 Hey everyone, we are now in October and October is the month in which we celebrate Halloween. And that means October is a great time for a theme month. But other reviewers do Halloween and monster themed reviews in October and they do a better job at that than me. Halloween's not really my thing. I wanted to do a theme month in October but something that's not Halloween related but would still be just as scary. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to HCC's 788's Ugly Ass Figures Month. Now hang on there, you parents that are concerned about the theme month having the word ass in it. Ass just means donkey. It's Ugly Donkey Figures Month. Nothing wrong with that. Even so, kids, don't use that word at school. Or if you do, tell your teacher you heard it on G.I. Joe Berg. Commander 788 here. Remember a few weeks ago when I reviewed Super Trooper and I dressed all shiny? Wow, that was fun. Well, this week we are looking at Rapid Fire. Rapid Fire is exactly like Super Trooper but without all the shiny and without all the fun. Before we get started with that I need to give a code name to another patron. This patron's name is William Phillips. Well, William Phillips makes me think of Wilson Phillips. Wilson Phillips was made up of the daughters of members of the Beach Boys and the mamas and the papas. So I think I am going to combine those things for your code name. William, your code name is Beach Papa. Beach Papa? Welcome to the club. So, Ugly Ass Figures Month. This month we are going to look at Ugly Ass Figures all month. You might think most of those figures are going to come from the 1990s but actually we are going to spend most of the month in the 80s. Except for this week, this is the only 90s figure we are going to look at. Rapid Fire was an ugly ass figure. He was also a pioneer. A pioneer in Hasbro's cheap and lazy approach to G.I. Joe in the 90s. Rapid Fire, as you will soon see, is just a copy of the 1988 Super Trooper figure. But Super Trooper was all chrome and shiny and Rapid Fire is not. Oh, but wait, he has a gimmick. The figure came with a VHS cassette, which may have been a big deal in 1990. Nowadays, though, not many people even have something that will play a VHS cassette. Fortunately, I do. Since I made a Super Trooper costume for my Super Trooper review, I decided to make a Rapid Fire costume for this one. But I took all the fun out of it just like they did with the figure. So let's take a look at it. And I warn you, it's not going to be any fun. HCC788 presents Rapid Fire. This is Rapid Fire. G.I. Joe's fast attack expert from 1990. This figure was only available in 1990. It was discontinued for 1991. There is some dispute, but it may have been released first as a Toys R Us exclusive. But it was eventually available at regular retail in 1990, but only that year. Rapid Fire entirely reused the mold from Super Trooper, the mail away figure from 1988. He even had the same accessories except for one he did not include Super Trooper's shield. And of course, the other major difference is the color. Gone is the chrome. There's no chrome on Rapid Fire. Instead, he has other colors. This complete reuse of the Super Trooper mold would be a mark against Rapid Fire, but it's made even worse by the fact that Super Trooper was made up almost entirely of reused parts. So Rapid Fire is a double copy. It's difficult for a reissued figure to be as good as the original. A reissue really needs to do something special to improve on the original. But unfortunately for Rapid Fire, it takes away the one thing that made Super Trooper special. It takes away the chrome. So Rapid Fire is a major downgrade from Super Trooper. It's like Super Trooper, but a lot less fun. Rapid Fire came with something Super Trooper did not have. He had a VHS cassette and it had a cartoon on it. Hey, that's different. Other GI Joe figures didn't come with that. So does the fact that Rapid Fire included a videotape with a half hour cartoon episode make up for the fact that he loses Super Trooper's chrome? No, no, it does not. This gimmick apparently worked so well, Hasbro used it again for Sergeant Savage. This Sergeant Savage action figure came with a VHS cassette that had a 22 minute cartoon episode on it just like Rapid Fire. But unlike the videotape that came with Rapid Fire, this Sergeant Slaughter VHS tape included a cartoon that was new and it had a cartoon that featured Sergeant Savage. My Rapid Fire action figure is still on the card and this is a little unusual. I don't normally get carded action figures. But since I have this, we can look at how Rapid Fire was marketed and how he appeared on the pigs at retail. And that gives us a chance really to look at the card and I can tell you that the card includes some lies. Up here at the top we have the GI Joe logo and this card is pretty beaten up. We got some markings here, lots of creases and tears and look at this, it's even stapled. There's a plastic hook here because the hole for the pegs is torn. And then we have this advertisement here that says the new adventures of GI Joe and it says exclusive figure and videotape. And I don't really think either of them were exclusive. Although again, Rapid Fire may have been released at Toys R Us first, he was available at retail so not really exclusive. And I don't think the videotape, at least the cartoon episode on it, is really exclusive either. If neither the cartoon nor the figure were exclusive, I would call this a big fat lie. His codename is Rapid Fire. He is the GI Joe fast attack expert and those are certainly words that may or may not have some meaning. We've got a card contents list here and it actually includes the videotape, Rapid Fire. So thanks for letting us know that it includes the figure that we can see right there. It has a helmet and an M17 machine gun. That's referring to this thing here, that reissue of dial tones weapon and it is absolutely not an M17 machine gun. An M17 is a pistol. It's a pistol that was not released before 1990s so it can't be referring to that. There is such a thing as an MG17 machine gun but that is not an MG17. So that is another lie. Flipping around to the back, we can see some other advertising blurbs here. It encourages us to watch the daily TV adventures of GI Joe. Then it has a description of the cartoon episode that is on the tape. It even includes some of the characters in that episode in bold letters. You know what name is not on there? Rapid Fire. We have our one flag point here. I really think it should have been worth more than one flag point. It did come with an exclusive videotape. We've got the file card here. We will look at that later. Now you might be saying, hey, hoodie Coco, your figures on the card there. Don't you need a loose figure to review it? Well, yes, yes, I do need a loose action figure to review this. And well, while he is still on the card, he's not really sealed. The bubble is actually cracked in several places. And look, it's even totally torn off here above the VHS cassette. I got this figure because the card was pretty much a lost cause. It's too beaten up to really be collectible in my opinion. And it was super cheap. So I thought I'll get this carded figure and let's open it up. This is the first ever HCC 788 on camera opening of a carded figure. All right. First, let's see if we can just pull this tape out maybe because it's so cracked up here at the top that I think I can just slide it out. Yeah, there we go. So there's the tape. We'll watch that later. And this plastic blister is cracked in several places. I might even be able to just kind of kind of punch through it. Yeah, it's just it's so brittle. It's just cracking right off. Yeah, it's not going to crack quite enough for me to pull the figure out through the front. So I will need to cut it. This is very exciting. I will be the first person to physically touch this action figure. The first person to actually handle this rapid fire action figure. I'm so glad all of you are here for this special occasion. All right, that should do it out. He goes brand new ish rapid fire action figure and his accessories. Come on. And that's it. I took this figure off the card just moments ago and his O ring is not in very good shape. I'm attempted to go ahead and replace it, but I guess I'll hold off for the moment. These O rings that hold these GI Joe figures together because they are made of rubber, they can break down and disintegrate over time, even when the figure is still sealed on the card and is never played with. And this one in particular, I mean that card that that bubble was cracked. So he had absolutely no protection from the elements whatsoever. So yeah, his O ring is a little worse for the wear. There he is. There is rapid fire freed from his plastic prison and ready to review. Let's go ahead and start by looking at his accessories. Rapid fire only has two accessories, the helmet and the gun. And like with super trooper, these are just reissues. They are not new. Let's go ahead and start with his helmet. His helmet is bright green. And it is a copy of the helmet that originally came with crankcase from 1985. Crank cases helmet being in a much better gray color. Here's that helmet next to super troopers helmet. Super troopers helmet, of course, being all nice and shiny and reflective. Next, we have rapid fires weapon, which the card contents alleged to be an M17 machine gun. But we know it's really not. It is in an awful bright lime green color. Just about the worst thing you've ever seen. And again, this is a reissued accessory. This is a copy of the weapon that came with dial tone from 1986. Dial tones weapon just looks so much better that green color is just so yuck. And while we're at it, let's go ahead and look at that accessory next to the nice shiny chrome accessory. Of super trooper. And that's it for accessories. That's really it. This green vest thing. That's the same color as the other accessories may look like an accessory, but it is not. It is non removable. It is glued onto the figure as it was with super trooper. So now let's run through the articulation rapid fire had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures well before 1990. He could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. The downward motion on the arms is hindered by this big bulky vest that he's wearing. He had a hinge at the elbow that allowed him to bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He could swivel his arm at the bicep. The figure was held together with a rubber o ring that looped around the inside. That allowed him to move at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Those knee joints are pretty tight. But then again, I did just take this figure out of the package. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of rapid fire and the color we'll talk about later. I do have to remind you that as with super trooper this figure is made up of reused parts. Super trooper had one piece that was new that armored vest. But since rapid fire copies all of super trooper, he has zero original parts. Let's look at rapid fire's head. His head has brown hair, eyebrows, and eyes. And this head is reused from the head for 1987 Battle Force 2000 knockdown. The shade of brown on the hair is slightly darker on rapid fire. Knockdown's hair has a bit more red in it. But other than that, they are the same. And here is rapid fire next to super trooper. That is the same head, but super trooper has black hair instead of brown. That color change on the hair makes a huge difference, doesn't it? Looking at rapid fire's chest, he has this big bulky armored vest front and back in a bright lime green color. This vest is glued on to a regular GI Joe chest, so it adds a lot of mass to it. Again, this vest was original to super trooper. But of course super trooper's vest is nice and shiny and chrome. I do think the vest has some nice details, some armor, and some electronics. So it is well sculpted, but oh, that color. Under that vest, even though you can't see it very well, super trooper reuses the chest and back from 1987 out back. That's what you would see under that vest if you could take it off. Of course, he's wearing a black t-shirt under there. So that's a little different from the green t-shirt on super trooper and the white t-shirt on out back. But otherwise, another reuse of parts. I do like the fact that rapid fire has a hole for his back screw that goes right through that vest. So he could wear a backpack, not that he comes with one. His arms are bare with a couple orange straps that go around his biceps and a couple orange pouches on his upper arms. Then he has a blue watch on his left wrist and a blue device of some kind on his right wrist. And then again, as with super trooper, we have some unpainted detail on the right wrist. Unpainted details are a bit of a problem for me, especially if the detail is on a flesh tone part of the figure. To me, that just looks very bad and it's difficult to ignore. That was the same with super trooper. The same mistake on super trooper was copied over to rapid fire. These arms are reused from wetsuit and wetsuit's arms on that right wrist has that detail painted in black. So that's what they should have done on rapid fire and super trooper, but they didn't and that looks pretty bad. His waist is blue with a silver belt with lots of pouches all the way around. And this waste piece is a reuse of the waste piece from 1986 wetsuit. This is not a bad reuse of parts, same with super trooper. These pouches on the belt are really probably weights for wetsuit's weighted belt. Moving down to the legs, we continue those blue trousers with a silver knife on the right leg with a couple silver straps that go around the right thigh. Nothing really on the left leg. He has a couple really big knee pads that are bright orange, really crazy orange color. Then he has tall black boots. These legs may look familiar to you. These legs are a copy of the legs from 1986 Xandar, but with color changes. Unlike the color changes for super trooper, it doesn't really improve the colors when these legs are on rapid fire. In fact, the rapid fire legs may be a downgrade from the original. Before we move on, I wanted to show you all the pieces that make up rapid fire. Rapid fire had the helmet from crankcase, the gun from dial tone, the head from knockdown, the chest and back from outback, the arms and waist from wetsuit, the legs from Xandar, and the figure was a complete copy of super trooper but minus the shield. This figure was produced with almost no effort. The only thing they changed was the color. If you're going to reissue a figure like this and only change the color, those color changes had better be pretty spectacular. These color changes are not pretty spectacular. Alright, let's look at this VHS cassette because this is what was supposed to make rapid fire special. He came with his own cartoon advertisement. This episode, as you can see from the label, is titled revenge of the pharaohs. This is a geek animated series episode. I think it's fair to talk about the history of G.I. Joe on TV. After all, not everybody knows everything about the animated series, so terms like the geek series may not make sense. In 1983, the first G.I. Joe animated miniseries was released. It was a five-part miniseries titled a real American hero. It's also known as the mass device. The first G.I. Joe miniseries was produced by Sunbow, and Sunbow would continue to produce the G.I. Joe animated series up through the release of the 1987 G.I. Joe animated movie. In 1984, another miniseries was released titled revenge of cobra, and that introduced a lot of 1984 characters. In 1986, we got the second season of the G.I. Joe regular series, and it started with another miniseries called Arise Serpentor Arise. In 1987, there was a G.I. Joe animated movie. Unfortunately, it was not released in theaters. It was released on VHS, and it was shown on TV, broken up into parts. The Sunbow animated series was cancelled after the 1987 movie, and for a while, there was no G.I. Joe cartoon on TV. Then, in 1989, there was a new miniseries titled Operation Dragonfire. Operation Dragonfire begins the Deak era. Deak is the company that took over after the Sunbow series was cancelled. The Deak animated series is remembered for its poor quality and lower production value. In fact, there's a joke that Deak stands for do it cheaply. From 1990 to 1992, we had the regular Deak G.I. Joe series on TV. This episode, revenge of the Pharaohs, was from 1990. This episode, even though it came with the rapid fire figure, does not feature rapid fire in it. So now I guess there's nothing left to do but watch the tape. I'm going to watch this tape right now, but I'm going to take this armor off. If I'm going to have to watch this for approximately 30 minutes, this will be uncomfortable, so I'll put it back on later in the video. It's alright. It's mostly about Lady J and a night creeper that thinks he's an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. It's all pretty hokey, but kind of average for a Deak episode. Let's look at Rapid Fire's file card. This file card printed on the back of the card on which he was packaged. We have his faction as G.I. Joe. We have a portrait of Rapid Fire here. And this is just modified from the portrait on the Super Trooper file card. Now this is because, well, there isn't really any unique artwork for Rapid Fire. There's no card art on the other side. That space is taken up by the tape. So they just basically recolored Super Trooper's art. Another thing that's the same as the Super Trooper artwork is the G.I. Joe logo on the helmet. Of course that is not on the accessory on the figure. His codename is Rapid Fire with a hyphen. He is the fast attack expert, whatever that means. His codename is, oh hold on, codename, codename. Okay, they made a mistake. This is supposed to say file name. It looks like he has two codenames, but his file name is Robbie London. Robbie London is the name of a real person. That was an executive at Deak Animation. His primary military specialty is fast attack expert. I don't know what that means. Maybe he has to run fast because he's wearing bright green and orange, so he's an easy target. Maybe he should be the fast retreat expert. His secondary military specialty is sabotage, really? His birthplace is Seattle, Washington, and his grade is 03 captain. They made him a captain. That's something they did not do for Super Trooper. They are super soldier with a shield. They at least made him a lieutenant. But no, they just couldn't help themselves. They made the copy of Super Trooper a captain. Okay, let's finish looking at this file card for this captain from America. It gets even better. This first paragraph says, Rapid Fire graduated at the top of the first class to be processed through the Army's new school for fast attack maneuvers. Suffice it to say the object of the program is to produce highly motivated individuals with advanced technical skills for light ordinance assault operations deep within enemy territory. Hang on, hang on, hang on. They partially just copied the text from the Super Trooper file card. They just changed some of the words around a little bit. The Super Trooper file card says the requirements of this special Army school consist of fluency in three languages from the potential adversary list, airborne qualification, and a recipient of the expert infantryman's badge. I wonder how the Rapid Fire file card will modify that. Here it says requirements consist of fluency in three languages, airborne qualification, and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. The Congressional Medal of Honor. The Congressional Medal of Honor is the highest personal commendation possible. They are awarded by the President presented in the name of Congress. That's why it's called the Congressional Medal of Honor. They don't just hand those out like candy. Based on my research, only a handful of Congressional Medals of Honor have been issued since the end of the Vietnam War, and most of them were issued after 1990 when this figure was issued. So no, Rapid Fire does not have a Congressional Medal of Honor. Ugh, this is painful. Alright, let's move on to the second paragraph. This says Rapid Fire never takes the easy way out when it comes to doing things. You know, things, you know, just doing things. He just doesn't do things easy. But completed the points, that means west points, grueling ten-week cadets summer orientation in only five weeks. Oh wow. And to west point the hard way through the window by enlisting in the Army straight out of high school. This guy is constantly on the go, trying to be the best GI Joe at everything. If he keeps it up, he'll be calling the shots at the Pentagon soon enough. Again, they just sort of partially copied the text from the Super Trooper file card and changed it a little bit. Oh my god, this is just terrible. Let's talk about the media appearances of Rapid Fire, and that's easy. He appeared in no episodes of the animated series, including the episode on the tape that is included with this figure. Rapid Fire appeared in no issues of the comic book series published by Marvel Comics, and that's it, we're done. Looking at Rapid Fire overall, this is an ugly ass figure. This figure was produced with almost no effort. It's just Super Trooper. Even the file card is just modified from Super Trooper's file card. And Super Trooper wasn't all that great a figure to begin with. But at least Super Trooper looked nice. Rapid Fire doesn't even have that going for it. For Rapid Fire, instead of Super Trooper's nice shiny chrome, they combined the ugliest green color they could find with the ugliest orange color they could find. I can't think of any redeeming virtues for this thing. It's an eyesore. But the tape, doesn't the tape make it special? Well, it could have. If maybe the cartoon episode had been exclusive to Rapid Fire, that would have been pretty nice. Or maybe if the cartoon episode featured Rapid Fire, which it does not. It's just an average episode of the Deke animated series which you could have watched on TV. This isn't just lazy, it's cheap. Not only did Hasbro avoid the cost of creating a new mold for a figure, they also avoided the cost of the pre-production work and designing a new figure. They just reissued the same one and they changed the colors. And how did they get these specific colors? The best way to get these specific colors on a figure is to eat a lot of Skittles. I mean a lot of Skittles. Eat Skittles until you cannot eat any more. And then you puke them up onto a drawing of Super Trooper and wherever the colors land, those are the colors you go with. It's bottom tier. That was my review of Rapid Fire. I hope you enjoyed it. I told you it wouldn't be any fun. So yeah, for the entire month of October, we are looking at ugly ass figures. Not necessarily the ugliest figures. I think there are possibly uglier figures than the ones we will see this month. But this month we will see some ugly ass figures. I'm not gonna cosplay every one of them, but I will say that this color does come up a lot. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit the notification button so you don't miss any uploads. And please share my videos so more GI Joe fans can find them. I'd like to thank all my patrons including Beach Papa. Their support helps me keep the show going. If you like these videos and you'd like to help in that way, I do have a Patreon and a coffee account, so please check those out. You can find me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a website, hcc788.com. I'll be back next week with another ugly GI Joe toy review. And remember, no matter how ugly it is, only GI Joe is GI Joe. Super Trooper at least was in those many comics and in a live action TV commercial. Sadly, Rapid Fire never had a chance to shine.