudat. Well, Dusty's name was inspired by Ron Rudat but the character's name is Tater. Tater's salad. In the GI Joe comic book, Dusty had a couple of really good issues that focused on him. In GI Joe's special missions issue number 11, Dusty is on a desert mission with some new Joe's that takes a very dark turn. It involves torture and self-sacrifice. In the main GI Joe title in issue number 58, Dusty and Mainframe are on a mission to get computer data from a Cobra terror drone. Their guide is a child soldier named Rashid who dislikes Mainframe because he's just a computer geek and not a real soldier. In the end, Rashid learns to respect something besides war and killing. I think it's an interesting coincidence that both of these issues that featured Dusty were in some way about teaching. Looking at Dusty overall, this is a top tier figure all the way that all over desert camouflage is beautiful. It's a fully realistic figure right down to the accessories. He's everything we ever asked for out of GI Joe. If there's any downside to this figure at all, it's that bipod. It's so tiny. It's so easily lost. So if you don't need the figure complete, if you can live without the bipod, don't worry about it. If you don't have it, you'd hardly even know that it's missing. I think he was used appropriately in GI Joe media. He was never a core character, but in both the cartoon and the comic book, he occasionally got the focus that he deserved. But it's that line from the file card. So be it. That's bugged me ever since I was a kid. It's so dismissive. It's so unenthusiastic. Hey, how's the video going? How many times have I told you not to bother me while I'm working? Is this thing on? What's taking so long? I'm almost at the end of the video and I still haven't found the essence of Dusty. Well, what does he look like? Like that. He's from Desert Storm. He's not from Desert Storm. Desert Storm was in 1991. Dusty was released in 1985. That's a full six years before. These pretzels are making me thirsty. That's it. That's what's special about Dusty. He was a desert trooper in 1985. In the 1990s, Dusty is exactly what you would expect an American soldier to look like. But in 1985, Americans didn't fight wars in the desert. We fought wars in the jungle, like Vietnam. Hell, half the movies that were produced in the 80s were re-fighting the Vietnam War. G.I. Joe had jungle troopers and a lot of figures with jungle camouflage, but they didn't get us. So be it. In 1985, Dusty was the undiscovered country. He was the future that nobody knew was about to come to pass. If you think about it, all of us are simultaneously living in a world that is dying and a world that is being born. And Dusty was a foreshadow of the world that was yet to come. The file card says so be it to a desert trooper, but why shouldn't it? They didn't know then what we know now. And that's what I think is special about Dusty. And that was my review. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, make sure you do the things that I usually ask you to do. And most important, hit that subscribe button. And don't forget, next weekend is the G.I. Joe convention and I will be there. So there will not be a new review video for that week. But after Joe Con, I will be coming home with a lot more stuff to review. And I hope to see some of you guys there. Thanks for watching. And remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe. We haven't eaten dust like flour. Oh, what about, what about, other three amigos, Dusty Bottoms? Dusty Bottoms. How many times have I told you not to bother me while I'm working?