 and now for something completely different. Hello everybody, Hooded Corcor Commander 788 here. It is time for another vintage GI Joe toy review and this week we are going very vintage indeed. Now normally on this channel we look at GI Joe from the 1980s and a little bit from the 1990s but this week we are going back to the very roots of GI Joe. If you've watched this channel for very long then you've noticed that history is very important to this channel. By better understanding where you've been then you can better understand where you are and that helps you better understand where you're going. It's important to look back and to look forward and we're gonna do both with this review. We're gonna go back to 1964 and look at the first GI Joe. To paraphrase Roadblock, he's the reason we call ourselves Joe. HCC 788 presents from 1964, GI Joe. This is GI Joe. This is among the first GI Joe's introduced in 1964 and he was advertised as an action figure rather than a doll and he was billed as America's Moveable Fighting Man. Action figure was a term coined by Hasbro for GI Joe so this is the first GI Joe and the first real action figure. There are four basic GI Joe figures available in 1964. This is the action soldier. There was also the action marine, action sailor and action pilot. They represented the four major branches of the US armed forces. GI Joe's of this era did not have individual names but as they were being developed they did have prototype names. There was Rocky for the soldier and marine, Skip for the sailor and Ace for the pilot. That name Ace was later used in 1983 for GI Joe's fighter pilot. GI Joe in this form was available from 1964 to 1968 and he went through a lot of variations in the mold and the uniform. When you opened the box for a GI Joe figure back in 1964, he came with a few things. He came with a dog tag which is missing on mine unfortunately. He had his fatigue hat. He had his fatigue shirt and pants and he had his boots. You'd also get this army manual. Actually, there was a manual for each branch of service and this is sort of like a combination catalog and instruction sheet. It lists all the great equipment that you could buy for GI Joe separately. It also has instructions like here it shows how to fold a tent to put it in his backpack and here it has some instructions on how to remove the boots and we will have to try that out later. But you may notice something. The basic GI Joe figure did not come with any weapons. His combat equipment had to be purchased separately. That's because when GI Joe was introduced in the 60s it followed the so-called razor and razors marketing model and the basic idea is you sell the basic razor but you make your real money by selling replacement razors and the GI Joe context they would sell the basic figure but they made their real money selling all the equipment you needed to fully play with the figure. In 1965 an African-American action soldier was issued and that was pretty forward-thinking and progressive for the 60s but it was just the same basic figure mold in different colored plastic. In addition to the basic figure I also have a foot locker sold separately so we will look at the foot locker and some of his combat equipment. To look at the articulation on this figure we have to take his uniform off so let's get started with that and we'll start with the hat, his fatigue cap. This hat is an olive drab and it features some sculpted-on stitching on the brim and around the band and that is not too bad but it's not too detailed either. To take his shirt off you've got to undo the snaps so they're going to do that very carefully so the snaps don't tear away from the fabric. Then we kind of move the arms back and we carefully slide the shirt off of the arms. This is a pretty good authentic looking shirt with some faux pockets and some buttons and there's a tag on the inside that actually says GI Joe by Hasbro. Before we remove the boots I think we should consult the instructions. It says here boots off, grasp, heal and gently pull boot from foot. Steady with other hand as you work boot off foot. Okay let's give that a try. Okay we're going to steady with one hand and then it says to gently pull the heel of the boot from the foot gently. God damn it son of a biscuit get out of there. And that's how you remove the boots. These boots are blow molded with a seam down the middle here and we have sculpted laces and some sculpted stitching. Now the earliest boots were brown. These are the more common black boots. Next we remove the trousers with another snap being very careful. We just slide those off. I'm not going to take a close look at the combat fatigue pants because they're pretty plain. There are some variants of this. Some of them have some nice pockets on them faux pockets but these are pretty plain just in all of drab. And now the figure is naked. That's right that just happened. Let's take a look at GI Joe's articulation and he was advertised as having 20 points of articulation but I only count 18 points of articulation. Maybe you can count along and see if I'm missing something. He is articulated at the head here at the neck and with a great range of motion on the head. He's articulated here at the shoulder. Universal joint at the shoulder. He can move that all around. He has a swivel at the bicep really right at the bicep and perhaps this was a precursor to swivel arm battle grip introduced in the real American hero line in 1983. He has a hinge at the elbow so he can move at the elbow. He's articulated at the wrist so he can move at the wrist. He can also twist at the wrist. Twist the hand at the wrist not bad. He's articulated here at the torso. Pretty good range of motion there. Then he has balls at the hip so he can move his legs around like that but he also has kind of a thigh cut here so his thighs can twist as well. So I'm counting that as two points of articulation there. Then he has joints at the knee and then again at the ankle he can move his ankle and he can also twist his ankle and so really excellent articulation. Not really just good articulation for the time. I think this is good articulation for any era. To look at the main sculpted parts of this figure we can cover his nakedness. Let's look at the sculpt design and color really starting with his head which is the main sculpted detail on the whole figure. This is one of the painted heads available in the 60s. Starting in 1970 they introduced flocked lifelike hair. In 1964 the hair colors for GI Joe included blonde, brown, auburn and black and of course this is the blonde haired version. The blonde haired GI Joe had brown eyes and all of them had a scar on the right cheek. This was a distinctive mark for trademark purposes and to distinguish GI Joe from the inevitable knockoffs. Other sculpted parts include the hands and the left hand is in this open C shape which may be familiar to fans of 1980s GI Joe. The right hand is the so-called nose picker hand with the thumb and forefinger in this pinching pose. Another oddity on this figure the thumbnail on the right thumb is sculpted on the underside of the thumb and it was done this way to identify knockoff figures that might be using the same mold. There is also a little bit of sculpted detail on the feet if you're into that kind of thing. The advertising said this face was sculpted from a composite of 20 different medal of honor winners. Well that is probably not true but it is a nice marketing gimmick. The army manual says you can move your GI Joe into positions that a real life soldier can assume and it has some examples here. Well let's test that out. Check, check, check but I don't know why you'd ever want to do this and check. As we've seen the basic GI Joe figure did not come with a lot of stuff but you could purchase separately a ton of authentic looking combat equipment and you could also purchase the foot locker to store it all in. I do have the foot locker and some of his combat equipment so let's take a look at it. This is the foot locker. Early foot lockers were made of wood and they're pretty sturdy. They feature a metal latch and metal hinges and we have rope handles on the side. The lid featured a sticker with the GI Joe logo that was the logo that used at the time and then we have a space for name, rank and serial number which you could personalize but the real fun begins when you open it up. Under the latch and open the lid and you have a tray with some storage spaces for the equipment and on the inside of the lid we have a sticker that shows how you can put the equipment in the tray. Here's a closer look at the sticker. The equipment was purchased separately and you could put it in the tray in this configuration. I do have the equipment in the tray just the way it shows here so let's take a look at it. In this corner we have an extra set of boots. Here we have binoculars with a black string for a strap. Here we have the first aid kit which is very small red plastic with a white cross on it. Next we have what I consider GI Joe's primary weapon. This is his M1 rifle and that is a very nice replica of the real world weapon. This one is missing the strap that should go along there and it's got some scuffs on the butt here but still a really nice replica of the real world M1. Next we have what the sticker calls a carbine which looks to me like an M1. Carbine with a strap here and again this is a pretty good replica of the real world weapon. Next we have the bayonet. Some decent detail on the bayonet there and we have a ring there and we have a little notch there on the handle and that can attach to the carbine. Just put the barrel through the ring and put the notch on that tab right there and now you are equipped with a bayonet. Next we have the pistol and holster and the sticker just calls this a 45 pistol. It looks like it's a replica of the M1911A1 auto pistol. The holster is black and rubbery and it has this little knob here that attaches to the flap so you can open that up and it has a little red plastic wire here and the pistol does fit the holster pretty well so GI Joe can carry his sidearm. Next we have the belts and I have a couple of different kinds here. I have one with kind of a lighter green and a darker green. Now both of these are later belts. Earlier belts had cloth pouches. These both have kind of plastic sort of rubbery ammo pouches on them. Over here we have a helmet and this helmet unfortunately is missing the strap. Next is the field telephone which has a camouflage vinyl cover and what's cool about this is it opens up and it actually has a telephone receiver on a string. Here we have the fatigue hat which we've already seen. Here we have the canteen with the canteen cover and this is pretty cool. You can remove the cover and take the canteen out and the canteen has kind of a metal look to it with a black lid. This is the entrenching tool and unfortunately I do not have the entrenching tool cover that's supposed to go with it. Now this entrenching tool has three positions. This is the closed position. If you move it one click there this is the pick position and then you move it one more click to where it's fully open and this is the shovel position. Finally we have the mess kit and this mess kit is actually pretty cool. It has this handle that swings over the lid and latches. It's on a hinge but it comes off really easily. It can be popped on pretty easily too. It's a little bit annoying but you can take the lid off and if you take the lid off you actually have a tiny little fork and a tiny little spoon and a tiny little knife. That's just amazing detail. The tray itself came in a lot of variant colors. There are a lot of colors for this tray but you take the tray out and there you have a ton of storage space for all of G.I. Joe's equipment. You can keep a ton of equipment in here and G.I. Joe had a lot of equipment. He had uniforms in different colors. He had a snow cap here. We've got some more boots. This looks like one of the early release brown rubbery boots but it has a split down the seam unfortunately. We've got MP helmets. These are pretty cool. We've got more uniforms. The Green Beret set for G.I. Joe actually had a replica M16 rifle and that looks very nice. We have scuba tanks. We have air vests. We've got hats. Just a ton of stuff. Ski poles and if you don't overload the foot locker with equipment the figure will fit inside. Here's G.I. Joe decked out in some of his combat equipment. He has his helmet. He has his M1 rifle. He's got his pineapple grenades on his backpack strap. He's got his ammo belt. He's got his canteen. He's really ready for battle. The G.I. Joe figures from 1982 the first wave of 1980s G.I. Joe figures had this sort of generic soldier look to them and I can't help but think that maybe the designers at Hasbro were thinking more of the new G.I. Joe figures being specialized sort of generic soldiers like this rather than individual characters as they later became. In fact, if you give G.I. Joe the M16 he is very reminiscent of the 1982 infantry trooper Grunt. Looking at the 1982 G.I. Joe's you can see there's a little more science fiction than there was in the 1964 G.I. Joe. The 1960s G.I. Joe really emphasized authenticity but there was some military authenticity in 1982 G.I. Joe's and that's what I really liked about G.I. Joe. Apparently that's also what collectors of G.I. Joe in the 1960s liked about it. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say I could probably relate more to collectors of G.I. Joe in the 60s than I can to collectors of G.I. Joe in the 90s. The concept and basic design of G.I. Joe was by Stan Weston and it was approved by Hasbro executive Don Levine. Weston's original idea could have gone in a different direction it could have been a licensed product for the TV show The Lieutenant but it's a good thing that it wasn't. The toy would have gone away when the show was cancelled. Instead, Levine took the name of the figure from the story of G.I. Joe the 1945 movie starring Robert Mitchum and Burgess Meredith. Burgess Meredith did voice acting for the 1987 G.I. Joe animated movie. Now that could have been a nice way to bring G.I. Joe full circle back to its origin but unfortunately the movie was just not very good. This really is the origin of the action figure. Without G.I. Joe maybe there still would have been a Star Wars toyline and a Ninja Turtles and all the other toylines that we know today but they may have looked very different. Somebody first had to prove that boys would play with dolls and let's be honest whatever you want to call them whether they're 12 inches or three and three-quarter inches they're still dolls. The earliest G.I. Joe stressed authenticity. In the late 60s though the Vietnam conflict became less popular and military based toys lost favor so the focus changed to adventure. In the 1970s we got the adventure team and G.I. Joe was decidedly less military but the adventure team featured some innovations such as the lifelike hair the flocked hair and beard and that was imported from the UK's version of G.I. Joe called Action Man. In 1974 they added Kung Fu grip which was rubbery hands that could grip rather than these plastic hands that were frozen in one position. Those were also imported from the UK. In 1976 they got the eagle eye which was a mechanism that could move the eyes left and right which was honestly just really creepy. In the 70s G.I. Joe spun away from reality they introduced a superhero bullet man who frankly looked ridiculous he had a bullet shaped helmet and a unitard and G.I. Joe had a rip off of the 6 million dollar man called Mike Power Atomic Man Hasbro even made a knock off of its own toy line it made some non G.I. Joe action figures called Defenders they were G.I. Joe size figures with less articulation and really they were just cheap crap. Later Hasbro introduced Super Joe it was a last ditch effort to keep G.I. Joe relevant it ran from 1977 to 1978 and they were 8 inch figures instead of 12 inch figures they were basically meego sized figures instead of innovating Super Joe was trying to ride the coattails of more popular toys it didn't work and it killed the line and G.I. Joe was dead until 1982 while G.I. Joe was dying something else was happening Fisher Price introduced Adventure People in the 3 and 3 quarter inch scale the energy crisis had made petroleum products more expensive so smaller action figures were more affordable in 1977 Star Wars was a huge hit movie and Tanner got the license to produce Star Wars action figures and they did them in the Adventure People scale and of course they were a huge hit and so 3 and 3 quarter inches became a standard for action figures through the rest of the 70s and the 1980s in the post Vietnam era the US was ready to look at military toys again and G.I. Joe was relaunched in 1982 now the figures in 1982 were kind of generic looking figures but they had individual backstories and the universe for G.I. Joe was created by Marvel Comics and comic book writer Larry Hamma the file cards written for the figures by Larry Hamma really excited the imagination of kids in the 80s back in those days they were not allowed to use animation in toy commercials so Hasbro used animation to advertise the comic books and that in turn helped to sell the toys in 1983 President Ronald Reagan's chairman of the FCC Mark Fowler deregulated rules for children's programming that allowed toy inspired cartoons to hit TV including G.I. Joe and Masters of the Universe from there the marketing was really ramped up and G.I. Joe was a huge success and that was the G.I. Joe that I grew up with so how do I assess this figure I do like this guy I like owning this figure this is part of G.I. Joe history since it is part of history it's almost irrelevant to criticize the aesthetics of it I mean really who cares it would be like saying you don't like the Duke of Wellington because he wore his hat for to aft so what he defeated Napoleon that's what matters what matters for G.I. Joe is he became a legend and the success of this toy line allowed Hasbro years later to revive him into the G.I. Joe that we grew to love looking closely at this toy there were a couple things that could have been done better I think the plastic hands that are frozen in that position are a little bit difficult to work with the kung fu grip probably was an improvement also you have to have a lot of patience with these guys you have to be very patient and careful when you're changing out the uniforms and getting the weapons in his hand and getting him in the right position that you want him it's actually kind of zen you have to slow down and experience the G.I. Joe handling the action figure and all his gears I can really see why kids in the 60s were blown away by this guy I mean all that authentic looking equipment just has the look and the feel of quality you can feel the workmanship in it but that was the G.I. Joe of a previous generation the G.I. Joe that I grew up with was very different I think if Hasbro had just reissued the old G.I. Joe made some new 12 inch figures with updated equipment I don't think the kids of my generation would have bought it instead Hasbro created a new G.I. Joe that was laser focused on my generation but now my G.I. Joe is three decades old and when I look at the future of G.I. Joe and what the next generation of G.I. Joe is going to be I don't see it and that worries me what I have seen is G.I. Joe trying to ride a wave of 80s nostalgia reissuing characters from my generation updated, new sculpts, new articulation but with few exceptions I don't see kids playing with this stuff I don't think it looks like it's meant for kids to play with it looks like it's meant for guys my age to buy and put on a shelf they are reissuing new versions of Cold War era toys and that is not the future that will never be the future if there is to be a new generation of G.I. Joe and that is by no means guaranteed it will likely look very different from the G.I. Joe that I grew up with there will probably be no Snake Eyes no Cobra, no Duke maybe it's not even a team it will probably be something totally different it may be as different from our G.I. Joe as our G.I. Joe was from the 1964 G.I. Joe maybe I won't even like the next generation of G.I. Joe and you know what, that's fine don't make a G.I. Joe for me make a G.I. Joe for the kids make a G.I. Joe that will capture the imagination of today's kids, not kids from the 80s so G.I. Joe needs new ideas but a new idea isn't necessarily a good idea I mean Sigma Six was kind of a new idea but this is why I don't give bonus points just for coming up with a new idea I would think that if you looked at Sigma Six before it was released I think common sense should have told you that was not a very good idea I don't have any special respect for just throwing things on the wall to see what sticks I mean that's not innovating, that's guessing to figure out which new ideas are good ideas you have to think about them it takes time and work and study and development by smart people and I don't think that's happening right now and without that, no cartoon series no movie, no anything is gonna bring us our next generation of G.I. Joe that's why I don't lament Hasbro not having any new G.I. Joe this year I think for G.I. Joe to be reborn it probably needs to go away for a little while and a lot of people probably don't want to hear that and probably vehemently disagree but that's how I see it I don't know what the next G.I. Joe is gonna be like but for those future developers who are going to create the new G.I. Joe I have a couple suggestions I think it is possible to have a successful American-centric product I think the evidence of this is the recent Captain America movies they are successful in the United States but they're successful elsewhere too the reason they're successful I think is first of all because they are top quality there's no substitute for that but also because they play on more universal values and I think that is the key if you make a product that is focused on American jingoism I don't think the world's gonna buy that and I don't think Americans are gonna buy that either you can't just make a war toy the world has just changed too much in the last 30 years my next suggestion is don't be afraid to be relevant going back to the examples of the Captain America movies those movies had some relevant issues in them now if all you wanted to see was the action that's fine it didn't beat you over the head with them but security versus privacy preemption those were issues that were raised in those movies and those are issues that are relevant to modern times they weren't afraid to take a position and have a message so don't be afraid to say something the message shouldn't be overbearing but you don't have to produce a line that is so watered down that it doesn't have any substance say something and that will attract the more intelligent fans and I think GI Joe has always attracted the more intelligent kids because of course you could just play war with it but if you look closer it has more to it it has substance finally bear in mind the changes in the market nowadays the kids that play with plastic toys tend to be the younger kids and the kids that would enjoy the new GI Joe are probably a little bit older and those kids tend to play more with video games than with toys so the main focus may need to be on media rather than plastic now I do believe at least I hope there will someday be a new GI Joe toy line but the main focus may not be on the toys and you know what? that's okay because you're making it for the next generation you're not making it for me I may be totally wrong about everything but that's how I see the future and today looking at the past has kind of given us a launching point to look at the future I want to thank everyone who made GI Joe such a success back in the 60s without you guys none of us would be doing this we would have no future to talk about so thank you for buying GI Joe and loving GI Joe and spending all those hours playing with the toy and changing his uniform and taking his clothes off and playing with your little naked man sinners but next week we are going to get back to the 80s and it's been a long time since we have looked at Cobra so we are going to look at the bad guys it is Cobra's time to shine until then like this video on YouTube subscribe on YouTube like me on Facebook follow me on Twitter share this video that's what keeps this channel going and always remember only GI Joe is GI Joe a navy frogman with complete scuba suit and inflatable light ramp an air force pilot with high altitude helmet and air vest get GI Joe and get GI Joe equipment so you can set up exciting battle action whenever you want remember only GI Joe is GI Joe