 The Hood and Cobra Commander 788 here, it's time for another vintage GI Joe toy review and after last week, I wanted to look at something that was maybe a little bit better. So this week, we're going to look at the Desert Fox six wheel drive vehicle and the driver skid mark. Hey, let me stop you right there. We're not going to be making fun of skid marks name. Now maybe other reviewers would do that and everybody would get their giggles, but we're all adults here. We're not going to engage in the potty humor. We're going to be a bit more mature about this. I made brownies. Do you want one? No. Fun of skid marks name. We all know why people make fun of his name. We don't even need to go into that. Plus, we have a nice vehicle to look at, so we don't need to go to the gutter. We're only high brow on this channel. Hi, ice cream. Do you want it? It's chunky chocolate. No, thank you. I'm not hungry. I'm shooting a video. Oh, buddy. HCC788 presents the Desert Fox and skid mark. This is the Desert Fox, the six wheel drive vehicle from 1988 and the driver, the unfortunately named skid mark. This vehicle and figure set were first available in 1988 and were also available in 1989 and were discontinued for the year 1990. If there was a replacement for this vehicle in 1990, that would have to be the hammer. The vehicle based on the real world Humvee and this is a very nice, mostly realistic vehicle for that late in the line. The Desert Fox is, of course, a desert vehicle and it is appropriately colored with the primary color being this light tan sandy color. There were other desert vehicles released before the Desert Fox. I would say the first one was the vamp mark 2 from 1984. After that, the Mahler MBT from 1985 was in desert colors. In 1986, we got the Tomahawk helicopter in desert colors and this one had a camouflage paint scheme. Very nice. In 1987, the mobile command center was also colored for the desert. The Desert Fox came with one action figure skid mark and we don't need to comment on his name. We all know what it means. We're going to set skid mark aside for now so we can take a closer look at the Desert Fox. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Desert Fox starting in the front here. And in the front, we have this grill. We have a couple of pseudo headlights. There's no detail on them. They're really just cutouts in the top portion of the vehicle so you can see the gray underneath. We have a little bit of detail on here up at the top. We have the front wheels which are plastic and hollow and they have very minimal detail on them. Really just a little bit here. I think the exposed clip here is not very attractive. The wheels do turn. You can click them once to the right, middle and once to the left. They do stay in those positions and I guess that's fine. I don't really need turning front wheels on land vehicles but I guess that's a nice bonus. It does have a plastic axle not a metal dowel like the vamp so that will be more prone to breakage. We have a roll bar here in brown plastic with some headlamps and on the roll bar we have a pair of missiles. These orange missiles have a universal dumbbell slot that goes straight through the whole missile and you just put that on the roll bar like so. They fit on pretty securely. The blueprints call these Scorpion SS-12 anti-tank missiles and I don't love the orange color but it's okay for a desert vehicle. I guess these colors could be all in the same pallet. We have the cab which fits two action figures. We have the driver's seat there. Plenty of room to get the driver in and out of the vehicle. We have a gear shifter in the center there, a few odd buttons. We have very minimal dashboard detail. We have a non-functioning steering wheel. I'll demonstrate how to put the figure in the vehicle. There's plenty of room to slide him in the side door there and there is no back peg. There's no seat belt. There's nothing to really secure him in there but usually he's in there deep enough that he doesn't fall out too easily. Behind the cab we have this space and it's a remarkably large amount of space for such a moderately sized vehicle and right in the middle there we have the machine gun turret. The turrets call this a 20mm automatic loading anti-aircraft cannon and it can elevate on the turrets. There is some detail on the machine gun. It is not based on a real world weapon as far as I know. The turret itself is also in that orange color. Again, not the best color but tolerable for a desert vehicle. It has a texture pattern on it to make it look like it's made of metal. The turret can turn all the way around 360 degrees. The floor of this machine gun turret has a couple of foot pegs and you can use those foot pegs to place an action figure on there to operate the machine gun. Now, it's not super easy to get the figure on there. You can get both feet on there sometimes. There we go. So now you have a figure that can actually operate the machine gun. What's nice about this, the figure turns as the machine gun turret turns and that is really an excellent feature, maybe the best feature on this vehicle. This manned machine gun turret actually fixes a problem that the vamp had. The vamp had this really nice machine gun on it but who operates that machine gun? There's no space for an action figure back there. Sometimes the G.I. Joe comic book would show a person back there aiming the gun even though you couldn't really do that with the toy. We have the back wheels which are much the same as the front wheels. We have two on each side which is what makes it a six wheel drive. Here in the back we have this extra feature, this side facing seat with this computer panel. I'm not sure what all this computer gadgetry is for, maybe for targeting something. There's a foot peg way in the bottom there. I'm not sure how useful that would be but maybe you could fit an action figure's foot in there. It's at an odd placement there that you'd have to get the leg at kind of a strange angle. I'm not sure you could actually use that but this is still a really nice little bonus feature here. This is a nice way to carry an extra action figure on the vehicle without just having like foot pegs on the rear bumper which is what a lot of vehicles did. Here in the back we have this antenna in brown plastic and I really like this. This is the extra detail that makes the vehicle feel more realistic. Like all antennas and G.I. Joe vehicles this will probably be the most frequently missing part. Here in the bumper we have a fuel port that is just a sticker. Gone are the molded in fuel ports on earlier vehicles which you could use the gasoline hoses that you got with the USS flag and the Cobra Terror Drone to really pretend that you were refueling the vehicle. Finally in the very back we have a universal tow hook which you could use to tow something perhaps the mountain howitzer. Just hook it on there. I don't think there were any desert themed towed weapons at least not that I remember. Maybe somebody can correct me on that. There's an odd thing I noticed looking at Skidmark and the Desert Fox. He sits really deeply down in there and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Comparing that to a clutch in the vamp. Clutch he actually sits a little bit high for this bar. This bar here across that goes across here goes right across his eyes and that would obstruct his view. So it's like the vamp is just a little bit too small and the roll cage is a little bit too low for him. But we have a different problem with Skidmark. He can't see over the dashboard. The dashboard board is too high. Now let's look at the figure that came with the Desert Fox. Skidmark. Now settle down. We're not going to make fun of Skidmark's name. That's a cheap shot. Skidmark did not come with any accessories so let's take a look at his articulation. He had the articulation that was standard by 1986. 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. He had a hinge at the elbow. He could bend at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep. 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 bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpted design and color of Skidmark. And the first thing you notice is the palette that we're dealing with has a very bright orange, a very bright green, and a darker green with just a few black spots for details. On the head we have a non-removable helmet in very bright orange and we have, looks like some sunglasses and a fair face sculpt there. And on the helmet we have some dents in it and, you know, I actually kind of like this. It gives the helmet some character. Of course I would prefer that helmet to be removable but if you're going to do a non-removable helmet you might as well do one that looks good and I think this one looks pretty good. On his chest we have a bright orange vest in the same bright orange color as the helmet. We have some detail front and back. We have some odd black details here. I'm not sure what those are supposed to be but we have what looks like a knife. We have a black pistol and a holster and we have what looks like a radio receiver with a cord sculpted on that runs around to his back and we'd have to assume that this is connected to the communication system in his vehicle and I think that's really nice. I think it would have been nicer if that cord had been painted in the same way as the receiver rather than left unpainted. This is a very well sculpted vest in a horrible color but I have one other problem with the vest other than the color. It has these sculpted on pouches under his arms on both sides and those pouches actually interfere with the arm movement a little bit. You can't put skid marks arms all the way down by his side because they bump right into those pouches so his arms stick out a little bit. On his arms we have dark green long sleeves and this is a very nice color. I like this color but it's a color that doesn't appear anywhere else on the action figure so it's kind of out of place. I prefer this color to the other colors on the action figure but it just doesn't go with anything else. He has sculpted onto his right wrist a couple daggers. Very interesting little detail there. Now since they are on his right wrist they would be convenient to pull out with his left hand and this may be an indication that skid mark is left hand. His waist piece is a pretty plain sculpt. He has a belt and he has a belt buckle with US stamped on it. Other than that there's really nothing special about it. His legs are in that light green color. This is not quite neon green but it's close. It's very bright. On his right leg he has a pocket. On his left leg he has what looks like a mini sawed off shotgun. It's in a holster like a pistol and it's on his left leg. So that also may be an indication that skid mark is left handed. On both his legs he has sculpted in stripes that run all the way down his leg. Then there at the bottom of his trousers we have what look like elastic bands kind of like sweat pants and then of course we have orange boots in that same bright orange color. Let's take a look at skid mark's file card. It has his faction as GI Joe and it has a portrait of skid mark here and this portrait makes it look like his helmet should be yellow and that may have been the color that they were originally going to have the helmet in yellow. I don't think I can get behind this. I think the yellow might have actually looked worse than the orange. His final name is skid mark and he is the GI Joe Desert Fox six wheel drive driver and his final name is serial columbani and his file name may have been inspired by Giuseppe Columbani who was an Italian soldier who wrote a treatise on martial arts. Larry Hama the writer of the GI Joe comic book who also wrote these file cards was a martial artist and he may have come across Columbani's writing. His primary military specialty is fast attack vehicle driver secondary military specialty is infantry. Birthplace is Los Angeles California and his grade is E4. This top paragraph says skid mark was the kid that was held up by your mother as a shining example of everything that you were not. He was annoyingly polite maddeningly well groomed and excruciatingly successful in his studies. There was a collective sigh of relief from his contemporaries when he received his first driver's license and subsequently shattered all known records for the accumulation of speeding violations. This quote down here at the bottom says he keeps his locker and bay area squared away and spotless. It makes everyone else look bad by comparison. This could have been a cause for resentment if he wasn't the fastest and most reliable recon driver around. The worst thing that his teammates can say about him is the best thing that a soldier can say about another soldier. He does his job. I wouldn't call that a ringing endorsement. So this is the kind of guy that enjoys demonstrating that he's better than you so you kind of enjoy seeing him taken down a peg. Skid mark and the Desert Fox's GI Joe media appearances were brief. First of all he was not animated for the GI Joe cartoon series. He was only animated for TV commercials. He did not show up in the TV show. In the GI Joe comic book series published by Marvel Comics he first appeared in issue number 72 and also in issue number 73. And that was kind of important because those events precipitated the Cobra Civil War which is still one of my favorite story arcs in the Marvel comic run. In the comic book his uniform and helmet were colored green which looks a lot better. I really like that color scheme it would have looked great on the action figure. Looking at the skid mark action figure overall this is a pretty good sculpt that is ruined by a horrible color scheme. And I can't overlook the color that was a design choice and the designers have to be graded on that. The color takes what would otherwise be probably a middle tier figure and puts it right into the bottom tier. Looking at the Desert Fox overall this is a really nice vehicle. I can't quite put it in the top tier. I'm gonna call it a middle tier vehicle. It just has a few flaws but if you were to fix just one of these flaws it would probably be a top tier vehicle. It's really close. I don't like the exposed clips on the wheels. Some hubcaps covering those up would have looked a lot better. And the driver sits a little too low in the cab. He can't see over the dashboard. He's gonna have to sit on a phone book to drive the thing. But other than that the Desert Fox has a lot going for it. I love the gun turret. I really like the back seat. I like the color scheme. Most of the color scheme. The orange is not my favorite but I can live with it. I think the Desert Fox is an adequate successor to the Vamp Mark II. Also this is a very economically designed and constructed vehicle. It really doesn't have very many parts but it still has a fair number of features. I have some personal history with this vehicle. The Desert Fox was the second to last vehicle that I got as a kid. I was still getting some GI Joe in 1988 but it was some time within 1988 that I finally cut myself off from GI Joe. But I do remember getting the Desert Fox and I think I was pretty happy to get it. That was my review of the 1988 Desert Fox and Skidmark and congratulations guys. I'm getting through the whole video without making fun of Skidmark even once. Don't forget to like this video on YouTube. Subscribe on YouTube. Comment and share this video. That's what keeps this channel going. Like me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Support me on Patreon. And check back next week for another vintage GI Joe toy review. Thanks for watching and until next time remember only GI Joe is GI Joe. Hey baby I'm done shooting the video. How about those brownies?