 This episode of HCC788 brought to you in part by the die-cast enterprise. Join us each week as we discuss the sexual proclivities of Commander William T. Riker. The bravado comedy of Lieutenant War. And the adorable monkey shines if one Wesley the sweater crusher. Or maybe we'll just talk about the golden girls. Or hairstyles. Or cartoons. That's equally likely. We also like G.I. Joe. There, we tied that in nicely. Well done everyone on that. By all our play sets and toys. Cobra Commander 788 here. So great talk here to love G.I. Joe. Ready? Ready. Ready. Silence killed. Cobra Commander 788 here and it's time for another vintage G.I. Joe toy review. But before we get started with that, a couple of housekeeping items. First I wanted to let you know that I have a new perk on Patreon. You could receive one of these. This is an HCC788 secret code book. And you will need one of these to decode certain secret messages that will soon be transmitted from HCC headquarters. And some of those secret messages will have secret information in them. That's why they are secret messages. One more thing. There will be another Patrons Choice review at the end of March. And this time the patrons are going to select a vehicle. So if you want a vote, just check me out on Patreon. With that out of the way, let's get started with this week's review. And last week we jumped into 1993. Well this week let's stay in 1993 and see what else was available that year. This week we are going to look at Robo Joe. Oh, I need the table. I'm going to go get the table. Wait right here. I'll be right back. All right. I got the table. Okay. There it is. I got to lower the camera. Hang on one second. All right. There we go. I got it. I got it. I don't think I could do this without the table. With that encouraging start, HCC788 presents... This is Robo Joe, GI Joe's Jet Tech Operations Expert from 1993. This figure was only available in 1993. In the last few years of the vintage GI Joe toy line, some figures were only available for a single year. In earlier years of the toy line, figures were on the retail pegs for at least two years. 1993 was almost the end of the line. 1994 was the final year. What's with the name Robo Joe? Is it a ripoff of Robocop? Well, maybe, but he doesn't really borrow any other design elements from Robocop. This guy does not look like Robocop. Joe or JOE is an acronym that's supposed to stand for Jet Tech Operations Expert, but I don't think that really spells Joe. I think that should be J-Toe. For this figure, I have the full card back. I don't normally get those, but it's nice to have the full card back so we can see what that looked like. This was not in that big box of 90s Joes that was sent to me by Max Rebo's Ghost Music. This was one that I had before, but still, this is a good opportunity to thank him for that again. There's a lot going on with this card. We have the card art, which is okay. That's the best I can say for it, especially considering that we were accustomed to really inspired and beautiful card art in GI Joe. This really is just okay. And my opinion is just okay is not good enough for GI Joe. We have some logos here. He's in Armor Tech, which was a subgroup within Star Brigade, which was a subteam within GI Joe. So Robo Joe was a sub of a sub. Star Brigade figures had more science fiction and space themes than the main GI Joe line. It even included aliens. On the card front, Star Brigade gets top billing over GI Joe. The GI Joe logo is shrunk down here under Star Brigade, really tiny. It is upsetting to me that someone at Hasbro thought this was appropriate. This is not how you treat GI Joe. We have some instructions on how to use the figure stand and the missile launcher and the helmet. And we will take a look at those accessories later. Flipping the card around, we have the cross cell with the other figures in the Star Brigade Fighters assortment. They are numbered sequentially. We have Robo Joe, Duke, Rock and Roll, Heavy Duty, Destro, and Cobra Bat. We have Star Brigade spaceships, which are recolored reissues of older vehicles. We have battle core vehicles, and these aren't too bad, especially that ghost striker. That looks pretty cool. We have the Star Brigade armor bot, and I was mistaken when I previously said that these armor bots were not released. They were, and they were every bit as non GI Joe looking as you would expect. We have the file card that is in this horrible eye burning color that makes it very difficult to read, but unfortunately I will have to read it later. We have two flag points and most single carded action figures were only worth one flag point. I consider this to be a bribe for the kids to buy it. You get an extra flag point. Let's look at Robo Joe's accessories and he came with a lot of them. Most of these accessories came on an accessories tree. Kids would have to cut or break the accessories off of the plastic frame, a frame like this one. None of these accessories are unique to this figure. The 1993 armor tech Star Brigade rock and roll version 4 came with the exact same accessories tree, but in yellow plastic instead of gold. Oddly, he does not come with the gun pictured on the card art. From the accessories tree came with an assault rifle, and this is a reissue of the gun that came with the 1991 grunt version 3. Robo Joe's gun does not have the holes bored in the side and it loses some of the detail. He came with a submachine gun and this is a reuse of the submachine gun that came with the 1993 DJ version 2 and this is actually a pretty nice submachine gun. He came with a shotgun, a gold shotgun and this is a reissue of the shotgun that came with the 1988 muskrat. Again, it loses some of its detail. He came with a figure stand and that's a nice new thing they did in the 90s. They didn't have these packaged with the figures in the 80s, but this figure does not need it. He has great big flat feet and he can stand perfectly well without it. Finally, he came with a machete and this was also a reissue from 1988 muskrat and this is broken. I didn't mean to break it. I put it in the action figure's hand one time just to make sure that it fit. But when I pulled it out, the handle did not come with it. In this video, you'll notice that I haven't put any of the accessories in the action figure's hand and that's because all of the gold accessories are ridiculously fragile. Why are they so fragile? Gold plastic syndrome. Over time, this gold plastic can become extremely brittle and it can break with really no pressure at all. Out of curiosity, I did some checking and I found some sealed carded examples of RoboJo with the weapons from the accessory tree floating around inside the bubble. They had broken off the tree without ever being touched by human hands. Not all examples are like this, of course, but for some, the gold plastic became so brittle that just being jostled around inside the card was enough for them to come loose. Out of the gold plastic syndrome. My neck was made of gold plastic then I got the gold plastic syndrome. My head come clean off. Please give to the GPSA the gold plastic syndrome association. This could happen to you. RoboJo came with a helmet. This did not come on the accessory's tree but it has its own problems. It has no eye holes. How does he even see out of it? And why did he even come with this? It has these pointy ear things and you might think this looks like Batman but I disagree. That would be cool and I'm not gonna give this any cool points. I don't think it looks like Batman. I think it looks like Catman. Putting the helmet on the figure and yep, that looks incredibly stupid. RoboJo came with an orange missile launcher and two gold missiles. And this missile launcher has one nice feature. It has this handle here and that can fit in the hand, the fist of the action figure like so. But over here on the side it has this knob right here and that can connect to a hole in the shoulder of the action figure. So then it can be a shoulder fired rocket launcher. That's not bad. This missile launcher is in bright orange. It has minimal detail. It is the same missile launcher that came with star brigade rock and roll but in a different color. It has a gold trigger here in the back. You can operate the missile launcher by putting in one of the gold missiles and if this is the top of the missile launcher then the notch of the missile goes up and you push it in until it clicks. Once the missile is clicked in you just aim it and pull down on the trigger to fire. You know, I never was a big fan of these spring loaded missile launchers but after playing with them for a couple reviews I just might be sold on them because doing this is kind of fun. I wouldn't do that too much though because these are gold plastic and if these become as brittle as the other gold plastic you're going to break these very easily. It would especially suck if you broke it off inside the launcher. Let's look at the articulation on Robo Joe and his articulation is severely limited. He could turn his head from left to right but that is all no ball jointed head. He had a swivel at the arm. He could swivel his arm around but mine does not go all the way around. I'm not sure if it's supposed to or not. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move at the elbow. He did not have a swivel at the bicep. He did have wrist articulation so that was not bad. I kind of wish 80s Joe's had wrist articulation so that's a good thing. He has no articulation at the torso whatsoever. This is not an O-ring figure. He only has a hinge at the hip and another hinge at the knee and that's it for articulation. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of Robo Joe and just taking a look at this figure standing here. He has a very wide frame. He kind of reminds me of Dr. Terror, the Centurions villain especially with the missile launcher on the shoulder. He definitely has that Centurion's Dr. Terror look. The figure looks short but standing him next to an average height GI Joe figure you can see he is not short but because he has such a wide frame standing on his own he looks short and stout. Let's take a look at Robo Joe's head and his head is small exceptionally small for a GI Joe action figure made to look even smaller by being on a wide frame. He has gold robotics on one half of his face. He has black hair. I think this looks like the Terminator with the skin ripped off half of his face but he doesn't really look like the Terminator in any other respect. The entire torso is all one piece. This is not an O-ring figure as I said. There is a hole in the back but because of the positioning it would be difficult to fit a backpack in there. The black portions of the chest and back and really all the black portions on this figure are speckled with orange paint. Why? What is this supposed to represent? Is it battle damage? Did a can of spray paint explode? This could be a cool effect in another context. It looks like Hasbro discovered a new technique for paint application and they were going to use it on this figure whether it made sense or not. The arms are bulky. They are orange at the shoulder and black on the forearms with black fists and the black forearms have more of that orange paint speckled. His thighs are black with that orange spray paint. They have some orange details on them and his thighs are very stubby contributing to the figure looking very short. On the lower legs we have orange knee and shin armor and black speckled boots and the way the knees bend does not look natural at all. I know this is supposed to be a robot but that just does not look right. Let's take a look at the file card and as much as I hate looking at this color we've got to power through it. We've got a portrait of Robojo here says his codename is Robojo and he's the jet tech operations expert. He should be called Robojato. File name is Greg D. Scott. Primary military specialty is criminal termination. Secondary military specialty is outlaw incarceration really. Birthplace is Casper Wyoming. Grade is E3 which seems like a pretty low rank for a scientific genius. This quote here says I am stronger. I am faster. I am Robojo and this quote rips off the six million dollar man but he sure doesn't look anything like Lee Majors. This paragraph says Greg Scott we already knew his name that's redundant. A scientific engineering genius was working in his laboratory late one night on top secret plans for robotic battle armor suits needed to fight Cobra in space. Suddenly the lab was raided by Destro who managed to capture some of the plans and fatally wound the young inventor leaving him a shattered shell of a man. Well if he was fatally wounded then he should be rather less than that. GI Joe scientists used the remaining plans to rebuild his broken body and Robojo was born with a permanently integrated bio armor space suit linked with silicon wires, computer chips and muscle tissue. Now this powerful half man half robot fights alongside his star brigade teammates seeking justice and revenge on Destro. He doesn't design robotic battle armor anymore. He is it. His origin could have been lifted from any number of super heroes or super villains. There's also a bit of Frankenstein's monster to it. In fact his origin is kind of similar to Dr. Terror from Centurions. It is easy to talk about Robojo's GI Joe media appearances because it doesn't seem that he had any. He was never animated and he did not appear in the classic Marvel Comics run. Looking at Robojo overall What the hell man? What the hell? I was not a fan of the aliens in Star Brigade but at least with the aliens I could understand where they were coming from. But for this guy it's harder for me to understand what they were thinking. This is one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life. Of course it's bottom tier. In fact if there's a level below the bottom tier this guy belongs there. In fact there is a level below the bottom tier and I have sent figures there before. Where do I start? The articulation is sub par. GI Joe has been known for superior articulation since it's first incarnation in 1964. This is a giant step back. The added wrist articulation is nice but it doesn't make up for the rest. The orange color is gaudy. The paint speckles don't make any sense. The head looks tiny especially on that double wide body. The accessories would be a problem even if they weren't made with super brittle gold plastic. None of them are original unfortunately originality was costed out in the 90s. He has the backstory of a B-list comic book villain. He rips off part of Robocop, Terminator, Centurions, Six Million Dollar Man and he even looks a little bit like Cable from X-Force. But he doesn't rip off enough of each of them to say he's fully derivative of any of them. It's weird but I guess if you rip off enough other properties in small enough portions it can almost pass as original. Almost but not quite. This guy's ripped off in about 18 different ways. The name is a joke. What's with these joke names in 1993? It almost sounds like a placeholder name that they intended to change once they came up with something better. But they never came up with something better so they just kept it. Only redeeming quality I can think of is the wrist articulation. The rest is a clunky mess. Why is this figure in G.I. Joe? I'm serious. Why is it in G.I. Joe? Even if you like this figure you don't need to get this figure from G.I. Joe. You can already get this figure. Just get yourself a Centurion's Doctor Terror, a Robocomp, a Terminator, a $6 million dollar man and smash him together and then you have your own Robojato. If ever a figure deserved to go to action figure hell it is this guy. If you will forgive me viewers I think Robo Joe hit me a little harder than I thought. So old HudaCobra Commander 788 is gonna go see a doctor, get all patched up and I'll see you again next week for another Vintage Toy Review. Yelzebub, what are you doing here? I'm here for you. Well, you're a little late. I already defeated Robo Joe. Now I've gotta get to a hospital. I think I may have bruised a rib or something. You don't understand. I'm here for you. It is your time. My time for what? Your end of time. Your wounds are worse than you think. Nothing can be done about them. What are you talking about? I'll be fine. I just need to see a doctor. Okay. Maybe I'm heard a little worse than I thought but you must be mistaken. This is not how I want to go. If you go the way they want to but I don't know why you're so upset, you'll just regenerate. Regenerate? Of course. All GI Joe reviewers regenerate. You didn't know that? That's a strangely specific ability to pick up just for being a GI Joe reviewer. Don't question the rules. It would be the Robo Joe review that killed me. There must be something you can do. I've only just started on this journey. I still have so much to do. Please give me more time. Time is not mine to give. All those people that have gone on this journey with me, they've done so much for me. I don't want to leave them. Yet peace, reviewer. You have fought bravely and lived well. Let the Joeverse sing you to your rest.