 Hello everybody, HoodedCobraCommander788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review and I am in my backyard again and there are lots of outdoor noises for which I apologize, but this is the best space to do this video, so we're just going to have to suffer through it. I'm finishing up the requested reviews of the original three dreadnocks. I've already looked at my favorite dreadnock buzzer and my second favorite dreadnock torch, so now we're doing some cleanup here, revealing my third favorite or least favorite dreadnock ripper. I'll do a quick overview of the dreadnocks since I really discussed them more in the first two videos. The dreadnocks were a motorcycle gang introduced into the GI Joe universe in 1985. They were led by Zartan who was introduced to GI Joe in 1984. The concept of the dreadnocks was heavily influenced by post-apocalyptic science fiction movies like Mad Max. The names of the dreadnocks are inspired by the different weapons they use to destroy things. Buzzer uses a chainsaw, torch uses a cutting torch, and ripper uses a gun with a very large blade on it. We've already looked at buzzer and torch so I'm going to set them aside so we can take a closer look at ripper. Ripper as I said is my least favorite dreadnock so we're going to take a very close look at the reasons why. I just don't like this action figure or the character that it represents. Let's start as we always do by looking at the accessories and ripper came with a lot of accessories including this rifle, this silver plastic rifle with this enormous blade on the end. It's attached almost like a bayonet but this is not a bayonet. It's very clear that this weapon is used either for gouging or for hacking like an axe. I may not like ripper but I really like this gun. This is a great accessory and it's a little bit different. It's very unusual for a dreadnock because the main weapons for the other dreadnocks were not weapons that you would use to shoot at somebody. Torch has a cutting torch and buzzer has a chainsaw. Both of those would be used for cutting through metal or just destroying property. But this actually is a firearm. It has a magazine and it clearly is intended to use to shoot at people. The birds tripping in the background are driving me absolutely crazy. I hope that's not coming through too much on the microphone but I may lose my sanity by the end of this video. Ripper's gun is my second favorite accessory that came with the dreadnock. Of course my favorite was buzzer's chainsaw. I just love the chainsaw. But this is pretty cool too. I really like this. Here the dreadnocks are lined up in order of the awesomeness of their weapons. This gun is the high point of ripper's accessories. The other accessories I really don't like all that much. He came with what the card contents call a power jaw which is kind of a jaws of life type of deal. It has a knob there that this hose plugs into. I'll get to the hose in a minute. And this of course will be used to split metal apart or I guess crush it together but it doesn't actually work. It's just one solid molded piece of plastic and it doesn't actually function. It's just for looks and it's really not that cool. It's a two handed device so of course if you were to use it two handed he wouldn't be able to hold on to this really awesome rifle. And really how often would you play with this as a kid? How often would you really pretend that this thing was getting in there and ripping apart metal? I just really don't have much of a use for this myself. Attached to the power jaw and the backpack was this black rubber hose and these black rubber hoses replaced the old wires that used to be attached to the older GI Joe action figures weapons when the weapons would connect to the backpack and this was an improvement. For instance Torch had this wire connected to his rifle that ran to his backpack and that was a real pain. It was difficult to keep in and of course if you put it in it kind of warps the wire and it kind of restricts the movement of the action figures arm. But these hoses they don't do that. They don't restrict the movement of the action figure. They're long enough to stretch and to connect in the backpack and the weapon that they connect to. Of course your biggest risk is losing this but if you lose one it's really just a generic black plastic hose and you can get a replacement for it. And that brings us to the backpack and the backpack was a generator for the power jaws. It makes sense if you have the power jaws you need a generator for it and of course you need a hose running from the generator to the power jaws so it's all very logical. This backpack is actually two parts. There's the generator and there's this rack that fits on it. It does come apart but I've never found it very easy to get apart. Sometimes I need to wedge something in there and kind of pry this bottom part out. There we go. And this rack of course has these two knobs and the black hose can fit on these knobs and it can fit on either side. So I guess Ripper could hold this right or left handed or if you're just playing silly you can plug it into both sides and I don't know what the hell that's supposed to be. But here's the problem I have with the rack and the hose and the backpack is that it all links up to this power jaw which I think is useless in and of itself. So if you don't have the power jaw you don't need the black wire and you don't need the rack and you don't need the generator. So frankly you could do away with all of these and just give him this really awesome gun. I kind of have a problem with the backpacks for the dreadnoughts. Buzzer's backpack is essentially a gas can for a chainsaw that does not appear to take gasoline so that's kind of useless. And of course Ripper's backpack is a generator for this secondary weapon which I think is useless. So the only backpack for the dreadnoughts that I think makes any sense is torches because he does have a cutting torch and a cutting torch does need a fuel tank so this in a way does make sense but the other two backpacks I can really live without. Let's look at the articulation of Buzzer. He had the typical articulation for 1984 GI Joe action figures even though he was released in 1985. That means that he could turn his head from side to side like that although most GI Joe action figures that were released in 1985 had a ball joint at the neck. For instance, dial tone here had a ball joint so he could not only look side to side he could also look up and down. But the original three dreadnoughts only had that side to side motion which to me means that they were designed in 1984 but they were not released until a year later. He could move his arm up at the shoulder about so far and he could swing it all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move at the elbow at about 90 degrees and he had a swivel at the bicep. He could swivel his arm all the way around. He was held together with the rubber O-ring that allowed him to move at the torso a little bit. He could spread 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 look at the sculpt and design of Ripper and let's start with his head and this is where the hate really starts. His head is very weird looking. Starting with his hair he has a kind of Mohawk rat tail sort of thing but he has a full head of hair. Somehow this section of his hair sticks up and it's perfectly flat even though the rest of his hair is all grown in. So it's like he got a Mohawk, he got a full Mohawk and he shaved his head but then a few weeks later the hair grew back in and he hasn't bothered to shave it again. So I don't know it just looks really strange. He has these red sunglasses. Red sunglasses you don't see very often. Especially when I see red sunglasses they're like red framed sunglasses that women wear. So I don't know how exactly Ripper ended up with red sunglasses. His face is sculpted to look really ugly with a kind of a big nose and some ridges on his forehead. He almost looks like a Klingon and he's got huge satellite ears on both sides. This is really ugly looking individual. Of course that's about on par for a dreadnought but he does look really odd. And his jaw, his jaw is almost cartoonish like it's sort of squared off kind of like a Dick Tracy villain and he's got this black beard that just I don't know I always thought that his head didn't look exactly human. His head is shaped like a trapezoid. Let's look at Ripper's arms and his arms are actually the best part of the action figure. On his right arm he has this metal band that is painted with the metallic gold paint that Hasbro used and all of this metallic paint it rubbed off very easily and as you can see a lot of the paint is rubbed off of mine. On the hands he had rings and he had that on both hands and that actually is pretty cool. That is a detail that you don't see very often. I actually do really like that. His left arm is bare but he does have the rings on the fingers and I do like that. In fact the other dread knocks could have had that kind of detail. That's impressive. On the chest he has this necklace which on the card art looks like it's supposed to be broken bits of glass or metal but to me it just kind of looks like something he picked up at Spencer's at the mall. He also has this strap which doesn't quite go down long enough. I mean if you position the action figure it looks like the strap kind of disappears on his belly without going down to his belt and of course that continues along to the back and the same problem on the back. In order to make this strap look like it actually connects to something you have to kind of bend them over like that and that just looks stupid. The strap I guess is supposed to connect to the backpack but it doesn't really look like it would work. It's got a strap on one side so I would think that the heavy generator being held on by one strap would if it were real it would kind of swing out to the side like that. It just doesn't make any sense. He's got some sculpted on muscles which look alright I guess and up here he has some really tiny grenades. They look like grenades and I've complained about this before how the sculpting on a lot of GI Joe action figures use extra grenades when it looks like they just can't think of any other detail to put on them so you just get grenades everywhere even where it's not really logical when it doesn't make any sense and I don't think it really makes any sense here and they're not even full size grenades they're like little micro grenades. He has this knife here with kind of a jagged hand guard and that looks pretty vicious but then he has this ripped camouflage t-shirt and you can see the sculpted on rips on the shirt and that goes all the way around to the back and I know this is supposed to make him look rough and look like you know kind of a rough customer but I think it really looks silly. I mean he's got kind of a mid-riff here he looks like he's trying to dress like Gwen Stefani or something. Ripper's waist piece is very plain he has this black leather belt and it goes along to the back and it goes through the belt loops and this is the plainest and least interesting of the waist pieces of all the dreadnocks and we compare that to the skull and cross bones belt on buzzer and the fairly nice looking silver chain belt on torch and this is really quite ordinary. He does have some sculpted on pockets on the sides and in the back and he has what I don't know I guess is a wallet in his back pocket here. On his legs on his right leg he has a black holster with a pistol that is blue the same color as his blue jeans and it's just unpainted they just didn't even bother to paint this. I think this is really unfortunate and it makes the action figure look cheap. On his left leg there is nothing they actually didn't even bother to put any kind of detail on the left leg at all. He has some ripped jeans and some black riding boots which are pretty cool I guess those are alright but really the bottom half of this action figure is pretty lackluster it's like they used up all the awesome for the first two and so they had to make Ripper really plain and uninteresting. I really don't like the look of this action figure overall the bottom half is boring and the top half just looks silly. Let's take a look at Ripper's file card there were two versions there was this original version with the peach colored background but in 1986 GI Joe started issuing these file cards with a gray background it would have been the same file card but with a gray background like the gray background for buzzer's file card here I don't have the gray file card for Ripper but you can just see what it would look like. This file card was printed on the back of the card on which the action figure was packaged you can see the front of the card here and you can see that on the card they have him using this power jaw so it's unfortunate I think a poor choice to show the action figure using this useless accessory when they could have shown him using the really awesome gun with the huge blade. And here it has this faction as the enemy it doesn't say Cobra because even though the Dreadknocks were affiliated with Cobra they were not Cobra agents they were an independent motorcycle gang so it says the enemy and it has a nice portrait of Ripper. Up here it says Dreadknock codename Ripper and as I said with the other two this is more of an alias than a codename. His file name is Harry Naught and there's an inside joke with these Dreadknock filenames which I explained on my review of buzzer so make sure you check out my buzzer review video. Ripper's place of birth is Grim Cape Tasmania and that is in Australia. The Dreadknocks are an Australian motorcycle gang and that is a link to the movie Mad Max which did take place in Australia even though not all of the Dreadknocks were Australian of course buzzer was British. Grim Cape is a place known as being extremely isolated it is the far northwest tip of Tasmania and in fact the next land mass west of Grim Cape is Argentina if you can imagine that. Grim Cape was also the site of an 1828 massacre of 30 Aborigines and so it's a place with a very dark past which is probably why it was selected as Ripper's place of birth. In this section it says there are devils in Tasmania and Ripper is probably the meanest of them all of course this is referring to the Tasmanian devil which was a cartoon character but is actually also a real animal that is kind of small but especially kind of mean and nasty. Was expelled from nursery school for extorting candy from his schoolmates and spent most of his adult life in various correctional institutions. Here is trying to paint the picture of somebody who is essentially born bad. He is a professional criminal motivated by greed and a malignant dislike for the niceties of civilization except for motorcycles. A motorcycle is the only type of machine that Ripper does not want to destroy. This section says specialty and MO and it has an asterisk and it says MO means modus operandi and modus operandi is Latin for mode of operation. Ripper's MO is edge weapons and cutting tools is known throughout the swamps for using his blade like a cross between a fireman's axe and a can opener to unlock gates and crack safes. This reference to the swamps is his connection to Zartan. Zartan was a swamp-dweller as well as a master of disguise. All of the Dreadnock file cards mention the swamps. Buzzer is a scavenger of the swamps and Torch. He scavenges the swamps and Ripper he is known throughout the swamps and it doesn't really explain why all of the Dreadnock's cards mention the swamps but the connection has to be Zartan. Zartan is what all of the Dreadnock's have in common. He is their leader. Another reason I don't like Ripper, well there's a word for it but there may be children watching so I don't exactly want to say it so I'll call him an arsehole. That's it, he's an arsehole because British style swearing is not really swearing. Looking at the original three Dreadnocks we have the Disillusioned Intellectual, the Illiterate Moron and the Arsehole. And frankly I would take either of these two over Ripper, at least Buzzer has some intelligence and Torch, well he's stupid so he kind of doesn't know any better but Ripper, he doesn't have any redeeming qualities whatsoever, he's just destructive and mean, he hates the world and he's just a wrecking ball of hatred and venom and destruction. That was my review of Ripper and his file card and that concludes my review of the original three Dreadnocks, I hope you enjoyed it and if you're thinking of getting any of these Dreadnocks I hope you found these reviews informative. If you liked it make sure you go ahead and click that thumbs up on YouTube and let me know and if you're not subscribed to the Hooded Cobra Commander 788 YouTube channel make sure you subscribe. I've got a lot of great new toy reviews coming up, you do not want to miss a single one of them and make sure you go and like my page on Facebook because I've got a lot of updates on there that you don't get anywhere else. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.