 As you can see, she's about a B cup. Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review. This time we are looking at the 1983 Wolverine with the driver, CoverGirl. Before we get started, I want to remind everybody to like and subscribe. The Wolverine tank was released in 1983. It was also sold in 1984. It was discontinued in 1985 when it was replaced with nothing really. The base vehicle without the turret and the missiles was reused in 1989 for another vehicle called the Lynx, which instead of having the missiles had a more traditional tank cannon. The Wolverine was worth three flag points and it came with an action figure, CoverGirl. This vehicle has some sentimental value to me as I have a childhood memory of getting this vehicle. I remember very distinctly that my dad and I were in Sears, and I was lamenting the fact that my parents had not gotten me any GI Joe vehicles for quite some time. And of course a lot of my friends had gotten a lot of the new vehicles that had come out. So my dad told me to go to the toy section and pick one out. And out of all the vehicles that were in my price range, this is the one I selected. I thought it looked really cool, I liked the missiles, and I even liked the action figure. So the Wolverine is a little bit special to me because it is the first GI Joe vehicle that I ever guilted my parents into buying for me. In the real world, the Wolverine would be called a multiple launch rocket system, or MLRS. It is similar in design to a Russian rocket launching tank, the TOS-1. There are some differences. The Russian tank had the same basic sort of body like this, but instead of having two missile boxes, it had one large box of rocket tubes. Of course the Wolverine was not based on the Russian tank, because the Russian tank came out several years after this toy was released. In the early 80s, which is the era of the Wolverine, the US did use an MLRS called the M270, but that looked quite a bit different. It didn't have this tank like body, it had a cab, and it had a back portion that was the elevating missile launcher, and it looked more like a truck than a tank. Though it was a tracked vehicle, it was not a wheeled vehicle, so it did have that in common with the Wolverine. Other than that though, they are pretty dissimilar. The Wolverine may be based roughly on the M50 on TOS anti-tank vehicle, but there are some significant differences. The M50 seems to stand a bit taller than the Wolverine, and instead of having the missile boxes, it has elongated tubes for rocket launchers. So the Wolverine is not based on a real world missile system as far as I can find out, but it does have a very realistic military design. One design flaw of this vehicle that would make it not work in the real world is that the driver has to stick her head out to operate the vehicle. There's no hatch, so there's no way for her to retreat into the vehicle when she fires her rockets. To illustrate why this is a problem, check out this video of the TSO-1 firing its rockets. Just based on that, I think it's safe to say that when these rockets fire, you're not going to want to have your head that close to them. Let's look at the parts of the Wolverine. First and most prominently, it has 12 missiles. The blueprints call these ground-to-ground missiles, so these are intended to be either anti-armor or anti-personnel missiles. And just to make things even more frustrated for collectors who want to have a complete Wolverine, the missiles are numbered. That's missile number 12, and there's missile number 11. Each one of these has a separate, different, distinct sticker that goes on it so that you can't really have a complete Wolverine unless you not only have all 12 missiles, but also have all 12 individual stickers. Quite often you will find these missiles on the aftermarket without the stickers altogether. The missiles themselves are made out of a slightly rubbery material than the tank itself, and you can bend them without breaking them. And I like that. I wish more of the vehicle accessories and missiles were like that. You'd have a lot fewer broken missiles. Now they do tend to get a little bit more solid over time, less flexible, but this one still has some bend to it. One consequence of the missiles being slightly bendy is that occasionally you run across missiles that have a permanent warp. They are permanently bent, and that's kind of a pain. Here in the front, the Wolverine has an engine cover, which covers up some very nice engine detail, and on the engine cover is sculpted some sleeping bags, so that's a nice thing to have in the field. Finally, over on this side, it has the infamous tow rope, which the blueprints actually call a rescue cable. As you can see, this one is broken, but these are actually really hard to find. On the original toy, they were usually lost and often broken, and as you can see, this one did not stay in one piece. These are so hard to find, in fact, that I will not be looking for a replacement anytime soon. This rescue cable was meant to rescue stuck vehicles by hooking one end of the cable to one of these four cleats. We have two in the front and two in the back. You would hook the cable onto one of those, and then the other end, which should be attached there, could hook to a standard tow hook on a GI Joe vehicle, so if your vamp was stuck in the mud, the Wolverine tank could pull it out. Let's look at the features of the Wolverine, and of course the most prominent feature is the turret. With two large missile boxes, each carries six missiles for a total of twelve missiles. The turret can rotate all the way around, and it can elevate. In fact, it can elevate all the way over. The driver sits in a cockpit that unfortunately does not really have any detail in there. It's just a seat with no stickers and just plain plastic. The Wolverine does have a lot of other detail, though. Just look at all of that machinery and technical stuff that's sculpted on there. And even on the bottom, we have some sculpted on detail there, too. Even though you probably wouldn't have noticed this if it wasn't there, I mean, who turns over their tank to look at the bottom? I guess maybe if you're trying to find out if it's male or female. But Hasbro went the extra mile to just give us a little bit of detail on the bottom of the tank. Also on the bottom of the tank, we have four free-rolling wheels, and on the sides, we have fake tank treads. These tank treads are fake. They are not real. They do not make contact with the ground. The Wolverine rolls on its wheels. And I think it's fair to compare the Wolverine to the tank that G.I. Joe had before, the MOBAT, which did have working rubber tank treads. But that's because the MOBAT was motorized. You could put a couple batteries in it and it would move on its own. One advantage that the Wolverine has over the MOBAT is that it doesn't take batteries. And if you have the MOBAT without the batteries, if you just want to roll it around the ground, it actually doesn't work too well at all. You really more have to scoot it than roll it. So the MOBAT really needs the batteries in order to be a really good toy. Whereas the Wolverine has no batteries and it can roll freely. In the back was a standard tow hook so you could hook up one of G.I. Joe's small towed weapons and the Wolverine could tow it. One missed opportunity is that there are no foot pegs to hold action figures on the Wolverine. Like the MOBAT, the Wolverine only accommodates one action figure. And these platforms here would have been perfect to put a couple of foot pegs so a couple other figures could ride along. And that would not obstruct the turret in any way. It would have been perfect but it just doesn't have anything like that. Let's take a look at the action figure that came with the Wolverine. This is Covergirl. She was the second woman in G.I. Joe. In 1982 G.I. Joe featured Scarlett. And in 1983 they followed up with another female action figure, Covergirl. Hasbro produced very few female G.I. Joe action figures because they thought that boys would not want to play with action figures of girls. Well that certainly didn't apply to me. I didn't mind at all. In fact, I think I had all of the women action figures from 1982 up to the point that I stopped collecting around 1987 or 1988. I think it's worth noting that Covergirl was a woman in the early 80s in a special forces unit when women were not given combat roles in the U.S. military. Now when I was a youngster playing with these toys it never occurred to me that for some reason women would not be assigned to combat roles. That just seemed unnatural to me and you know what, it still does. As an adult I still support allowing women to have combat duties in the armed forces. Women are capable of being more than just moms and homemakers and I think that they ought to be given a chance to achieve everything that a man can achieve. So yes, I fully support the feminist position on that issue. Now let's take a look at the action figure. As you can see, she's about a B cup. Covergirl had the standard articulation for G.I. Joe action figures in 1983 which meant that her head could turn side to side. She did not have the ball joint in her neck that later action figures would have which would allow them to look up and down. In 1983 they could just turn their head side to side like that. Her arm at the shoulder could swing up and it could swing all the way around. She had a hinge at the elbow and she had a swivel at the bicep that would allow her arm to move all the way around. She had a rubber O-ring that looped through the inside of the figure which allowed her to move at the waist a little bit. She could move her legs apart about so far. With the hips she could move her leg about 90 degrees and she could bend her knee about 90 degrees. One improvement that they made on Covergirl over the Scarlet action figure is that Covergirl actually had holes in her feet for foot pegs whereas Scarlet did not. Let's look at the sculpt of Covergirl. She has a very cool looking brown leather jacket. It's a much more military look than the kind of leotard super heroine thing that Scarlet has going on. Covergirl had all unique parts in 1983. She did not use any parts from any other action figure. However, in 1984 Covergirl's upper arms were reused for the Baroness. As you can see, same upper arms. Covergirl had a smaller waist piece than the male action figures did but comparing her height to the standard height of the male figures you can see she's about the same if not slightly taller than Clutch here. That's a contrast to Scarlet who was actually slightly shorter than the guys. On her right leg she has a side arm and on her left leg she has this big 80s calculator thing which we have to assume she uses to do the calculations for the firing trajectories on her missiles. On her arm she has some kind of unit badge and I've been scrolling through all of the unit insignia of the US Armed Forces and I have not nailed down exactly what this is supposed to represent. Her hair is short and kind of auburn or brown and she is wearing lipstick I guess to give her a more feminine look and then again that's a contrast to Scarlet who didn't feel the need to wear lipstick into combat but the Baroness did so they do have that in common. Overall I really like this action figure I liked it as a kid and I still do. It has a very utilitarian look to it, it looks pretty military I mean she looks like she's here to do business and she's not going to take any crap from anybody. Let's take a look at the file card. These file cards were printed on the back of the box that the vehicles came in. On the reverse side there's nothing, it's just the back of a box. You were encouraged to cut these out because it contained a short biography of the character that the Saxon figure was supposed to represent and the basic idea of this card, the description that this card gives of Covergirl is that, well, she's hot. Of course she's highly competent as well but mostly she's hot. Up at the top here it says Wolverine Driver, codename Covergirl file name Courtney A. Krieger primary military specialty armor secondary military specialty A. F. V. Mechanics A. F. V. is armored fighting vehicle birth place is Peoria, Illinois and she's an E4 specialist. In this section it says Covergirl was a high fashion model in Chicago and New York prior to enlistment grew disillusioned with modeling and enlisted to put new direction in her life attended armor school at Fort Knox and by the way, Fort Knox does have an armor school proficient in diesel mechanics gas turbine technology so you know what, she could do clutches job qualified expert, Law Rocket Dragon AT missile, that's anti-tank missile M16, M1911A auto pistol in this bottom section it says Covergirl finds that she must work against her beauty to prove herself she's compelled to learn and master decidedly unfeminine disciplines her self-assurance and stunning good looks reduce most men to stuttering fools so there you have it, she has to work harder than the men because she's just so hot I think this illustrates a general problem with the way women are depicted in boys toys or other media and that is that their characters are mostly defined by their beauty or by who they are dating basically the most important things about women characters is their attractiveness to men or which men they are attracting in the comic book when she was introduced she immediately got catty with Scarlett of course because as soon as you put two women together it immediately becomes a competition for the attention of the men folk there are exceptions to the generally poor way that women are treated in media that is aimed toward boys but unfortunately Covergirl is not one of them I think that she's an interesting character she's very competent in what she does and I always thought she deserved better she deserved better than what she got in the cartoon or the comic book or any depiction in G.I. Joe this is a person who has come far in her life and has worked very hard to get in the position that she's in and most of what the file card has to say about her is that she's hot that's my review of the 1983 Wolverine and it's Driver Covergirl I hope you enjoyed it if you did go ahead and give this video a thumbs up if you didn't go ahead and give the video a thumbs down but don't forget to subscribe because I've got a lot of great new videos coming up and you will not want to miss them see you all later