 Hello everybody, HoodedCobraCommander788 here, I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review. Now the last two videos I did are kind of downers, so this time I'm going to look at something awesome. We're going to look at the 1986 X-30 Conquest and the pilot that came with it, Slipstream. This is the X-30 Conquest. It was available from 1986 to 1987. It was discontinued in 1988 and there was a replacement for it in 1988, the Phantom X-19, which was a larger jet than this. The X-30 Conquest was worth four flag points. It came with an action figure, Slipstream. I'm going to look at Slipstream a bit later, so I'm going to set him aside for now. The Conquest was a smaller, lower price point replacement for the Sky Striker, the first GI Joe jet that was introduced in 1983 and was no longer available in 1986 when the Conquest hit the store shelves. The Conquest was designed by Hasbro employee Guy Cassidy and with the kind of reverse wing shape design, it looks very futuristic, very science fiction, but in fact it isn't. It is based on a real world experimental jet, the Grumman X-29. You may have noticed that some parts of my X-30 Conquest have experienced some yellowing, which has caused them to have a sort of green tint to them. There are some remedies to this. You can use hydrogen peroxide. I haven't had as much luck with those remedies as some other collectors have, so I'm just going to leave them for now. I know for some collectors, this discoloration is a big problem, but it's not really quite as important to me. All GI Joe vehicles came with an instruction sheet like this one, and on the reverse side it had blueprints of the vehicle, and it describes some of the features, and I'll be referring to these blueprints as I describe some of the features on this toy. Let's look at the parts and the features of the X-30 Conquest starting at the front, and it has a rubbery nose cone just like the Sky Striker did. It has double blast 25mm twin cannons, and that looks pretty fierce, and they're on the top of the fuselage just like the Sky Striker. The Sky Striker had a single cannon on the top of the fuselage. On the Sky Striker, that wouldn't really have worked because the gun was in a position where it would have interfered with the pilot's instrument panel. However, on the Conquest, the guns are a bit farther forward, and I think that would work, and it looks really great. It reminds me of World War II fighter planes, where the pilot is looking straight down the long axis of both guns. It has these sharp teeth and eye details on the front end, and this is really great. The front of this plane is shaped like a shark anyway, so this detail is really perfect. This very reminiscent of old school U.S. Air Force fighter planes. On the other side we have these Cobra kill marks, indicating this pilot has shot down four Cobra aircraft. On the other side of the cockpit, we have these front black fins, and they come out very easily. They just pop right out. They don't secure in very well, at least they don't on mine, so that could be a little bit frustrating if you have them fall out all the time, but they do look really good, and they are black, which provides a very nice contrast to the gray base color of the vehicle. Let's take a look at the canopy. The canopy is very simple, very basic. It swings up on a hinge right here, so you can get your pilot in and out. As with all other G.I. Joe clear plastic canopies, there is a danger of breaking it at the hinge here, so be careful about that. It also has this notch here at the front that fits in this hole here on the fuselage. That's to help lock it down, but mine does not lock down very well anymore. I've taken the canopy off, so we can look inside the cockpit. As you can see, this is a single-seater jet. The SkyStriker was a two-seater, but you can only fit one action figure in this one. You can see some detail behind the pilot seat there, and the seat itself, and you can see some molded-in detail on the sides, some instruments, but there's no instrument panel or anything like that, and no control stick. That's something that was lacking on a lot of these G.I. Joe jets. I would have liked to have seen a joystick or something like that. The pilot seat does not have a backpack to secure the pilot in there, so the pilot just sort of rests in there, and he will flop around a bit as you're playing with the toy. Also, since my canopy doesn't secure closed very well, if he flies the jet upside down, the pilot will in fact just fall out. The cockpit is missing two other features, the SkyStriker head, a removable seat, and parachutes, but I'm sure those features were left out to keep the cost of this toy low. Funny thing, when the Conquest first appeared in the G.I. Joe comic book, it was shown doing two things that the toy could not do. First of all, it had two people. It was a two-seater jet. The toy was just a one-seater, and one of those people parachuted out, and the Conquest did not come with parachutes. Now let's look at the wings, and the wings are the most prominent feature on this vehicle, these sort of forward swept wings. It almost looks like the wings are put on backwards, but this, again, is based on a real jet, the Grumman X-29, and this is just very visually striking. This is a great design. You can tell at a glance there is just something special about this jet. You don't mistake this for anything else. And this looks like a G.I. Joe jet. It's not so strange that it doesn't fit within the G.I. Joe universe. I really love this design. Let's take a look at the missiles. There are four of them, and they each fit on the bottom of the wings, on this dumbbell-shaped peg here, on this slot here on the missile. The blueprints call these AIM-12 light Sparrow air-to-air missiles. They are yellow, and I like the yellow. It provides a little splash of color against an otherwise dull-colored vehicle. Let's compare this to the SkyStriker's Sight 3 Sparrow missile, which was about the same size, but the SkyStriker missile was based on the real-world AIM-7 Sparrow. I have not been able to find a real-world reference for this AIM-12 of the Conquest. So I don't think it's based on a real-world missile. It does look pretty cool, though, with these middle wings like that. Look at this. You see that? This is what happens when you own a cat. For my next video, instead of doing a toy review, I think I'm going to do a cooking video. I'm going to show you how to cook a cat. In addition to the missiles, it has two fuel drop tanks. These look like bombs, and you can certainly play with them as bombs. They are fuel tanks, but you know what? Fuel tanks are not fun to play with. Bombs are fun to play with, so you know what? Just pretend that they are bombs. They're actually made of two parts. This back end is removable for some reason. I don't know why you'd want to make it like this. This is just another part to get lost and have to track down. But be careful of that. If you're looking for these fuel tanks, make sure it has this cap on the back end. Let's look at the landing gear. We have rubber wheels, which is really nice. Nice to have rubber instead of plastic. The back wheels turn. The front wheels, the rubber part of the wheel, actually seems to spin around the hub. The hub does not move. At first, I thought this was a mistake. I thought my wheels were stuck, but it looks like that's how it's supposed to work. They're retracted by pushing them up. The SkyStriker had a hand-operated mechanism that automatically pulled the landing gear up. The Conquest doesn't have anything like that, which is fine. The back landing gear, you actually have to push them in a bit and then fold them up to fit inside the body of the aircraft. This is kind of a cool design because they are on gears. So if you pull one out, they both pop out. That's pretty cool. I like that. Another like is that when the landing gear are down, the back landing gear just kind of tend to hang like that. I don't care for that very much. I think if they had put like a peg and a slot back here so it could just kind of friction in and hold up when the landing gear are down, that would have helped it quite a bit. Nothing like that, though. I guess it's all right. It's not that big a deal. The landing gear, that's what they look like when they are retracted. The wheels are still exposed and that does look a little bit hokey. However, these landing gear are much sturdier than the pull out landing gear of the 1984 Cobra Rattler. So that's a plus. We have a single air intake directly under the cockpit. This whole panel that includes these back stabilizers is removable. I've removed this one off camera because mine fits in there very securely. I don't like to take it out. I'm afraid that I'm going to break something. I'd rather just leave it in. There's a cavity inside, which I guess you could use for storage space. And really, I guess, you know, this could be a two-person vehicle. You could put your co-pilot in the trunk. These rear stabilizers are angled like everything else on this jet. That looks really cool. I've got some discoloration on these. We have two removable engine covers. This front one, you take that off and you can see some engine detail in there. I really like this detail because to me it looks like it's taking the single air intake and then splitting it between the two engines. That's just a really cool detail there. And the back engine cover, you pop it off this way and you can see some more engine detail. That just looks amazing. I love the engine detail on this toy. We have two black fins in the back here. They are at angles. They're not perfectly vertical. And these do come out. You got to be careful about that. They just slot in like that. But they look fantastic. They are black for one thing, which is what we always wanted on the Sky Striker. So it's nice to finally get some black fins. We have the Conquest logo here and that is just a nice touch. The black against the lighter gray looks beautiful. And last but certainly not least, we have the engines in the back which are squared off as you can see and that is perfect. It fits with the shape of the vehicle. It makes it look very streamlined. It does not make it look blocky or clunky. I think it would have looked wrong if they had round engines on here with the squared off body. I think they designed it absolutely perfectly. And again, they are yellow, which gives us that nice splash of color against the duller colors of the vehicle. Looking at the Conquest X-30 overall, what a sweet jet. I mean, this thing is awesome. It reminds me of the Star Wars X-Wing fighter, but in its own way, it out X-Wings the X-Wing. I mean, look at it. It looks like an X from every angle. From this angle, from this angle, from this angle, I mean, from every angle, this thing looks like a barbed weapon at the forward sweeping wings like this. It almost looks like it's reaching out for its prey with its missiles as the claws. Then with the shark teeth and the eyes, it really completes the image of this jet as some kind of a predator. Can it fly? No. Unfortunately, the X-30 Conquest is not compatible with the 1985 USS flag, which came with this tail hook, which would fit on the Skystriker, and this hook would snag the arrester cable for when the aircraft would land, like a real Navy aircraft landing on an aircraft carrier, but this does not fit on the Conquest, which I think is really unfortunate. This back panel is removable, so it seems like they could have easily enough sculpted in something that would have fit this tail hook, but it's just not there. That is unfortunate because the introduction of the GI Joe cartoon showed the X-30 Conquest taking off from the USS flag. Well, maybe the Conquest could launch from the USS flag, but it sure couldn't land on the USS flag. This is slipstream to USS flag. I'm coming in for a landing. Roger slipstream? The flight deck is clear. HIT THE BREAKS! Damn it, Hawk. We lost another one. Let's look at our pilot's slipstream. He came with no accessories. He was wearing this pilot's jumpsuit, and you might notice there's some discoloration on mine. These light tan parts should be all the same color, but some parts on mine have a little bit of yellowing. I actually kind of like the deeper caramel color of the yellowed parts, but if you're looking to pick up a slipstream, all of this should be the same color. Those colors should match. Let's look at slipstream's articulation. He had the typical articulation of 1986 GI Joe action figures. That means he could turn his head from left to right like that. He could also look up and down. His head was on a ball joint. He could move his arm up at the shoulder about so far. He could also swivel his arm all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow. He could move 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, so you could move him 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. He could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of slipstream starting with his head. On his head he has a helmet that is not removable. He has some silver goggles. Looks like he has kind of a smiling face. His face is actually painted on. The base plastic color is brown and his skin tone is painted. You often run into problems with that paint being rubbed off mainly at the nose, so he'll have literally a brown nose. Look out for that. There is the tiniest spot of wear on mine. There is a variant of slipstream's head. I'm not sure if this is coming out very well on the camera, but some slipstreams had teeth sculpted in to his mouth there where he's smiling, and some didn't. Some just had that painted white there. This is the version that has the teeth sculpted in. I can see it clearly in person, but I don't think that's coming out well on the camera. That is not the type of variant that really is very interesting to me. That's a very minor difference between the two. I know some collectors are really obsessed with getting all variants. I'm not really, and that's not the type of variant that really interests me at all. On his chest he has a gray harness that has some air hoses and things, and that continues to his back. A nice sculpting on his jumpsuit there. On the front he has a zipper, and it looks like a couple of zippered pouches. He also has what looks like a pilot's wings, looks like a badge. This would be a US Air Force pilot's badge, and this is probably a senior pilot's badge, which requires seven years of experience and 2,000 flight hours, and we will assume that slipstream qualifies for that, so probably a senior pilot. On his arms he has these brown shoulder covers, and he has brown pouches on each forearm, and he has black gloves. On his waist piece he has a silver belt buckle, and he has this black hose, which connects to this pouch here, fairly plain looking belt though. There's a variation on slipstream's waist piece. Some of them say made in Hong Kong, like this one, others say made in China, and again that's not the kind of variant that I really look for. On his right leg he has a black pistol holster with a gray pistol. He has these gray leggings, which look like they fasten up the side, as you can see on his left leg. They cover part of his boots, and he does have black boots. This jumpsuit the slipstream is wearing is probably a G suit, which is worn by fighter pilots. It has air bladders inside it that inflate and restrict blood flow to the lower extremities, so it prevents blackout at high G forces. The way the file card describes how slipstream flies, he would definitely need a suit like this. This is a slipstream's file card, and this file card was printed on the back of the box that the X-30 came in. There's nothing on the other side, it's just the back of a box. You are encouraged to cut these out. It has as faction as GI Joe, and it has a portrait of slipstream. This would have come from the artwork on the front of the box. It has his code name as slipstream, and a slipstream is describing the wake that follows behind a moving object. So his jet moves really fast, and it leaves a slipstream, which is where he gets his code name. It has him as the Conquest X-30 pilot, and his file name is Gregory B. Boyagian. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. That's an Armenian name, and his file card says he speaks Armenian. And that's probably why, that's where his family is from. His primary military specialty is fighter pilot. His secondary military specialty is computer technology. His birthplace is Provo, Utah, and his grade is O2 First Lieutenant. Provo, Utah is the location of the largest Mormon Church of Latter-day Saints Missionary Training Center, and there is a connection to the Armenians. There was a Mormon enclave in Armenia that was driven out in 1921, so slipstream's family may have fled to Utah. This top section says slipstream was a video game whiz and computer hacker until he discovered flying. He joined the Junior Civil Air Patrol while a teenager and eventually got his Air Force Commission through ROTC. The Junior Civil Air Patrol is still a program that is available to teens who are interested in aviation. He finished at the top of his class in flight school where his knowledge of computers and his lightning reflexes gave him a keen competitive edge. He speaks Armenian, Greek, and French. He plays a mean game of table tennis and is known in the pit as an unrepentant joker and mimic. His bottom section is a quote and it says, an aircraft with computer-assisted control surfaces can do things that are impossible for a conventional plane. In parentheses, flat turns without banking, flight axis shift, and horizontal rolls. The controls are incredibly sensitive, the slightest tremor being translated into drastic movement. It takes a light touch to fly a ship like that and slipstream has that touch. The eye, the brain, and the gust to make that aircraft do exactly what he wants. This quote is really interesting but it actually talks more about his airplane than it does about slipstream. Looking at slipstream overall, I really like the figure. I'm glad he's wearing a brown and tan kind of earth tones. It really kind of sets him off against the very gray and black vehicle that he pilots. One thing I think is kind of odd is even when I'm looking at slipstream straight on, it seems like he's always looking up. It's just something in the way his head was sculpted. It's very strange looking. I'm not sure that was intentional but that is a very weird effect. It's also nice that slipstream looks like a pilot. Let's compare him to the previous GI Joe pilot, Ace, who as you can see looks more like an astronaut than a pilot, right down to the astronaut's bubble shaped helmet. It's been suggested that Ace's ridges here on his legs indicate that he is wearing a G suit but that's not really what a G suit looks like. The image that I've been able to find has a G suit looking more like this than like this. This is really more of a pressure suit and it does look more like an astronaut's suit. It's not that I dislike Ace, I really don't but I do like slipstream. I'm glad they gave us a nice realistic looking pilot and he has one heck of a mustache. Let's compare the Conquest with the jet that it replaced, the Sky Striker. As you can see the Sky Striker is much larger than the Conquest. The Sky Striker was a two-seater, you can only fit one action figure in the Conquest. The Sky Striker had automatic landing gear and a sweep wing design. No such thing on the Conquest, the landing gear you'd manually push up. The Sky Striker has six missiles to the Conquest's four missiles and the Sky Striker was compatible with the tail hook that came with the USS Flag aircraft carrier. The Conquest was not. So which one do I prefer? I still prefer the Sky Striker. This thing is a legend. It's huge, it has a ton of features but the Conquest has a lot going for it. The fact that it's smaller actually isn't entirely a detriment. It's actually a little bit easier to play with when you're pretending to fly it around. The Sky Striker was pretty big and bulky. The Conquest was cheaper so it was easier to get one and when you're using these guys in dog fights with Cobra Rattlers and Firebats their playability is about the same. So even though the Conquest does not quite stack up to the Sky Striker it is still a very worthy replacement. That was my review of the X-30 Conquest and its pilot slipstream and his file card. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did don't forget to 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 don't want to miss them. Also don't forget to like the Facebook page you get a lot of updates there you don't get anywhere else. I'll be back next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review video. I'll see you then.