 This episode of HCC 788, brought to you in part by non-stop pop, non-stop pop, definitely an actual comic strip, and not just an extensive enterprise's front for a cartoonish supervillain's attempts to take over your world fools! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Pardon us? Yes. Definitely a comic. For another vintage GI Joe toy review, and my review of Lobotomax was rough, I'm not gonna lie. But the truth is, there was a good amount of science fiction in GI Joe, and it didn't just happen in the 90s, it was in the 80s too. So this week, we're gonna talk about, whoa, I just got a really tingly feeling, ah, happening to me! Where's the- Are you hooded cover commander 788? Yes I am, but this is a really bad time, I've got a slight problem here. I have something for you. We've had this letter since 1982, with specific instructions to deliver it to you at this very spot at this exact time. Sign here. You know, we've been taking beds at the office that you wouldn't be here. I guess I lost again. Yeah, thanks. Move two steps to the left, from the future to help save you and- It's happening to me, why am I disappearing? It's just as I feared, older GI Joe fans are disappearing, if something isn't done soon, you will completely vanish, as will GI Joe! Ah! According to the historical records, this week you're going to review sci-fi. Well that was the plan, but maybe I need to go to the hospital instead, since half my body's disappeared. The problem is, you're stuck in the past, you represent nostalgia. Your love for vintage GI Joe is not enough to help it survive. To save yourself and GI Joe, you need the help of a reviewer that can take GI Joe forward, to the future! The future? That means I need a reviewer who looks at modern GI Joe. I know just who to call! Joefan82 reporting in. Joefan! Look what's happened to me! Oh, that looks uncomfortable. This is exactly why I don't do green screen. Doc says I need your help to stop me and GI Joe from disappearing! I thought Doc was African American. That's what I'm saying! Not that Doc! Listen closely! You must follow my instructions to the letter! First, you must review the vintage sci-fi action figure. Your nostalgic perspective is the first element. Then you must put sci-fi in the time machine, and send him to Joefan82 in the future! All the way to the air 2016! His modern perspective is the second element. Once your two elements merge, everything will be fine! Wait a minute. Is that a thunder machine? Pretty cool, huh? You made a time machine out of a thunder machine? I figure. If you've got to make a time machine, why not do it with some style? Doc! Come on! Focus! I'm disappearing here! Oh, right! Right! Now I'll see you at the end of the video. In the meantime, why not to completely disappear? Joefan82, are you ready to do your part? Ready. Hoodie! Are you ready? And let's go! I've got to get this review done while I still have hands! HCC788 presents sci-fi! This is sci-fi. GI Joe's laser trooper from 1986. He was first available in 1986 and was also available in 1987. He was discontinued for the year 1988 and there was no direct replacement in 1988. He was of course the successor to GI Joe's first laser rifle trooper Flash from 1982. Let's address the elephant in the room. Sci-fi is wearing a very bright neon green uniform and you might wonder why a toy line that was military based would release an action figure that is so aggressively non-military. Well there was a reason for this. The bright neon green was used because there was a trend in toys at the time toward bright colors. So this is an example where GI Joe was a trend follower rather than a trend setter and in my opinion that's always when they lost focus and went off the rails. This figure's codename sci-fi is of course short for science fiction and that really does describe the inspiration for this figure. It's not really military at all. It's purely science fiction. The sci-fi action figure wasn't always going to be called sci-fi. There were some other names that were floated around for him. In Marvel age number 34 there's a section to meet the new Joe's and sci-fi appears on page 18 but they're not calling him sci-fi. They're using his prototype name of Hotspot. They even have a different file name for him Edwin P. Rohrer. There was a second version of sci-fi released in 1991 and they gave him a gray jumpsuit which looked better. So if you like lasers in GI Joe and to be honest I've never been a fan but if you like lasers you could still have those but at least the figure was not in a bad color. But then in 1993 and 1994 they went right back to crazy colors for sci-fi so his foray into sanity was brief. Let's look at sci-fi's accessories and let's start with his weapon first. He had what the contents of the card called an XH86LLOM beam laser rifle. The rifle is black and it has little knob here and that is to connect the standard black rubber hose the standard GI Joe connector just plugs right in there and it has sculpted on here what looks like a magazine so you can easily imagine this as a conventional assault rifle. It's not based on any real-world weapon that I know of. I haven't been able to find any reference for whatLLOM might stand for so we'll just assume this is some super powerful laser rifle. He has that long black rubber hose this is standard on a lot of GI Joe action figures and the other end connects to his backpack. This backpack is pretty cool it has the knob for the connector it has some sculpted techno detail on both sides and it has these teeth on the side here and you can use these to store the laser rifle. It looks like you're intended to attach the rifle by the barrel like that and now sci-fi can carry his laser rifle on his backpack and that's nice that I like weapons storage like this I wish more GI Joe figures had features like this. Let's take a look at a brief history of laser rifles in the GI Joe toy line up to sci-fi in 1986 and I'm excluding laser pistols like the ones that came with Destro and Tomax and Zamon. In 1982 we had Flash with his XMLR1A laser rifle and it had a wire that connected to the power source in the backpack. Also in 1982 we had the Jump Jet Pack which included a laser rifle and that also had a wire that connected to the pack. In 1983 that was reissued and Grand Slam carried that laser rifle. Then in 1983 we had the Arctic Trooper Snowjob with his XMLR3A laser rifle and this was an upgrade from Flash's XMLR1A. As you can see with this one there is no connector to a power pack, it looks more like a traditional rifle and this rifle became the standard laser rifle in the GI Joe animated series. Then in 1984 we had the Baroness with her high density laser rifle and that looked a lot like a sniper rifle. This laser rifle like sci-fi has something that looks like a magazine and like snow jobs it does not have a wire that connects to a power source. Then in 1986 with sci-fi we go back to the laser rifle with the wires. He has a wire that connects to the power source in the backpack. Let's look at the articulation on sci-fi. He had the articulation that was standard for 1986 GI Joe action figures. 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 and a swivel 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. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and he had bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt to design in color of sci-fi and we've already addressed this. He's wearing very bright neon green. He has some spots of black but he's also wearing a lot of silver so he's very poorly camouflaged. I would not call this figure design futuristic because I would assume soldiers in the future would still prefer not to be shot so they probably would prefer a subdued color scheme rather than this bright neon green and silver. Let's take a look at sci-fi's head. He has a green and silver non-removable helmet and there are some sculpted on non-removable helmets in GI Joe that I think are fine but usually that is a problem for me. I want to be able to remove those helmets. He has a black visor. This helmet design is very reminiscent of a Robocop. I think that's been pointed out before but sci-fi was released before the Robocop movie so Robocop could not be a direct influence on sci-fi. On his chest he has that bright green jumpsuit and a silver chest plate with some green stripes. He has some black stripes on the shoulders and that silver chest plate reminds me a bit of grand slam so that's a little bit of a throwback. His arms are also in that bright green color. He has a couple pockets on the upper arms and he has some sculpted on elbow pads but they are unpainted. I think these would have looked nice if they had painted them. Even if they had gone with silver I think that would have looked pretty good. As they are they are just unpainted details and that's kind of a problem for me. On his forearms he has a couple black devices. I don't know what and a pair of black gloves. On his waist he has a very basic black belt. Some black pouches and a silver belt buckle. His legs are interesting. We have that bright green jumpsuit of course but we also have these pockets on the front of his thighs and we have these black cartridges and it looks like those are supposed to be magazines for his laser rifle and I think that's all right. I like it when there's a coordination between the sculpting on the action figure and the accessories. We have a bit of black padding that runs down the inside of his thighs. There is some random sculpted detail on the thighs. I'm not really sure what those are supposed to be but then he has some very tall silver boots, very science fiction looking silver boots and they have knee pads but they're just very minimal knee pads. They just barely go up above the knee. These silver boots kind of remind me of Ziggy Stardust. These really should be on a glam rock star. They just need high heels. Let's take a look at Syfy's file card. His file card has his faction as GI Joe. We have a portrait of Syfy here. Although we don't really get to see his face. What is not under his helmet is obscured by his rifle. His codename is Syfy and he is the laser trooper. His filename is Seymour P. Fine. His primary military specialty is infantry. His secondary military specialty is electronics. His birthplace is Geraldine Montana and his grade is E4. This paragraph says Syfy lives in a slow motion world. He takes everything real easy and he's never in a hurry to get anywhere or do anything. But that's what it takes to be a laser rifleman. At a range of two and a half miles the impact spot of a laser light will jump 100 feet for every one thousandth of an inch movement at the source. That spot has got to be held on target long enough to burn through that source. Otherwise it's no more harmful than a warm breeze. To be honest this sounds like it's describing a weapon that is pretty impractical. A laser rifle is going to be pretty much useless at long range. If you're going to hit something with it you're going to have to hit something up close. However you could use the laser to blind the enemy. Just flash it in the enemy's eyes. Even if you can't hold it steady enough to burn through the target you could use it in that respect. Down here we have a quote. It says, Sci-Fi made some appearances in G.I. Joe Media. In the cartoon series he first appeared in Arise Serpentor Arise Part 1. But he didn't have a speaking role in that episode. He got the most focus in the episode titled My Brother's Keeper. In that episode Sci-Fi is assigned to a mission at a science fiction convention. That episode taught us some valuable lessons such as science fiction fans are weird. Science fiction writers hate their fans and apparently disabled people are a-holes. Hey knowing is half the battle right? They left that out of the PSA. Here is had a hard time using these designated laser troopers because in the cartoon everybody used lasers. All troopers were laser troopers. So there wasn't really anything special about Sci-Fi. In the G.I. Joe comic book published by Marvel Comics Sci-Fi first appeared in issue number 74 and he had a fair number of appearances thereafter. He was in the very next issue number 65 which focused on the Defiant Space Shuttle. He reappeared late in the series with the introduction of Star Brigade. Being at this figure overall Sci-Fi is exactly the opposite of what I liked about G.I. Joe. He is as his name suggests science fiction and he's in the brightest of bright colors. Earlier laser rifle troopers also had bright colors but they were smart enough to tamper it with more traditional military colors. In 1986 G.I. Joe took on a decidedly science fiction direction. They introduced Serpentor. They cloned Cobra Emperor. They introduced Bats, a robot army. They introduced Dr. Meinbender who would become Cobra's mad scientist. There were some good solid military looking figures released that year too. But the bright colors and the make believe weapons were starting to take over and that trend really took off in 1987 when military based figures were in the minority. G.I. Joe did swing back to its military roots later but it was too late for me. I was already out of G.I. Joe by that time. In the last two or three years of the line they really went to crazy town. Most of the line had very little to do with the reality. Hoodie! Your nostalgic perspective! Oh right, right, my nostalgic perspective. Vintage G.I. Joe reminds me of the best parts of my childhood. It's an escape from the stress of adult life. It's something I can be passionate about but it doesn't hurt anyone. And these vintage figures are survivors. They are play time veterans. These are the toys that were there for our imaginary battles. As an adult, rediscovering G.I. Joe really helped me through some difficult times. Modern figures couldn't do that. I don't have the connection with them. But holding a vintage figure in my hand even if it's a figure that I don't like takes me right back to a good point in my personal history. And that's why I love vintage G.I. Joe. In a way, it kind of saved me. Ah! Hoodie! Quick! Before it's too late, put sci-fi in the time machine! Hurry before your arms disappear! Hit it!