 Yellow Troops hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, and following up last week's review of the largest place I had ever made the USS flag, I decided to go straight to the top and look at G.I. Joe's Commander, the top dog, the head honcho, I'm talking about none other than General Hawk. HCC 788 presents from 1986, Version 2 of Hawk. This is G.I. Joe's Commander, Version 2 of Hawk. He was available in 1986 and 1987. He was discontinued for the year 1988, and he did not really have a replacement that year. The closest thing to a replacement for Hawk in 1988 would I guess be Tiger Force Duke. Duke is an authority figure within G.I. Joe, and he was released that year, but I would not consider him to be a replacement for Hawk. Hawk was later available as a mail-away offer in 1991, and the mail-away version of Hawk had a different shape file card, and instead of having three accessories, he had a single accessory, a gold submachine gun. This version of Hawk is often referred to as General Hawk, obviously because that is his rank, but also because that distinguishes him from Version 1 of Hawk from 1982. There are obviously a lot of differences between these two versions of Hawk. The Version 1 of Hawk was made up of a lot of the standard G.I. Joe parts that made up a lot of other figures in 1982. Also Version 1 of Hawk was not a general, he was a colonel, and Version 1 of Hawk was not a carded action figure. He was packaged with the MMS, the Mobile Missile System, and that's the only way you could get this first version of Hawk. There are a lot of other important differences between these two versions of Hawk, and we're going to cover those later in this video. In the G.I. Joe comic book, Hawk has given his promotion from Colonel to Brigadier General in issue number 45. In the G.I. Joe cartoon series, Hawk was not in the early episodes at all. He first appeared in Season 2, in Arise Serpentor Arise Part 1. Before that in the cartoon series, G.I. Joe's leader was Duke. If you followed the G.I. Joe comic book, you knew who this guy was right from the very beginning. If you only followed the cartoon, he was introduced rather abruptly and without explanation. Let's take a look at Hawk's accessories starting with his weapon, and the card contents call this a Walter P.P.K. 9mm short pistol. But this really does not look anything like a Walter P.P.K. A Walter P.P.K. is much shorter. This is too long to be that particular pistol. This does not perfectly match any other 9mm pistol that I can find. It looks a lot more like a .45 Colt M1911, but that is not a 9mm. This is a black version of the pistol that originally came with the 1985 Keel Hall, with Keel Hall's pistol being silver instead of black. This is often mistaken for the pistol that came with the 1987 Chuckles, and those pistols are very similar and about the same size, but there are some important differences. Here are the two pistols together for comparison, and you can see some significant differences, but if you don't know what you're looking for, you could easily end up with a Chuckles pistol instead of a Hawk pistol or vice versa. If you can get a close look at them, if you can only see them from a distance, really mainly look for this finger guard, which is on Hawk's pistol, but not Chuckles. Hawk's next accessory is his helmet, and it is a good-looking helmet, nicely sculpted in green, which is appropriate. It has some sculpted goggles on there, and this little square here would have his general star on it, a strap for the goggles, really pretty nicely detailed. Although this is a nicely sculpted helmet, I always did have a little bit of a problem with it though, in that I think it rests a little bit high on his head. I really kind of feel like it ought to come down more. I just don't like the look of it, the way that it rests on his head, so it's not quite as cool as it could be, but still really nicely sculpted and detailed. Hawk's final accessory is his backpack, which the card contents call a field pack, and this is another accessory that is very nicely sculpted with a lot of great detail. I mean, you really just look at all the detail on here. You've got a canteen, you've got a little grenade there, a couple grenades, you've got a little walkie-talkie here in this pouch. Very nicely done, and this backpack sometimes gets mistaken for the backpack that came with Flint. You can see that it's very similar in color and in size, and it even has some of the same features on it, but those are different backpacks, so don't get those mixed up. I don't really need Hawk to have a backpack though. I really imagine him riding around in an awestriker commanding the troops. So a backpack really isn't an essential accessory. So the backpack is really cool but not needed. I'd rather give that backpack to another figure that needed it. The helmet is so-so, but to me the primary accessory for Hawk version 2 is that pistol. Let's look at the articulation on version 2 of Hawk. He had the articulation that was standard by 1986, meaning he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. His neck was on a ball joint. He could swing 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, and 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 at the hip about 90 degrees, and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of version 2 of Hawk, starting with his head, and on his head he has flowing brown hair, a nicely sculpted eyebrows there, a pretty good sculpt on his face, very masculine looking. He has kind of a chin divot there. It looks like he needs Chinderware. The head is where we run into a major controversy with this figure. This is the head of version 1 of Hawk. Notice anything different? Other than the fact that the faces look completely different. Version 1 of Hawk has very blonde canary yellow hair. For some reason, on version 2 of Hawk, they decided to give him brown hair. Now, there's nothing wrong with the head of version 2. It's a good looking head, and the brown hair color actually fits very well with the overall color scheme of the action figure, but when you come out with a version 2 of a figure that looks like a totally different person from version 1, I'm kind of going to have a problem with it, and I'm going to have to rant about that later in this video. On his chest, he has a brown leather jacket that is very nicely detailed. Looks like it has a black fur line collar. Goes all the way around. He has a pistol holster strap that goes over his shoulder. He has a gold pistol, and unfortunately, this gold and the silver metallic paint on these figures tended to wear off very easily, and it's pretty well worn on mine, not a lot of that gold paint left. And there is also supposed to be some gold paint on some other spots, like these stars on his shoulder, his general stars, but the paint on those has also worn off. The chest has some other great details. These patches here, the top one looks to me to be a US Army parachutist badge, and this lower one, the longer one here, looks like a combat infantryman badge. On the arms, there's that brown leather jacket, some nicely sculpted details there. Black cuffs, bare hands, and on his left arm, it looks like he has a pocket here with a pen. On his waist piece, he has two black belts that go all the way around, and he has two silver belt buckles. Unfortunately, that silver paint has kind of worn off on the top one on my figure. The lower belt buckle has what looks like an eagle sculpted on it, really, really nice detail. And that lower belt slings down to the pistol holster on his right leg. That pistol holster is empty, and I presume that's the holster in which he's supposed to place the pistol accessory, but unfortunately, that is not a working pistol holster, that's just a molded piece of plastic, and that's an area in which these vintage action figures are kind of lacking. A modern figure would have an actual holster there where you could place the pistol, and that is something that modern figures do better than vintage figures. With the 1987 chuckles, we finally got a working pistol holster, which was very nice, but I really wish they could have introduced that feature the year before with Hawk. His legs have a green camouflage pattern, and that looks really nice. I'm a big fan of camouflage. I wish we could have gotten a lot more camouflage on these vintage figures, but I'll take what I can get. On his left leg, he has a pocket, and he has a couple black boots, and on his left boot, he has a knife. Let's take a look at Hawk's file card, and the file card was printed on the back of the card on which the action figure was packaged. You can see some of the artwork on the front of the card there, and I think we should also compare and contrast this file card with version one of Hawk's file card. Now, since version one of Hawk came with the MMS, this file card was printed on the back of the box, so it is plain on the back. This file card has this faction as GI Joe, and it has a nice portrait of Hawk here, and I do like this portrait, and I like the way the helmet looks in this portrait. I just don't think the helmet on the action figure quite lives up to it. His code name is Hawk, and he is the GI Joe commander, and this is something they had started doing by 1986, putting the code name at the top in bold letters and the specialty underneath. Before that, they used to put the specialty at the top and the code name underneath. This code name of Hawk, I think, is referring to a Warhawk, or someone who generally proposes a Bellicose foreign policy position. His file name is Clayton M. Abernathy. His primary military specialty is artillery. His secondary military specialty is radar. His birthplace is Denver, Colorado, and his grade is Brigadier General. Now, this is not his pay grade. What they usually do on file cards is they will put the pay grade here. His old file card has him as pay grade 06 Colonel, and then when he was promoted, he was an 07 Brigadier General. Although Hawk is a Brigadier General and the GI Joe commander, he is not the highest ranking member of the team. That would be Rear Admiral Keele Hall from 1985. This middle section says Hawk was the original field commander of the GI Joe team before he got his general star and was booted upstairs to honcho the entire GI Joe operation. This does not precisely follow the continuity of the GI Joe comic book. In the GI Joe comic book, Hawk was the original field commander of GI Joe, and General Flag oversaw operations. But after General Flag was killed, and after Duke was introduced, Duke more or less became the field commander of GI Joe, and Hawk sort of took over the role of General Flag. But after Hawk got his general star, that's when he returned to the field and again became the field commander of GI Joe. He's a West Point graduate and has a list of special education credits as long as his arm, but he still managed to get the main body of his experience out there where it counts on the battlefield. West Point is referring to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. It was established in 1802 by Thomas Jefferson. This bottom section has a quote. It says, Hawk is the type of commander who goes out and gets shot at like everyone else. Troops respect that. They know he won't ask them to do anything he isn't willing to do himself. And that's why they are willing to do anything Hawk tells them. Well, maybe so, but in the comic book, Hawk was sometimes known to use underhanded means to get what he wants. Take note of something with this file card. This file card is actually less specific than his original file card. I mean, it says he has special education credits, but it doesn't say what they are. It says he got his experience on the battlefield, but it doesn't say where, but his original file card does. His original file card says he graduated advanced infantry training, covert ops school. It says he served on Cadre, North Atlantic Range Command, et cetera. It gives us a list of weapons that he's a qualified expert with. And I think that's kind of strange. Normally the second version of the file card has a lot more information than the first version, but this one is the other way around. We already talked a little bit about Hawk's appearances in G.I. Joe Media. If you followed the comic book, you knew who this guy was. If you only followed the cartoon, he just sort of appeared out of nowhere as the king of everything and sort of displaced Duke as the team leader. Once Hawk was introduced in the cartoon, the chain of command went like this. Regardless of shoulder rank, for some reason, command in G.I. Joe had very little to do with the actual rank of the character. So it had Hawk at the top, with Duke as second in command, Flint was next followed by Beachhead. In the G.I. Joe comic book, Hawk was prominent in early issues. He was introduced in issue number one, and he had some great moments in those early issues. He went one-on-one against Destro and he was shot in the back by Cobra Commander. He was overshadowed by Duke, but he later returned after his promotion to a field leadership position. He was portrayed as a good leader, but not necessarily likable. He often disregarded the considerations of his troops and he was manipulative as hell. Consider what he did in issue number 45, which incidentally is the same issue in which he got promoted to Brigadier General. He assigned Ripcord to fly over Cobra Island with Ace in the Sky Striker on a reconnaissance mission when he knew that Ripcord thought his girlfriend might be held captive on that island. Without orders, Ripcord parachuted down to Cobra Island. That allowed Hawk to launch a rescue mission for Ripcord and that rescue mission allowed him to gather intelligence on Cobra Island. Hawk used Ripcord's relationship to manipulate him into placing himself in danger so Hawk could gather intelligence on the enemy. Here's the thing about that. Hawk is not a Boy Scout troop leader. He is in command of men and women who must fight and kill and maybe die to accomplish a mission and he is going to make sure that mission is accomplished no matter what. Even if that means he doesn't play nice with his own troops. Hawk was promoted to General in time to lead GI Joe's full-scale attack on the secret Cobra base in Springfield. In the cartoon, Hawk was an okay character but he was somewhat overshadowed by Sergeant Slaughter, the new celebrity Joe introduced at the same time. Okay, let's talk about this hair color controversy. The first version of Hawk had blonde hair, the second version of Hawk had brown hair and it was the second version of Hawk that first appeared in the GI Joe cartoon. The explanation given for this is they didn't want kids to confuse Hawk with Duke whom they had already set up as the blonde-haired leader of the team. That may indeed be the reason for the hair color change but my problem with that is it's not a good reason. If they wanted to change the hair color so kids would not confuse Hawk with Duke, they could have done it just for the cartoon. They did not have to do it on the action figure. They had done that before. Now your fans who had been collecting the figure since 1982, your long-term fans had an inconsistency between version one and version two of the figure. And thankfully, the comic book which already had Hawk with blonde hair stuck with its own continuity and kept Hawk with blonde hair when he got promoted and got his new uniform. That created an inconsistency between the comic book and the action figure. So by trying to avoid confusion in one area you potentially created more confusion everywhere else. And by the way, most kids are not so dumb that they can't tell the difference between two characters with the same hair color. Just draw them different and give them different uniforms and most kids can tell the difference. And this isn't the only time they changed hair colors like this. Tiger Force Duke had brown hair instead of blonde hair for no reason at all. I hope kids didn't get fused him with Hawk. Looking at Hawk version two overall it is an excellent action figure even with the brown hair. The brown hair does actually fit very well with the color scheme overall. There is a nice color balance with the browns and the greens. And there is a lot of nice detail like the patches on the jacket. The pistol accessory is appropriate but I'm not a big fan of the other accessories. I don't think he needs the backpack and although the helmet has nice detail I don't like the way it rests on his head. The hair color change is a problem and that should not have happened. But the head sculpt is quite good. This is a top tier figure and an excellent character. That was my review of version two of Hawk. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did make sure you give it a thumbs up on YouTube and don't forget to subscribe. That's what keeps this channel going. And don't forget to like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. You get a lot of updates there you don't get anywhere else. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review.