 Combat journalism is at the heart of G.I. Joe. The movie, The Story of G.I. Joe, about real combat journalist Ernie Pyle, was the inspiration for the name of the original 12-inch figures in 1964. In 1989, G.I. Joe once again drew inspiration from the real world for its own combat journalist. With the introduction of Scoop, G.I. Joe returned to its roots. Hello everybody, Hoodie Coco here. It's time for another vintage G.I. Joe Toyer review. Scoop is based on a real person, Mike Leonard, journalist and former correspondent for the Today Show on NBC. Scoop is a bit of a conundrum. He's based on a real person, but that person was not a combat journalist. G.I. Joe returned to its roots by creating a character that filled the role of Ernie Pyle, but they didn't seem to draw any other inspiration from it. Though G.I. Joe should have a reverence for the role of the combat journalist, Scoop was not welcomed with open arms when he joined the team. I should also note that Rob from G.I. Joe Berg is a big fan of Scoop, so hello Rob and the rest of the G.I. Joe Berg gang. Let's see if Scoop will be one of my favorite figures. HCC 788 presents Scoop. This is Scoop, G.I. Joe's combat information specialist from 1989. This figure was first available in 1999. It was also available in 1990. It was discontinued for 1991. This is the only vintage version of Scoop. There was a modern update in 2017. The character and the figure of Scoop are based on the real life journalist Mike Leonard. To my knowledge, Mike Leonard was never a combat journalist. Instead, he did very personal stories about his own life and family. The journalist in particular, the combat journalist, has a storied and hallowed place in G.I. Joe lore. Scoop takes his name from a journalism term. That means to get an exclusive story. If you get a scoop, it means you got the story before any other reporters, given that the original G.I. Joe was inspired by a real combat journalist. It's fitting that 1980s G.I. Joe got its own journalist character based on a real person. There is a very minor variation on the Scoop action figure. Some of the figures were stamped on the butt made in China, while other figures were stamped made in Hong Kong. I have no idea if one is harder to find than the other. This type of variant does not interest me at all and it's not one that I would seek out. It's just a coincidence that the two figures I have are the variants. Although Scoop is a combat information specialist and he would do his job on the front line, he is not a combat troop. G.I. Joe had other non-combat specialists, including in 1983, Doc as a medic. In 1985, Airtight was a hostile environment specialist and in 1986, Mainframe was a computer specialist. Not every figure had to represent a combat specialty. The technicians and medics added depth to the line because their jobs weren't as exciting though. The figures may not have been played with as much by kids. Did Scoop have a Cobra equivalent? Well, it depends on what you thought this scanner device that came with the Televiper was supposed to be. If you thought it looked like a video camera, then the Televiper could fulfill the same role as Scoop for Cobra by recording and reporting activities in the field. Let's take a look at Scoop's accessories by starting with the helmet and wow, this is a special helmet. It is green. It has a paint application. It has red goggles. It is made out of soft flexible plastic, which is nice. It has a microphone that is removable and since this microphone is removable, it is often lost. That is the most commonly missing accessory. Really, Hasbro, would it have killed you to glue these things in? I do like that the helmet is flexible. It makes it easier to put on the figure and to take off and there's less risk of scraping the paint off the hair. The biggest problem with the helmet is it is huge. It's a bit oversized. If Scoop were wearing only the helmet, it would look comically oversized. It's way too big. However, the other accessories are also kind of big and clunky too. So next to the other accessories, it doesn't really look oversized. As an ensemble, it's not too bad. Scoop's next accessory is his pistol. The pistol is black with a suppressor. This is not based on any real world weapon as far as I'm aware. It looks like just kind of a generic black pistol. This would be Scoop's self defense weapon. His role is not combat, so he probably wouldn't use this in an offensive capacity, but he will be on the front lines in the line of fire, so he may have to use this from time to time for self defense. Given the size of the other accessories, it would have been nice if there were a working pistol holster somewhere either on the leg or the backpack or something like that. He can hold all of his accessories at the same time and that is good. But since there's no place to holster the pistol, that means he has to operate his big clunky camera one handed. His next accessory is what the blueprints call a high-tech camera. It has a black connector hose that connects to it. I'm going to pull that out for now. We'll take a look at that in a minute, but let's look at the camera first. This high-tech camera is in light gray. It has a lot of technical detail. Looks like it has some kind of readout here. It has a viewfinder. It has a large lens and I believe this down here is supposed to be a microphone. This is an 80s camera. It's big and chunky. It's not oversized for a camera at the time, really. You'd expect this to be a shoulder-mounted camera, but it doesn't seem to have a curved shoulder mount, just a pistol grip. Professional cameras used by news networks are still pretty large, but your cell phone could probably take better video than this old clunker. This camera would have to do more than just record. It would also have to work with scoops, satellite, and encryption gear, and that was a lot of technology to carry around in 1989. Next, we have that black connector hose that connects to the camera on that little knob. It also connects to the action figure on the right leg to another little knob connector on this black device. This black device may be an extra battery or maybe it has a wireless link up to the transmitter on the backpack. Now let's look at that backpack. This backpack, the card contents refer to as a satellite relay station. It has a large dish and a lot of electronic detail. With this backpack, Scoop can send a live feed of the battle back to headquarters with a satellite link up. Scoop has a lot of accessories, but he can carry all of them, and that's very important in my book, and they make sense for his specialty. They're all unique accessories too. This is not a 90s figure where they were stamping out a bunch of generic accessories that had nothing to do with the figure that they were packaged with. If I were to add anything, I would really like to have a holster for the pistol. Let's take a look at the articulation on Scoop. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures at the time, so 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 that allowed him to bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep that allowed him to swivel his arm all the way around. This was an O-ring figure, meaning the figure was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside. That allowed him to 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 sculpted design and color of Scoop starting with his head. This head is sculpted in the likeness of Mike Leonard, the real journalist. It is a good likeness of the man at that age. He has brown, wavy hair and a slightly expressive face. Looking at his chest, he has a green vest with a lot of detail on the front. We need to look closely at these. He has black binoculars with a black strap. He has a black still photo camera with an unpainted strap and he has some various other black details on the chest which are probably rolls of film and flash bulbs. The details on this chest are impressive and they are absolutely appropriate for Scoop's job. So I really appreciate that. There's only one unpainted detail on the chest and that is the unpainted strap for the camera. But you could say that he has a camera strap the same color as his vest. I guess I could buy that. Unfortunately the painted details do not continue to the back. There is no paint on the back at all. It looks to me like Scoop is wearing a sweater vest. In 1989 this would have made him a pioneer in wearing sweater vests into battle. In military parlance this is referred to as BSVU or battle sweater vest uniform. Now that may sound ridiculous to you but if you Google it I think you will find that it doesn't exist and I just made it up. When we get to the arms we start to see a problem. He has long yellow sleeves. It's not a bright yellow. It's more of a deep yellow but still yellow. He has a pocket on his right upper arm. He has a black cuff on his right sleeve. He has a black electronic device on his left forearm and he has bare hands. This device on his left forearm I assume is for controlling the satellite link-up on his backpack. On his waist piece he has more yellow. He has a black belt with moderate detail. Not a lot but I guess it's enough. He has a strap on the left side that goes down to his holster. On his legs he has yellow trousers. He has the aforementioned black electronic device on his right thigh with a couple straps to go around the thigh. He has an unpainted pocket on the front of his left thigh and then on the side he has an empty pistol holster in black and a couple straps to go around the left thigh and then one strap that goes up to his hip. I have to assume this is supposed to be the pistol holster for his pistol accessory but it's obviously the wrong size. There's no way that would fit. Also it is on his left leg which implies that scoop is left-handed but I haven't been able to confirm if the real Mike Leonard was left-handed. Moving down he has some black boots with some impressive detail and he has another pistol, a black pistol in a holster on his left ankle. So that's two pistols on his left side so they are heavily implying that scoop is left-handed. Obviously the yellow is going to be a problem for me. I don't have a problem with the green or the black. The colors match closely with some other Joes such as Airtite and Lightfoot. Airtite was a hostile environment specialist wearing a hazmat suit so the yellow is sort of excusable. Lightfoot as an explosives expert he probably would have to do his job under fire so he probably should be more combat ready than he is. Though you could imagine Lightfoot doing his job after the battle disarming munitions. Although scoop is not a soldier he would do his job on the front line or embedded with a team on a mission so I feel he should be as camouflaged as the team he is embedded with. When you look at photos of embedded journalists with combat units you do see a color difference between them and the troops. Sometimes they even wear their civilian clothes. This designates them as journalists and noncombatants. Scoop though is not a civilian journalist. The file card and the comic book make clear he is on the Jo team. As such he should be mission ready like everyone else. This is why the yellow doesn't work for me. It's too bright for any environment other than maybe an urban environment. It may designate scoop as a noncombatant but it would also give away the position of any team he's embedded with and that's just not going to work. Let's take a look at scoop's file card. This file card has his faction as GI Joe. It has a portrait of scoop here. The helmet doesn't look quite as oversized in the artwork. It has his code name as scoop and he is the combat information specialist. His file name is Leonard Michaels which is the reverse of Mike Leonard. I wonder why the change was Mike Leonard aware they were making him into an action figure. I haven't been able to confirm how this tribute to Mike Leonard came about. His primary military specialty is journalist. Secondary military specialty is microwave transmission specialist probably so he can work on the transmission equipment that he comes with. His birthplace is Chicago Illinois. The real Mike Leonard is from Chicago. His grade is E4. This top paragraph says it takes a special kind of guy to step out from behind cover during a firefight and keep his fingers squeezing the trigger of his video cam with an advanced degree in journalism as well as a master's degree in electrical engineering scoop could have had a secure future with a network news team. Instead he opted for service on the GI Joe team because he wanted to be on the spot when the news was being made not reporting the aftermath. Network news reporters are often on the spot when the news is happening. That's a curious reason for joining the Army also since he is not a civilian journalist and because GI Joe's missions are classified his reports would not be made public. They would more likely be used for internal purposes by the GI Joe team and the Department of Defense. This bottom paragraph has a quote. It says the other GI Joe's were a bit put off by scoop at first. They resented having a third wheel tagging along lugging 60 pounds of video equipment and not much firepower. It looks like we have a typo. We have an extra end quote there. They changed their minds after he carried a wounded comrade two clicks to an extremely hairy evacuation site for a medevac. All the while his camera captured the whole thing on tape. Now that's called doing your job and then some. This tells me the Joe's don't value scoops contribution to the team. They only accepted him after he carried a wounded teammate from the field. But that doesn't mean they actually value his job. It's the and then some that they actually cared about looking at how scoop was used in GI Joe media. He had some significant appearances especially in the animated series in the deep era. He appeared in the miniseries Operation Dragonfire. He was in all five parts of the miniseries and he was a main character. He started out as a civilian reporter giving a negative spin on GI Joe's humanitarian activities. Due to an act of heroism, saving Sergeant Slaughter, he was made a member of the GI Joe team. It was all a ruse though. He was secretly working for Cobra and infiltrated GI Joe as a spy. Scoop joined Cobra because he believed GI Joe was responsible for the destruction of his family home. He later learned the truth that Cobra destroyed his home. He switched sides and started helping GI Joe for real. Scoop's arc was one of the better things about the Operation Dragonfire miniseries but I have to say GI Joe's recruiting practices seem to be a little lax. He had a few other appearances throughout the series but mostly as a background character. In the GI Joe comic book series published by Marvel Comics, he appears in issue number 92 where he participated in the rescue of captured Joe's and October guard in Sierra Gordo. He called in an artillery strike from the thunder clap. Other than that, he didn't contribute much to the story. His more important appearance was in the special mission series issue number 23. It's one of my favorite issues of the series. That issue even uses his name as the title. Scoop tags along on a mission so he can document it for the Department of Defense. From the outset, the Joe's don't trust him. They haven't trained with him and they resent someone looking over their shoulders. Leatherneck sums it up. He says, nobody gives a rat's fanny about you being an outsider. All we care about is whether your lack of experience, your stupidity, clumsiness, cowardice, or even your body odor is going to get the rest of us killed. The comic shows a lot of the tactical planning and techniques the Joe's employ when on a mission. It is meticulous. Scoop is a proxy for the readers. The Joe's give him a quick education and how to be mission ready. The issue reads like a military procedural or like an illustrated field manual. Not only do we see the professionalism of the Joe's, we also see the iron grenadiers as experienced and smart fighters. It's one of the best issues of special missions. But in all the Joe's complaining about Scoop, there's one thing they didn't mention. He's wearing a bright yellow uniform. They're worried about his body odor when he's wearing bright yellow. This shows how Larry Hama, the writer, dealt with non-military elements like brightly colored uniforms in his military book. He ignored them. He just pretended it wasn't an issue. This special missions comic was a perfect opportunity to hang a lantern on Scoop's bright yellow uniform, but he didn't do it. Larry took the same approach to other brightly colored Joe's like lifeline. That makes Larry a lot more flexible and open-minded than I was as a child. The bright colors always bothered me. I didn't want purple or yellow or orange on my military team. Sometimes I even painted over those colors. For Larry though, it apparently wasn't a big deal. Looking at Scoop overall, I'm going to call this a middle-tier figure close to the top tier. There's a lot to like about this figure. The sculpting is excellent. He comes with a lot of appropriate equipment, both as accessories and molded onto the figure. He bears a good likeness to the man that inspired him. Although some collectors excuse the yellow as designating him as a non-combatant, I don't. For a civilian journalist, yes, but Scoop is a Joe. He's going to be embedded with teams in combat zones. He cannot wear a uniform that's going to give away the team's position. The accessories are good if clunky. The pistol could use a holster. The camera seems a bit ridiculous, but remember, it was the 80s. The best thing about the character is the real-life inspiration, both the connection to the real person and the connection to G.I. Joe's roots. Some elements of Scoop don't mesh perfectly though, and you can see the seams. He has the likeness and sort of name of a real person, but he doesn't seem to have any other connection to him. Scoop is a combat journalist, but he is inspired by a civilian Today Show correspondent. He hearkens back to the story of Ernie Pyle, but doesn't seem to take anything from it. Had those threads been tied together better, Scoop could have been a great character. I also think, given G.I. Joe's history, Scoop should have gotten a lot more respect than he did. That was my review of Scoop. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please consider giving it a thumbs up on YouTube, and subscribing to the YouTube channel. And don't forget to hit the notification bell and share this video. That's what helped this channel grow. You can find me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a website, hcc788.com. Thanks to my patrons who helped make this show possible. If you like the show and you'd like to support this show in that way, please check out Patreon. You can also find out how to decode the secret messages in these videos. I'll bring you a new vintage G.I. Joe toy review each week. That's all for now. I'll see you next week. And until then, remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe. Here is a bulletin from CBS World News. The Navy Department has just announced that Ernie Pyle, the well-known war correspondent, has been killed in action in the Pacific. The Navy said Pyle was killed by a Japanese machine gun bullet on a small island off Okinawa. This bulletin has come to you from CBS World News. We resume our schedule program.