 Hello everybody HoodedCobraCommander788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review and in the last few review videos I have done some of my favorite vintage vehicles and action figures and that's pretty easy to do because I really loved GI Joe growing up as a kid. I love collecting it now so a lot of the figures and vehicles fall in the favorite category but they're not all my favorite and I do kind of need to mix it up a little bit so this time I thought I'd look at a figure that definitely is not one of my favorites. It would not be correct to say that I hate this figure. There's not a lot in GI Joe that I hate. There actually are a few figures that I actively hate and I will review those figures but I'm saving them for a special occasion. So we're going to review the 1985 Quick Kick and again I don't hate this figure but I do have a few things to say about it. Quick Kick was introduced in 1985. He was also sold in 1986. He was discontinued in 1987. In 1991 he was re-released as a mail order but that version of Quick Kick had some subtle color differences from the original. Quick Kick is the GI Joe silent weapons expert which seems a kind of odd because GI Joe already had a silent weapons expert. Snake Eyes. Quick Kick does not use guns and Snake Eyes does so Quick Kick kind of seems a little bit redundant. He's like Snake Eyes without guns. Well maybe he is a little bit redundant but I still like having Quick Kick as part of GI Joe but I'll talk about that more later. In 1987 Quick Kick was replaced as GI Joe's resident martial artist by Jinx, the female red ninja. Quick Kick's codename comes from an English language expression which means to kick things quickly. Let's not look at Quick Kick's bare feet first. Let's look at his accessories as we usually do and he comes with what the card contents call a samurai sword. This samurai sword is fairly well detailed. It has kind of a rougher wrapping on the handle than Storm Shadow's sword. You can see Storm Shadow's sword handle has a much more elaborate design, much more detailed, a less detailed in Quick Kick's sword handle. Also like Storm Shadow's sword it's all molded out of one solid color of plastic. We just didn't get paint apps on the accessories back in the 80s. Quick Kick's other weapon was not his bare feet. It was Nunchucks. Nunchucks molded out of the same color of silver plastic as his sword. Again another fairly well detailed accessory. It looks pretty good and Storm Shadow again also came with Nunchucks. His was molded in black. Quick Kick's Nunchucks are not just a silver remold of Storm Shadow's Nunchucks. They are different. So far we're doing pretty good on accessories. Both of these accessories are appropriate for a silent weapons expert and martial artists. So let's look at his third accessory, not his bare feet. His backpack and this is the accessory that makes the least sense. The backpack itself I suppose is fine. It's fairly well detailed and it provides a storage space for the sword. The sword slips right through there. You can see how it slides through the inside there on the back. And so I mean if it were just on its own there would be nothing wrong with this backpack. The problem with the backpack is how the hell does Quick Kick carry it? It attaches to his back through the hole there but he doesn't have any straps for it. He does have this red sash and I suppose you might think the backpack connects to the red sash but no way. The backpack only barely touches the edge of the red sash and if that were really attached and he wore it that way the backpack would kind of swing out and it would flop around. He wouldn't be able to quickly access his sword. So it looks like the backpack is just stapled to the skin on his back which makes absolutely no sense. He has a backpack with no straps. Honestly I don't think this character needs a backpack. It's nice to have a place to store the sword but it just doesn't make sense with the design of the figure. Let's not take a look at Quick Kick's bare feet. Let's take a look at his articulation and he had the typical articulation of 1985 G.I. Joe action figures most of which did not have bare feet which means he can turn his head from left to right but he can also look up and down. His neck was on a ball joint. He could move his arm at the shoulder up about so far and he could swivel it all the way around. He could bend at the elbow about 90 degrees and he had a swivel at the bicep so 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 he could move at the torso a little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could move his legs at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. His bare feet are not articulated. Let's take a look at the sculpted design and bare feet of Quick Kick starting with the head. His head as you can see has black hair. His face I think is meant to evoke Bruce Lee. He looks somewhat like Bruce Lee but not exactly. He looks different enough that Hasbro would not get in copyright trouble for using Bruce Lee's image but I think the head and really the whole figure is supposed to bring back images of Bruce Lee. He's wearing a white headband that goes around and ties in the back. It has a red sun from the Japanese flag which is kind of interesting. Quick Kick is half Japanese according to his file card but he's also half Korean and his nationality is American. His chest as you can see is bare. Unfortunately my example has a bit of a scuff right there. He has a muscular chest and nipples which is something that was lacking on the bare chest of Zartan. Apparently something about Zartan's color changing ability made his nipples disappear. So the nipple is nice attention to detail but I suspect that the sculptor of this action figure knew I would be making this review video 30 years later and put the nipple on there as a way of tricking me into praising man nipples. Well played Hasbro guy well played. Quick Kick has a red sash that connects to his belt in the front and in the back. This sash is obviously some kind of cloth and it has some pockets where he has shuriken or throwing stars. I always wondered if you stored your throwing stars this way and you had to bend over or kneel down or something do you end up stabbing yourself with them. The waist piece has a gray belt with a buckle. It has some blue pockets on the side. Not a lot of detail on the waist piece but I think that's intentional. The legs are plain black trousers all the way around. There are no sculpted weapons on the trousers and I think that's intentional too. I think the black pants are meant to look like karate pants. They're light. They're loose and they're supposed to be comfortable for kicking and for unarmed fighting. And now we get to the bare feet. Quick Kick has bare feet. He's not wearing any shoes. While I suppose this might be appropriate for martial arts when you're practicing in the gym or something like that but there is no way anyone would go into combat like this. Quick Kick thinks that by going barefoot he will be more silent but Storm Shadow wears shoes and he doesn't seem to have any problem with that. I'm sorry but no matter how you cut it this is crazy. No matter how tough Quick Kick is he could be taken down by a sharp rock or a broken piece of glass on the ground. And it's not about toughing out the pain either because you're not going to tough out an infection on your foot. To make matters worse the flesh tone is painted on black plastic on these feet so you often run across Quick Kick's feet that have some of the paint worn off. There's a little bit worn off here and so it looks like he has black toes and that looks really ugly. Okay enough about Quick Kick's bare feet. Let's talk about his file card which does not have any bare feet on it. The file card was printed on the back of the card on which the figure was packaged on the other side of the card. You can see part of the front of the artwork on there. Oh look there's a bare foot. Quick Kick had two file cards. Originally it was this peach color but in 1986 they started issuing file cards with a gray background. The file card is the same otherwise but the background color is different. We have a nice portrait of Quick Kick here. It says his faction is G.I. Joe. His specialty is silent weapons and his codename is Quick Kick. His file name is Ito MacArthur S. His primary military specialty is infantry. His secondary military specialty is intelligence. First place Los Angeles California and grade is E6. This section says subjects Japanese father and Korean mother owned a grocery store in Watts. Not accepted by either the Japanese or Koreans because of his mixed ancestry and too short to play basketball, Quick Kick turned to martial arts. All martial arts. He's a ranking black belt in Taekwondo, Goju Ryu, Southern Prang Mantis Kung Fu, Tai Chi Sword, Zen Sword and Wing Chun. He was working as a stuntman in Hollywood when he was recruited for the G.I. Joe team. I find this highlight on Quick Kick's ethnic background really fascinating and maybe it mirrors the experience that a lot of children of immigrants have. This sort of inter-ethnic rivalry in American inner cities. Larry Hama, the writer of the G.I. Joe comic book and the writer of a lot of these file cards was himself an Asian American and he may know something about this sort of experience. In this section it says he's a qualified expert in all NATO and Warsaw Pact small arms. He doesn't come with any NATO or Warsaw Pact small arms but apparently he knows how to use them. This quote in the bottom section says, here's the situation. You want to gain access to a fortified villa, 12 foot tall continuous wall topped with razor spiral and only one gate through it. Two inch steel plate on the gate, two sandbag guard houses with direct telephone link to the main house, four guards with submachine guns, two dobermans, an asylum alarm hooked to a dead man switch that one of the guards is leaning on at all times. How do you do it? Have Quick Kick hit it, that's how. This file card is really well written. It gives the impression of a very interesting character. He's got a very fascinating background. He sounds like a total badass. He's an expert at what he does and it seems like he can overcome any odds with his martial arts ability. Kind of like another member of the GI Joe team and Quick Kick does all this without wearing any shoes. So what do I think of Quick Kick overall? First of all, he has no fricking shoes and that's really tough for me to get by. There's no way in any universe that that works. It's not that I don't want Quick Kick as part of the GI Joe universe. I really like the character and I like what he does. I like the way he's portrayed but I just like him to be a little bit more combat ready and wear some shoes. Quick Kick is definitely meant to evoke images of Bruce Lee. He's definitely supposed to make you think of Bruce Lee. Interestingly enough, Bruce Lee was neither Japanese nor Korean but nonetheless it's still the same idea. The whole shirtless design with the black pants fits with the way Bruce Lee appeared in some of his movies. So you're definitely supposed to look at Quick Kick and think that Bruce Lee has joined GI Joe. Bruce Lee, however, had the good sense to wear shoes. So there you have it. Quick Kick is a fascinating character. The action figure is actually pretty nice. Pretty well detailed where it needs to be with some subtlety. For what they were trying to do, I think they did a pretty good job. There are just some design choices in this that, to me, don't make any sense. For that reason, I cannot put Quick Kick in the top tier of GI Joe action figures. At best, he's middle of the pack because, well, he's not got any shoes on. It's very difficult for me to get past the bare feet. He's wearing bare feet and, fourthly, his feet are bare. That was my review of the bare footed Quick Kick. I hope you enjoyed it and if you're thinking of getting a Quick Kick who doesn't have any shoes, I hope you found this video informative. If you liked it, make sure you give it a thumbs up on YouTube and make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel. I've got a lot of great new GI Joe toy reviews coming up. You don't want to miss them. Most of them are wearing shoes. And 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 be back soon with another GI Joe toy review. I guess I wasn't too big of a hurry. Remember, anything worth doing is worth planning. If you don't plan, you're out on the land. Pulling is half the battle.