 Hello everybody, hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. I'm back with another vintage GI Joe Toy Review and this time, hey, we are looking at one of the most iconic and beloved GI Joe characters of all time. Of course I'm talking about the 1984 GI Joe Heavy Machine Gunner Roadblock. As you may know, Stalker is my number one favorite GI Joe character and Roadblock maybe not number one, but definitely in the top 10 and maybe in the top 5 of my favorite GI Joe characters. There have been a lot of versions of Roadblock, but let's take a look at how Roadblock appeared when he was first introduced in 1984. This is Roadblock, GI Joe's Heavy Machine Gunner. He was first introduced in 1984. He was also sold in 1985. He was discontinued in 1986 when this figure was replaced by version 2 of Roadblock. As the Heavy Machine Gunner, Roadblock took over the duties of Rock and Roll, who was GI Joe's first machine gunner in the first wave of GI Joe action figures in 1982. When Roadblock was first introduced in the GI Joe comic book in issue number 22, it was Rock and Roll who paid Roadblock respect for Roadblock's ability to handle his big 50 caliber machine gun. Let's take a look at Roadblock's accessories starting with his machine gun. This is an M2X machine gun, and what this really is is a modified M2 Browning, 50 caliber machine gun, sometimes called the MADUS. This is a pretty good representation of the M2 Browning. It looks a lot like that real world weapon. Main modification on here is the M2 usually has like a double grip here in the back, whereas this has a pistol grip. If you look at the artwork on the card, it almost looks like a pistol has been grafted onto the end of this weapon. To go along with his MADUS, Roadblock has a tripod which can be mounted on his backpack. The tripod has a hole which fits in this peg here on the backpack. Mounts the machine gun on the tripod by threading this peg through the hole on the tripod, and there you go. This is a very low sitting tripod, so Roadblock really needs to fire the gun from the prone position, which is good for maximum cover and accuracy. You can have Roadblock standing with the tripod on the gun, but I don't think it really looks good that way, so I usually leave the tripod on the backpack. Roadblock's next accessory is his helmet. He came with a light green helmet, which more or less matched the color of his gun. This is a standard helmet. It's much like the helmets that came with all of the 1982 G.I. Joe action figures like Rock and Roll. But as you can see, this helmet that came with the earliest versions of Roadblock did not have the holes in the sides. Later versions of Rock and Roll did have a helmet that had these ear holes like Rock and Rolls. Another figure that came with this light green, no holes variant helmet was the earliest versions of Duke. Roadblock's next accessory is his backpack, and his backpack is an orangey brown color that pretty much matches his pants. This backpack is not very well detailed. It has this handle here, but it's a little bit thick. I don't think I would put that in the action figure's hands. Don't use that as a handle. And of course it has this knob here on which you can mount the tripod. And that is very small and it sticks out and that can crack off very easily. You see a lot of backpacks with that little knob missing. And finally it has a removable ammo box. This ammo box pegs into this little peg right here. And that's another peg that can crack off very easily. Just goes in that hole on the ammo box here. The ammo box is very simple and there is no ammunition belt, nor is there an ammunition belt sculpted on the action figure, unlike the bandoliers on Roadblock here. So you just kind of have to imagine the ammunition being fed into the machine gun. This is not exactly what a real .50 caliber ammunition box looks like. If you want to know what one really looks like, it looks like this. Let's look at the articulation on Roadblock. He had the standard 1984 articulation, meaning he could turn his head from side to side like that. He could also lift his arm up at the shoulder and swivel it 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 the rubber O-ring so he could 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 and that's a very tight joint there. It's so tight it makes me nervous to move it. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of Roadblock, starting with his head. The sculpt on the face is good enough, I suppose. I don't really have any complaints about it. He's got a mustache there, a little sole patch kind of thing on his chin. You can't really see his ears. His ears aren't very pronounced there. One thing I don't like about this head is that he has a very narrow head but also very long. It seems like his head sort of goes back here in sort of an alien shape. The head sculpt on version 2 of Roadblock is a bit better even though they sculpted him with an expressive face which I don't really like. They did manage to give him a normal shaped head which I think is a lot better. I'd really prefer to have this head sculpt on this body. Looking at his chest, he has a very large chest. He's very barrel-chested. I think this is meant to convey his very muscular frame. He has a camouflage tank top and over that he has black straps. Those are straps for his backpack. Even though this is supposed to be a very muscular figure, his arms are really average size. No specially sculpted muscle tone in his arms. We have some green gloves and we have a green watch and a green glove on his left hand. On version 2 of Roadblock we did manage to get more muscled sculpted arms but what I really wanted to see was a very muscular frame and arms like on Sergeant Slaughter. That would have been more befitting of the Roadblock we saw in the cartoons and the comic book. On this piece he has a black belt, a reasonably detailed belt that looks pretty good and then he has these brown trousers that are sort of a slightly orangey tint. This orangey brown plastic has a tendency to be very fragile so you'll see a lot of these 1984 Roadblocks with broken crotches. On his right leg he has a green knife with a strap. On his left leg he has a black pistol holster with a pistol and this is a little unusual. Especially when I see pistols sculpted on the left leg of a figure that's an indication that he is left handed. However, I don't think Roadblock was ever portrayed in any of the media as being left handed. Then on his feet he has some pretty standard black boots and these boots are kind of an odd shape. His toes are sort of bulbous there, they sort of bulge out. It gives his feet kind of a weird shape. I do not use a figure stand with this figure because of the very fragile plastic. I'm worried about cracking the heel off of the foot with a figure stand. But case in point, even though I've been very careful with this figure and tried not to put any stress on the plastic at all, still I've got a chipped heel right there. So this is very fragile plastic so do be extremely cautious with it. Let's take a look at the file card and normally I only have the file card but for Roadblock I have the full card back. The figure would have been packaged on a card very much like this. You can see the artwork on the front of the card here, it says he's the heavy machine gunner codename Roadblock. It's got the contents of the card listed along the edge here. Fortunately, there's some of that still on there. Often, when the card is opened up and the plastic bubble is ripped off, it rips off the card contents too. So I think it's very unfortunate that they put the card contents along the edge there. Clipping the card around, we can see the cross cell with all of the other GI Joe action figures that were available at the time. He was worth one flag point just like all other GI Joe action figures. And here we have the file card which we're encouraged to cut out and keep. The file card has his faction as GI Joe, it has a portrait of Roadblock, that was from the artwork on the front of the card. It says he's the heavy machine gunner, his codename is Roadblock. His file name is Marvin F. Hinton. His primary military specialty is infantry heavy weapons, and his secondary military specialty is Cook. This secondary military specialty of Cook is very important to the personality of Roadblock. His birthplace is Biloxi, Mississippi and his grade is E4. This section says, Roadblock's dream was to be a gourmet chef. He was working as a bouncer to earn money to attend the Escoffier School in France when an army recruiter convinced him that the army could train him to be a chef. Since Escoffier School is referring to Auguste Escoffier, who lived in the late 19th and early 20th century, he was a French chef and the author of many books on French cooking. Roadblock's preference for gourmet food is reflected in his early appearances in the GI Joe comic book. Roadblock joined but found army menus and preparation techniques to appalling, surprise surprise, transferred to the infantry. With each career move, he's moving farther and farther away of his ultimate goal to be a gourmet chef. That expert M2 Browning 50 caliber heavy machine gun, and that really is what this accessory is supposed to reflect, even though it's called an M2X. All Warsaw-packed heavy machine guns, M16, M1911A1 Autopistol. This bottom section has a quote. It says, 50 caliber Browning weighs 84 pounds. Add 50 pounds for ammo, that's about 134 pounds of steel, generating 2,930 FPS in muzzle velocity. At a cyclical rate of 550 RPM, anybody who can handle that doesn't need a machine gun to keep me away. This bottom quote really doesn't say anything about Roadblock at all. It really talks about how massive and powerful his machine gun is. So massive and so powerful that it really probably wouldn't be possible or even practical for Roadblock to fire at handheld like this rather than mount it on a tripod. Looking at this figure overall, of course this is an iconic GI Joe character, one of the most beloved characters in all of the history of GI Joe. So it's hard to really knock Roadblock as a character. The figure has a few flaws though. The head sculpt is weird and really the head sculpt for version 2 of Roadblock is much better. Even though Roadblock did not appear with his helmet very often in the GI Joe cartoon or the comic book, the figure looks better with the helmet on. I do like the uniform of version 1 Roadblock better than version 2 though. The grey pants on version 2 are okay but I don't care for the bright green and version 1 just looks more combat ready than version 2. I would have liked to have seen a more muscular build but I guess the sculpting of the time just wasn't up to the task of creating a really big bulky muscular figure. Fortunately they did improve over the years and I really would have liked to see a Roadblock that was about the size and the build of a sergeant slaughter. I think that would have reflected how he appeared in the different GI Joe media. Just a quick height comparison with an average GI Joe action figure rock and roll. You can see Roadblock is not really any taller so really the only way they represented his more bulky build was with a larger chest piece. The color choices are really good on this figure. I think the greens and the browns and the blacks work very well. It's a nicely balanced color scheme and a really good action figure overall. I just wish it didn't have the weak points with the weird head, the very fragile plastic and not quite the muscular build that this figure should have. I'm still going to put this figure as a top tier figure though. How can you not have version 1 Roadblock as a top tier figure even with the flaws? I love this figure as a kid, played with it all the time. He had to be on all the missions. This was just a great iconic figure and as a kid playing with it I got a lot of great memories of it. Roadblock was very prominent in GI Joe media. He made many appearances in both the cartoon and the comic book. In the GI Joe cartoon series, Roadblock spoke with this weird kind of rhyming pattern. Essentially almost every line he spoke was in rhyme. And really why? Just why? Did they think since he's a black guy that he should be a rapper? No more rhymes now, I mean it! Anybody want to see that? Roadblock really shined in the GI Joe comic book where he was portrayed as more than just a big guy. In issues number 28 and 29, he literally puts the guns of the killer whale on his back in order to save the entire team. But after he does so, he still doesn't take the credit. He gives the credit to his teammate, Deep Six. As powerful as that scene is, it is impossible to reenact with the toys. And in issue number 39 he reveals that when he was younger he was a boy scout and a choir boy. Now, Gung Ho thinks that that's all sissy stuff, but Roadblock really doesn't care what others think. He knows he's strong, he knows he's a big guy and he doesn't need to make others feel small so he can feel big. He exudes self-confidence and integrity. He was a very strong character in the comic book and in that sense he was a lot like stalker. Now in the GI Joe toyline we did not get a lot of African-American characters, but it was very strong, very good writing in the comic book that kept these African-American characters from just being the token black guy. So I have to give great kudos to Larry Hama, the writer of the GI Joe comic book, for how he handled these characters. And it's worth pointing out that in another issue of the GI Joe comic book, Roadblock beat Storm Shadow with pure muscle over skill. The live action movie GI Joe Retaliation, Roadblock was played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson. And the character as he appeared in that movie was different from how he was in the cartoon and the comic book, but I still thought it was pretty good. I thought it was a good update. And he still had, I think, the important characteristics of Roadblock. And this is how Dwayne Johnson appeared as Roadblock in plastic form as the battle-cotta Roadblock. You can see there are quite a few differences between the new Roadblock figure and the original. You can see the new figure is quite a bit taller. There's a difference in scale here. That's a reasonable likeness of Dwayne Johnson as he appeared in the movie. And the new figure, it does sort of keep the same spirit of the original, kind of sort of a little bit. Except this guy is supposed to be a ninja. Here's a brief history of GI Joe tough guys. When I was first playing with GI Joe toys back in 1982, Rock and Roll was the tough guy on the team. He was the muscle, really, because his file card mentions weightlifting and he came with a really big gun. In 1983, though, we got Gung Ho. And he was portrayed in the comic book as being very tough and mean. And he has some kind of sculpted on muscles on his chest. So he became the muscle on the team. He became the team's strongman. Then when Roadblock came out, he kind of took over that role. And he was definitely portrayed as being the strongest and biggest and bulkiest character on the team. After Roadblock, really the next character that took over that role was Sergeant Slaughter. And it's even visible in the action figure. He's sculpted with these huge bulging muscles. And in the GI Joe media cartoon and comic book, he was portrayed as being very strong, very tough. In kids' playtimes, these tough guy characters were imbued with superhuman strength. And really, that's how Roadblock can carry this massive machine gun and fire it from the hip is because when kids are playing with this, you sculpt a few muscles on a guy. And all of a sudden he has Superman powers. So when I was playing with these figures as a kid, nobody could beat any of these characters. They were just too strong and too tough for any Cobra opponent. That was my review of the 1984 Roadblock version one. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you're thinking of getting a Roadblock action figure, I hope you found it informative. If you liked it, don't forget to give it a thumbs up on YouTube. And don't forget to subscribe. I've got a lot of great new GI Joe toy reviews coming up. You don't want to miss them. And don't forget to check me out on Facebook and Twitter. You get a lot of updates there. You don't get anywhere else. I will see you next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review. I'll see you then. Men always surrounded by lesser beasts. I asked myself the same question. Boo. How did you get here? Garb! That's easy for you to say, sucker. Now shut up. Blittentime, little buddy. I got to do the whole thing again because of you, Duke. How does that make you feel?