 Hello everybody, HoodedCobraCommander788 here and I'm back with this week's Vintage GI Joe Toy Review and just a reminder, July will be Cobra Month, but we're still trying to round out June. I post my videos on Monday, but there are a lot of Mondays in June. Who knew? Somebody should invent something where you can just look at it and see how many Mondays there are in a month. Why hasn't anybody come up with that? This week I'm knocking out another requested review. This one was pretty easy because I already had everything ready to go. We're going to look at GI Joe's first Navy Seal Torpedo. This is Torpedo GI Joe's Seal, which is an acronym for sea, air and land. He was first introduced in 1983. He was also sold in 1984 and 1985, which is a long time on the shelves. He was discontinued in 1986. He was later available as a JCPenney exclusive mail away three pack with tripwire and snow job. When Torpedo was discontinued in 1986, he was replaced with another Seal wetsuit. As you can see, both Torpedo and wetsuit are outfitted as divers. In 1984, GI Joe got another diver, Deep Six, who was the driver of the shark flying submarine. To say seals, obviously we're not talking about the animal. We're talking about the US Navy Special Operations Force that is trained and equipped for all environments. Unfortunately, only one environment is represented by Torpedo. He is equipped as a frogman, which is a combat diver. In 1985, Cobra got their own frogmen and a rival to Torpedo, the Cobra Eels. Let's take a look at Torpedo's accessories. He came with one weapon, which the content of the card on which he was packaged calls a Harpoon Rifle, and this is an odd little weapon. Harpoon gun normally is very large and mounted on a turret, and it's used for whaling. This is really a spear gun, sometimes called a scuba gun, and it can be either rubber powered or pneumatic or air powered, and it is also used for fishing. Like the scuba suit that Torpedo is wearing, this weapon is really good in only one environment, underwater, which I think is very unfortunate. I mean, we've got a Navy Seal here, but he doesn't come with any weapons that he could use to fight on land, and it's a very simple accessory at that. It's far from my favorite GI Joe accessory, in fact, it's probably near the bottom of the list. Torpedo's next accessory is his backpack, which pegs into his back like that, and this is his scuba tank. Scuba tanks are sometimes called diving cylinders, but what this really is, is a rebreather tank. A rebreather scrubs the CO2 from exhaled breath so the diver can rebreat it, and it replenishes some of the oxygen from these tanks. Rebreathers are much smaller than traditional diving cylinders. On the sides of the tank there are these sort of rocket looking things, and it's not very clear what these are supposed to be. I mean, are they supposed to be weapons that he can fire off of his backpack, or do they propel him through the water? You could really imagine these to be anything. And finally Torpedo comes with a pair of swim fins, and these are pretty self-explanatory. They are identical, there's not a left and a right, they're both the same. They fit on the foot of the action figure by this peg, which fits in the hole on the bottom of his foot. And Torpedo has pretty small feet, and they fit quite snugly in there. They do secure on quite well, and they have this sort of stopper here at the front of his toe. Torpedo is about the only GI Joe figure that will fit these swim fins. They really are made for very small feet. So if you take like a standard GI Joe with boots, he will not be able to fit that swim fin. It just, the foot is too big to fit on there. Because these swim fins, some ankle articulation would have been nice. Since there's no articulation there, they are made to be parallel to the ground when he's standing, like any other GI Joe action figure. But when he's swimming, that's not a very natural pose. With the swim fins on, he has huge flat feet, which you might think would make it easier to stand the figure up without a figure stand. But I found that it's really hard to balance him with the fins on. So I found that it's easier to put a little bit of mounting putty on the bottom of one foot in order to stand him up so he won't fall over backwards. Let's look at the articulation on torpedo. He had the typical articulation of 1983 GI Joe action figures. That means he could turn his head from left to right like that. He could also swing his arm up at the shoulder, and he could swivel his arm all the way around at the shoulder. He had a hinge at the elbow. He could move his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep, so he could swivel his arm all the way around. He had the swivel arm battle grip that was introduced in 1983. The figure was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside. 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. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of torpedo starting with his head. In his head we have a black mask. This is a diving mask. He has kind of an oddly shaped head. If you look at his head, he sort of has a muzzle shaped mouth, and it's kind of a strange look. We can see his eyes through what's supposed to be goggles, but they're kind of lopsided. They're not symmetrical, and his eyes look a little bit droopy, so that's a very strange look on this head. From his mouth leading along the side, we have a hose, and that hose just sort of stops there. It's just sculpted on, and you're supposed to pretend that it continues on to his rebreather tank. Now when we got wetsuit in 1986, he came with a removable hose, but torpedo wasn't quite that advanced. On his chest we can see torpedo is wearing a wetsuit, or a scuba suit. A wetsuit is just a low density insulating suit that's worn by divers. Continues to the back, and we've got this very striking light gray and black color scheme, which I do like. It's not flashy. I don't know if it's terribly military looking, but it looks really good. This is a nice, very subtle color scheme. On his chest we have what look like four pockets, and that's about all we get for detail on this chest. It's very subtle, very understated, and that continues to the arms, which are also very simple. We have a zipper on the outside wrist for his wetsuit, and same thing on the other side, the other arm, and we have some light gray gloves. His waist piece continues the theme. He's wearing a belt, and this is probably a weighted diver's belt. On the inside of his legs we have the light gray, and on the outside of his legs we have the black. So we have a nice uniform color scheme throughout the entire figure. On his right leg he has a knife. We have a zipper at the ankle. On his left leg we have some devices, perhaps explosives, another zipper. We have zippers on the inside ankles and some light gray boots. Torpedo has very small feet, and comparing his feet to rock and roll's feet, which are about average, you can see the size difference. Torpedo's feet are very small. Even considering that he's not wearing traditional army style combat boots, those are still small feet. Let's take a look at the 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 from the front of the card here. We have his faction as G.I. Joe. We have a portrait of Torpedo from the artwork on the front of the card. You can see he's in a diving pose. It has his specialty as seal in parentheses sea, air, and land, and his code name is Torpedo. His file name is Edward W. Lealoha, and he is probably named after Steve Lealoha, who was a comic book artist and anchor. His primary military specialty is Navy Seal. His secondary military specialty is demolitions. His birthplace is Aiyahawaii, so we have a Navy frogman from an island culture that is very tied to the ocean. Aiyahawaii is a small city on the island of Honolulu. His grade is W-O-4 in parentheses warrant officer, and I had to look this up because I didn't know the Navy had warrant officers, but they do. However, after 1975, the Navy stopped using this W-O grade. This should say C-W-O for chief warrant officer. Just for the heck of it, let's put Torpedo together with G.I. Joe's other warrant officers, Flint, and Lift Ticket. This section says Torpedo was a scuba instructor prior to enlistment, attained black belts and three martial arts by age 19. In parentheses, Wushu, Kenpo, and Goju Rayu. Wushu is Chinese full-contact sport fighting, Kenpo is a form of Japanese self-defense, and Goju Rayu is a traditional Okinawan karate, proficient with Filipino butterfly knife Bali Song, and these butterfly knives became somewhat popular in the 1980s. I always wanted one, but my parents never got me one. For some reason, they were not too keen on getting me real weapons. Obviously, my parents didn't understand the self-defense needs of an eight-year-old on the playground. Not that I was bullied, but Cobra could have attacked at any minute and I would be unarmed. Training records after SEAL school, classified. What kind of training could it have been? Probably typing and home economics. Qualified expert, most NATO small arms. NATO unwarsaw-packed explosive devices, and it would have been nice if he came with some NATO small arms. Or even if he came with one of these butterfly knives, that would have been awesome. This bottom section says, spends off-duty hours perfecting his fighting skills and marksmanship. Marksmanship in what exactly? Speargun? A strict vegetarian, regarded by his teammates as a highly competent professional but has the personality of a cold fish. We have a diver described as a fish, I'm not even going to comment on that. Looking at torpedo overall, there's some upsides and some downsides to this figure. The upsides, I really like the color scheme. The black and the gray, they look really good and they're very subtle. It's both striking and subtle at the same time. And it takes some design skill to design a figure like this that is both striking and not excessively flashy. Comparing him to his replacement wetsuit, who has yellow accessories, a yellow helmet, kind of an aqua greenish-blueish colored suit, this is much flashier than torpedo. And I much prefer torpedo. Torpedo is definitely colored more for combat. Torpedo was also an important addition to GI Joe in that he expanded GI Joe to the sea. He's their first Navy member. There are some downsides to this figure too. I really don't like the spear gun. I understand the spear gun is an appropriate weapon for a diver, but we've got a Navy seal here. He should be able to fight on land too. And he's just not equipped at all for fighting on land. And that extends to the non-removable mask. I would have preferred it if he could remove this mask. If he could take even the face mask off, you could maybe put a helmet on him, give him an M16, and send him into ground combat. But instead he has this permanently molded on diving mask. And I just don't like that. That's a big thing that's hard for me to get around. I'd like to be able to take that off and put him in different roles other than just being a frogman. Even though torpedo did not come with a vehicle, he is well paired with the 1980 for shark flying submarine. The shark did come with a diver, deep six. However, on the bottom, if you remove the torpedoes, this is a peg just like on the backpacks. So if you remove the scuba tank from torpedo, you can peg him on the peg here where the torpedo on the shark was, and he can ride along. Unfortunately, the peg on my shark is far too loose. Torpedo will just fall off. So I have to add some mounting putty to keep him on. In the various GI Joe media, torpedo was not portrayed as a cold fish at all. In the GI Joe animated series, he was kind of a party guy with a very outgoing, vibrant personality. Okay, first thing, if people are calling you torpedo, you already have a nickname. You do not need to shorten that nickname into a second nickname. And second, you don't ever want people calling you PEDO. In the GI Joe comic book, he was introduced with pretty much no fanfare, and some of his appearances in the comic book are just bizarre. For instance, he appears in one comic book wearing his scuba suit and his flippers during a land battle, and that's just very strange. He did appear a few more times in the GI Joe comic book, but he was probably underutilized. In my personal estimation, I did not like this figure when I first got him in 1983. I really didn't have much use for him, until a friend of mine got the USS Flag aircraft carrier toy, and then everything changed. Suddenly, these naval characters like torpedo became much more important. Most of our play battles tend to start at sea on the USS Flag aircraft carrier, even when we took vehicles and figures out into the backyard to have a jungle battle. Most of the time, they started on the USS Flag. We had some great, epic naval battles between GI Joe and Cobra, and torpedo participated in those. So torpedo went from a bottom tier figure to a top tier figure very quickly, but as an adult collector, I tend to move him back down toward the middle. There's a lot that I like about this figure, but the lack of detail and the non-removable mask, those do tend to hurt it. That was my review of the 1983 torpedo. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, make sure you 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 do not want to miss them. Also, don't forget to like the Facebook page. You get a lot of updates there that you don't get anywhere else. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review.