 Hello everybody! I got my new codename. I'm SuperReviewer! Yeah, I'm gonna wear this for the whole video. Koko here. You might notice that I'm especially shiny today. I'm so shiny and reflective that even if this is a bad review, you will be distracted and won't notice. That seems to be the theory behind the subject of this week's review. It's a figure that will distract you with shiny objects, so you won't notice that it is completely unoriginal. Before we get started with that, I need to give a codename to another one of my patrons. And the next on my list is Benjamin Pensurga. Benjamin. Ben. Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben's rice. Rice rice, baby. I've got it. Ben, your codename is Vanilla Rice Viper. Welcome to the club. The subject of this week's review is the Super Trooper, a lesser-known G.I. Joe action figure. Who is the Super Trooper you ask? Well, he's a soldier that is super. He's very patriotic and he carries a shield. No, not that one. Super Trooper, and yes, that is his real codename, has the dubious distinction of being almost entirely a copy, both in the action figure and the concept. But he has a quality that may override all of that. He is shiny. And if you are easily distracted by shiny objects, which I am, then the problems with this figure may not matter. SuperHCC788 presents the Super Review of Super Trooper. This is G.I. Joe's Super Trooper from 1988. This figure was only available in 1988. It was discontinued for the year 1989. That was unusual for G.I. Joe figures in the 80s. Most figures were available for multiple years. This figure was available only as a mail away offer. It was never available at retail and there were no later versions. Some G.I. Joe figures in 1988 included many comics with certificates for Super Trooper. You could mail in four of those certificates to get the figure. That's how he was initially available. However, sometime in 1988, I know Super Trooper was available through catalogs such as this one. In fact, opening it up, right there he is. And in this catalog, he's available for $3.50 plus one flag point. The most important and the most obvious part of this figure is it is chromed. The figure's accessories and the non-removable chest plate are VAC metalized chrome. So they are very shiny and reflective. This is an incredible bonus feature. Not very many G.I. Joe figures had this. The first figure to get this treatment was Destro in 1983 who had a silver chrome head. And there was a later version of Destro with a gold head. G.I. Joe has an excellent history with mail away figures starting with the first mail away figure from 1982. Cobra Commander. Excellent. Then in 1983, there were two mail away figures, Duke and Major Blood. Excellent. In 1984, the grand tradition continued with the mail away hooded Cobra Commander. Excellent. In 1986, we got another mail away figure with Sergeant Slaughter. Excellent. 1987 was a great year for mail away exclusives giving us Starduster, Steel Brigade and The Fridge. Excellent. After all these awesome mail away figures that came before G.I. Joe fans in 1988 eagerly awaited the exclusive mail away figure for that year and they got Super Trooper. Excellent. Not. Despite the name and the shield, Super Trooper is not a complete rip-off of the world's most famous super soldier, Captain America, just mostly a rip-off. Hasbro further ripped off Captain America in 1994 with Sergeant Savage. If you put Sergeant Savage and Super Trooper together, you would have a copyright infringement lawsuit. No doubt. In fact, for legal reasons, I probably shouldn't have them standing so close together. Only Rob Liefeld's Agent America was a bigger Captain America rip-off. Super Trooper with his shiny chrome features goes perfectly with Sky Patrol vehicles, which are also all chromed and shiny just like Super Trooper. And since the Sky Patrol figures were not chromed, Super Trooper is the perfect choice to pilot these. If you are easily distracted by shiny things, and I admit I am, Super Trooper in a Sky Patrol vehicle is chrome overload. Thanks to the great G.I. Joe YouTuber FormBX257 for pointing this out in his video, I love this look. Super Trooper had some extra media attention when he was released. He had a live-action TV commercial. Really. Of all the underrepresented Joe characters we would have loved to see in live-action, Super Trooper got the nod. And before anybody comments about it, this figure has nothing to do with the movie Super Troopers. That came out in 2001. Continuing another tradition with G.I. Joe Malloway figures, there is almost nothing new on this figure. Almost all of the figure and the accessories are reused from other figures. There are a couple unique items though. Keeping with Hasbro's habit of producing figures as cheaply as possible, the entire mold of Super Trooper was reused in 1990 for Rapid Fire. This figure that came with a VHS cassette. It's the same figure, different colors and minus the shield. Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to reviewing this one. Let's take a look at Super Trooper's accessories starting with his weapon. And this weapon, this gun, which looks like a submachine gun to me, is shiny and chrome and looks pretty good. It's also not a new accessory. This submachine gun is a reissue of the weapon that came with dial tone from 1986. If they're going to reissue an accessory though, this is not a bad one. I've always liked that weapon. Next, we look at Super Trooper's helmet. And this is another shiny chromed accessory. Looks pretty good. It's a little bit different from the card art. The card art shows that helmet with a GI Joe logo on it. That is not on the accessory of course. This helmet is also not original. This is a reissue of the helmet that came with 1985 crankcase. And finally, we get to the shield. And this shield is a unique accessory. It wasn't reused from another action figure. And really, what other figure would have this? Yes, it's a shield. It's not exactly like Captain America's shield. It's not round. It's more of a riot shield. It has a viewing port up here on the top. But obviously, a figure called Super Trooper with the shield is going to make you think of Captain America. This shield, like the other accessories, is VAC metalized chrome. It's very shiny. It has a texture pattern on it, so it isn't perfectly reflective. And that's probably a good thing. Otherwise, it would literally be a big mirror. The following year in 1989, a Cobra Trooper, the Alley Viper, had a shield not too dissimilar from Super Troopers. Was Super Trooper the inspiration? Yeah, probably not. Let's take a look at the articulation. On Super Trooper, he had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures by 1988. Meaning 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. His arm movement is somewhat hindered by this chest plate that he wears. His arms will not go any farther down than that. He does have a hinge at the elbow, so he could bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He has a swivel at the bicep, so he can 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 bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of Super Trooper, and wow, he borrows from a lot of other action figures. First of all, if his head looks familiar, well, it should. This head reuses from 1987, knocked down from the Battle Force 2000 subset. Exactly the same head, but with a different hair color. In his chest and around his back, he has this VAC metalized chrome armor, and of course, it looks great. If you like shiny things, it's beautiful. It has some sculpting work on it, some various technological details there, but it's not removable. At least it's not supposed to be removed. If you could remove it, though, you would see that Super Trooper reuses the chest and back from 1987 out back. Next, we look at Super Trooper's arms, and you might not think there's anything too weird about these arms. Oh, but you would be mistaken. These arms are reused from 1986, Wet Suit. Of course, Wet Suit has sleeves on the upper part of his arms, and the arms on Super Trooper are bare. He has dark green pouches on his upper arms with some bands that go around his biceps. It looks just a little bit odd. On his left wrist, he has a dark green watch. He has another dark green device around his right wrist. Also around his right wrist, he has an unpainted band. So that's just flesh color, and that looks really strange. That's a very bad unpainted detail. On Wet Suit, that whole band is painted black, and that's what they should have done on Super Trooper. That unpainted detail is very distracting. On his waist piece, he has a gray belt with pouches all the way around. Green trousers. And this is another reuse of parts from Wet Suit. He has the same waist piece, and this is actually not a bad reuse of parts. And the color change maybe even improves on it a little. On his legs, he has dark green trousers. He has a gray knife on his right leg and a couple straps that go around his right thigh. He has silver painted, not chrome, knee pads. And he has tall black boots. These legs are also reused from an earlier action figure, but the color change may trip you up. These legs are reused from Xandar from 1986. I didn't recognize them when I first saw them, but the color change is definitely an improvement on the original. There you have Super Trooper, a premium figure you could only get through the mail at higher cost than a standard retail figure that was made up almost entirely of reused parts and accessories. That has bro way. Super Trooper has shiny reflective armor, reflective helmet, reflective shield, and reflective gun. He's so super he's gonna take a handicap. He's gonna make sure the enemy knows exactly where he is so they can shoot at him. And he's so super he will win anyway. At least I assume that's the theory behind this guy. Otherwise it'd just be kind of stupid. Sitting around wearing reflective objects all the time. Who would do that? Let's take a look at Super Trooper's file card. This file card was inside the mail away bag with the figure. It has a red back as most mail away file cards did. It has his faction as GI Joe, of course. It has a portrait of Super Trooper here. It says his codename is Super Trooper. And he has no specialty or maybe he's such a Super Trooper. He has every specialty. His file name is Paul Latimer. And that was the name of a Hasbro employee. They did that some time on these file cards. They'd put little Hasbro employee references on them. Primary military specialty is infantry. Secondary military specialty is public relations. What? Birthplace is date in Ohio and his grade is 02, which is a first lieutenant. At least they didn't make him a captain. You know they were tempted though. They were tempted to make Super Trooper a captain with a shield. This top paragraph says Lieutenant Latimer graduated at the top of the first class to be processed through a new army school that's so secret it doesn't even have a name. Suffice it to say that the object of that program is to produce highly motivated individuals with advanced technical skills for assault operations deep within enemy territory with virtually no support. Requirements consist of fluency three languages from the potential adversary list, airborne qualification and a recipient of the expert infantryman's badge. Well, yeah, that makes him elite but it also sounds like a G.I. Joe. What about this secret school makes him more elite than the super elite G.I. Joe team? This bottom paragraph has a quote. It says he went to West Point the hard way, head first, by enlisting in the army straight out of high school. He then took the test for admission to the West Point Prep School, a grueling 10 week program with a 60% attrition rate and no guarantee of an appointment to the academy at the end of it. Okay, I have to give the file card credit here. West Point Prep School is a real thing. It's the U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School. The admission process is the same as to West Point. You have to be nominated by a U.S. congressman. But the person that goes to the prep school needs additional preparation before entering the academy. Additional training and schooling. So someone who goes to the prep school is someone who's not quite ready for West Point. He could have been staff material. The Joint Chiefs had their eyes on him. So why did he sign up for a secret program with an extremely low profile and little chance of personal advancement? Was it because he preferred an assignment where honor, integrity, and loyalty were considered assets instead of liabilities? Or was he simply seeking adventure? Or maybe it paid like 5 bucks an hour more. The benefits were really good. A word about this file card. It does follow a common GI Joe file card trope. He's the best of the best of the best. Okay, fine. But at least he's not a superhuman soldier as his codename implies. That would have made him way too close to Captain America. Now instead of being a superhuman trooper he's just a trooper that trained really hard, which is better. But people are still going to think of Captain America when they look at this guy because of the codename, because of the shield. They pretty much made sure of that. And let's not forget the much more direct Captain America ripoff. Please don't sue me, Marvel. Taking a look at how Super Trooper was used in GI Joe Media, he did appear in those many comics and in that live action TV commercial that we saw earlier. But he didn't have any appearances in the regular comic book series or animated series. That raises an interesting question for me. Some of these figures, especially the mail away figures, didn't appear in any mainstream storyline. It's not just Super Trooper. Also, Starduster, Steel Brigade and The Fridge. They never made any appearances in the regular comic book or cartoon series. So if these characters never showed up with the team, were they really on the team? How do these characters fit within your GI Joe universe? How do you use them? For me, they're mostly nice figures, but I don't really imagine them within GI Joe. They don't interact with my other characters and they're just really not part of any storyline that I think of. I'm going to do something a little different in this video. I'm going to put up a poll on YouTube. You should see it in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Vote in the poll and tell me if you consider Super Trooper to be on the GI Joe team or not. Looking at Super Trooper overall, everything about this figure is silly and kind of dumb and low effort, but he's shiny. This figure was released in an era when some at Hasbro seemed to think they could just poop out any old turd and kids would buy it. As long as it was a shiny turd and to some degree they were probably right, but objectively this is not a very good figure. Their inspiration from Captain America is near plagiarism. They made a premium figure with almost entirely reused parts and accessories, a premium figure on the cheap. And they didn't even bother to integrate the character into the ongoing comic book or cartoon storylines. It is nothing more than a shiny thing for children to spend their money on. And based on that, it deserves a place in the bottom tier. However, on a personal subjective level, I love having this figure. It doesn't fit in any of my concepts of G.I. Joe, but God help me, I love shiny things. If you also like shiny things, you might want to get your hands on a Super Trooper. And if you're a fan of 1990's Sky Patrol, Super Trooper looks pretty sweet in those vehicles. So yeah, the figure is total nonsense and deserves all the derision it gets. But I can see my face reflected in his helmet so I still kinda love it. That was my review of Super Trooper. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, make sure you give it a thumbs up on YouTube and make sure you subscribe to the channel and hit the notification button so you get future videos. I would like to thank my patrons who make all of these videos possible. If you like the channel and would like to support the channel in that way, please consider checking out my Patreon. I also have a coffee account now, so if you liked this video, you can leave me a one time tip. You can find me on social media, on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a website, HCC788.com. I love G.I. Joe, and I love bringing you G.I. Joe toy reviews every week, so please check back soon for another vintage G.I. Joe toy review. I will see you soon, and until then, remember, only Super G.I. Joe is Super G.I. Joe. Super Trooper, there's only one way to get him. Send four Super Trooper certificates and a one dollar handling charge. See details on specially marked packages for your Super Trooper, the ultimate warrior. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable this is. It's hot. I feel like a baked potato. However, the alien transmissions are not getting to my brain when I wear this, so hey, that's an extra bonus feature.