 Do you think he's dead? I think he's dead. Try to wake him up. Hmm. Ah! Yep, he's alive. I've really lost my mind. I'm seeing action figures walking and talking. You have to settle something for us. Which one of us is the real airborne? Well, that's easy. The original is the real one. There can only be one true airborne, and he is Franklin E. Tall Tree. That's a good point, but have you seen my parachute? Ooh! Shiny! That's not fair! Shiny airborne is the real airborne. That's some loyalty. You love 90s G.I. Joe figures better than 80s G.I. Joe figures. Don't push it. Hello everybody, hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. This is the show where we review every vintage G.I. Joe toy from 1982 to 1994. I'm still hiding from the plague, and I intend to keep on hiding until it's gone. I am taking all reasonable precautions. I really hope all the bleach I'm drinking doesn't turn my hair white. 2020 is the year of the 90s. On this channel, we are focusing mostly on G.I. Joe toys from that decade. Also, 2020 has been a really crappy year so far. Coincidence? Yes. This will be our first Sky Patrol figure review. I reviewed the Sky Patrol Skyhawk last year. Sky Patrol is a subset that we haven't really looked at very much. This week, we will look at Airborne Version 2. But is it really? Airborne Version 1 was released in 1983. Airborne Version 2 was released in 1990. Even though they share the same codename, they are totally different guys. So should it count as a Version 2 when it's a different character? The government stole Native American's land and now it's stealing their codenames. HCC 788 presents the figure I do not consider to be Version 2 of Airborne, Sky Patrol Airborne. This is Sky Patrol Airborne. G.I. Joe's parachute assembler from 1990. This figure was available in 1990 only. It was discontinued for 1991. It was part of the Sky Patrol subset. This is either the first or second version of Airborne, depending on what you count as a version. In 1983, G.I. Joe introduced the helicopter assault trooper Airborne. His real name was Franklin Talltree. He was a lawyer from a rich Native American family. The 1990 Airborne was none of those things. This is a different guy with the same codename. Why did this happen? Did Hasbro forget they already had a guy by this name? They may have thought kids wouldn't remember the original Airborne by 1990. But in 1991, they released a new version of Grunt. There hadn't been a Grunt action figure since 1983. Even though the figure looked very different from the original, he still had the same codename and filename. It is intended to be the same guy. If kids would have forgotten about Airborne by 1990, why would they remember Grunt by 1991? Sky Patrol was a sub-team that was only available in 1990. It included six action figures and four vehicles. The vehicles were all covered in reflective chrome. According to the commercial, the reflective surface was invulnerable to lasers. The vehicles were reissues of earlier GI Joe and Cobra Air vehicles mostly. The lineup included a chrome version of the Havoc, which was a land vehicle. The Havoc included a little flying car, though. The figures all included shiny and metallic coated parachutes. This was a variation of the old mail away parachute pack from 1985. Although the Sky Patrol parachute packs worked in basically the same way, they are new. They are not straight reissues of the 1985 pack. All of the figures used bodies from earlier action figures, but they had new heads and new accessories. There was at least some effort in the Sky Patrol series. Normally, using reissued parts would be a strike against a figure. In the case of Sky Patrol, the colors were changed so dramatically, it's easy to forget the parts are reused. There is an oddity about Sky Patrol. They all have vehicles, but the members aren't pilots or specialists in operating those vehicles. They are all paratroopers with ground combat specialties. I have the full card back for Sky Patrol Airborne, so let's take a look at it. Although a lot of the front of the card is torn away, we can still see the artwork. The artwork is okay. Maybe not up to the standards of the 1980s, but it's all right. They made doubly sure you knew this guy came with a shiny silver parachute by including it both in the artwork and with this big advertisement here that says with working silver parachute. We have the GIJO logo and the Sky Patrol logo here. It's partially covered up by the price sticker. According to the price sticker, this was $4.50. That's a little more than a standard action figure, but the Sky Patrol figures did come with some bonuses. Flipping the card around to the back, we see the cross cell. All these are the standard GIJO figures that were available at the time here. And in this partition, we have the Sky Patrol team. This paragraph says, Command of the Air is crucial in determining the outcome of a battle. Sky Patrol, GIJO's elite six-man airborne unit, uses advanced stealth technology and sophisticated laser weaponry to clear the sky of Cobra aerial assault crafts. This blurb seems to be confused about what these guys do. They jump from the sky into battle. They don't really keep the sky clear of Cobra aerial assault craft unless they pilot the Sky Patrol vehicles, which none of them are depicted as doing on this card. However, they were depicted as piloting the Sky Patrol vehicles in GIJO media. We will talk about that later. There's a file card, which we will look at in depth in a few minutes and we have an 80s style flag point, one flag point. With the additional cost of these figures, maybe they could have bumped that up to two flag points. Let's take a look at airborne accessories starting with his helmet. His helmet is in a gray, slightly reflective color. It's more of a pewter color. It includes red goggles. The helmet fits over his head and eyes. And I think that looks really good. I think this would be a good helmet for night operations. It's got some decent detail on it. And we don't often get paint applications on GIJO accessories. So the red goggles, that's a nice bonus. The next accessory is the rifle. The rifle is in a black plastic. It's well detailed. It looks kind of like a deformed M16. It has this very narrow carrying handle. It has a fat magazine. It has a barrel shroud with vent holes in it. This is a made-up weapon, but it's not too fantastical. You could pretend that it's real. Finally, we get to the parachute pack. This is the primary gimmick of Sky Patrol figures. This parachute pack is in gray plastic. It has a backpack to hold it onto the figure. It has a pin on this loop that fits into clasps to hold the pack together until you're ready to deploy the shoot. All Sky Patrol figures use the same parachute pack mold, but in different colors. They all had the same silver parachute. Before I open this parachute pack, I want to point out this is not a copy of the 1985 male-away parachute pack. It's an entirely different mold. The parachute inside functions basically the same way, but of course the male-away parachute was camouflaged and the Sky Patrol parachute is silver. One other difference is the male-away parachute pack had an additional strap to hold the pack on the figure. The Sky Patrol parachute pack only has a peg, so I am less confident that it will stay on the figure. We will have to test that later. The Sky Patrol figures included a set of instructions and blueprints for the parachute pack. This had the instruction sheet on one side and blueprints on the other. It says Sky Patrol parachute pack. This is similar to the instruction sheet that came with the male-away parachute pack. In fact, they used the same artwork for the pack and the helmet, even though the figure did not come with a helmet that looked like this. But they did update the artwork on the parachute itself with that Sky Patrol emblem. It calls that parachute a nylon micro mesh parachute material with radar reflective coating. Hey, any excuse to make it shiny is okay with me. Let's open up this parachute pack to take a look at the shoot itself. You have to pull that pin out of the clasps and then it opens up. It kind of splits in half. It's hinged at the bottom. It uses white twine that's tied on the inside to hold it on. And of course, it has a very shiny reflective parachute and it has to be folded pretty tightly to fit in that pack. It opens up to be pretty big, which of course, it would have to be in order to work for the action figure. Here is the parachute completely opened up. I'm not sure how well the camera is picking it up, but there is a black Sky Patrol emblem in the center. I have the action figure in the frame for scale. It's quite a bit larger than the action figure. And when used outside, it will be very shiny and reflective in the sunlight. I have to point out this reflective material on these parachutes can flake off. And when it does, it leaves the parachute transparent like this other Sky Patrol parachute that I have. In fact, it can be a little bit difficult to find a Sky Patrol parachute that is undamaged. You can see my hand through there. It's totally transparent. All of the silver material has flaked off of this one. When I test the parachute later in this video, I will use this one because it's already damaged. I want to protect my nice shiny silver parachute. To get the parachute back into the pack, you have to fold it very tightly. It's a very large chute that has to fit into a very small space and there is no easy way to do this. Just fold the thing as tightly as you possibly can. Once it's rolled up very tightly, you have to fold it end over end and make sure you don't leave any extra space in order to fit it back into that pack. That's pretty tight. I'm not sure that'll even be tight enough. Let's see. You got to kind of wedge it in there. Yeah, that'll work. And then it has to close. It has to clasp. The clasps have to come together and then you take the pin and you push it through. Yes, there we go. And now you have the parachute back in the pack. Okay, I'm in the backyard to test the parachute pack. I was going to use my damaged parachute, but I could not get that parachute pack to stay on my airborne figure. So I am going to have to use my nice shiny silver parachute for this test. No other choice, but that is the parachute that came with this figure. So I'm going to follow the directions and see if it works. It is a bit breezy out here, but the breeze is blowing back this direction. So it should not sail over the fence if the parachute even works. If it's going to blow anywhere, it's going to blow back into my yard rather than that direction. So shouldn't lose it. That's good. My prediction is that this parachute will just fall off the figure. If this does not have the extra strap like the Mail-A-Parashoot pack did or does, this is only held on with the backpack and my prediction, I'm going to toss it up in the air. If the parachute deploys at all, I think the parachute will just fall right off of the figure and the figure will plummet to the ground. Let's see if my prediction is correct. According to the instructions, I am supposed to pull the pin out of the clasp and to take the parachute out and hold it like this and then toss it in the air and it should deploy. All right, I've got two cameras going on this guy. So let's see if this will work. All right, ready? Here it goes. All right, that did not deploy at all. And yeah, the figure did fall off. Let me see if I can help it along a little bit. Let's test that one more time. Okay, let's try this again. I've loosened it up a little bit. It was packed pretty tightly. I've got that pack on the figure as tightly as I can get it. I'm hoping by loosening the parachute up a little bit, it'll be a little easier to deploy. I'll toss it as high as I can get it and let's see if it works. I can barely keep this parachute pack on the figure, even just while it's in my hand. I think there's no way this is going to work. So let's try it. Yeah, it's not even deploying. Let's see if there's any way I can get it to work. All right, I'm going to try it one more time. This is basically open. According to the instructions, I should not have to do this, but this is the only way I can think of that maybe will get this thing to deploy and float down. So here it goes one more time. Well, that's sort of, it's sort of opened. All right. Oh, well, see that is the problem. The figure will not stay on. This just isn't going to work. Let's take a look at the articulation for Sky Patrol Airborne. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures well before 1990. So you 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 look at the sculpt design and color of Airborne. Airborne reuses the entire body of 1986 lift ticket, but with a new head. The color changes so dramatic, you barely recognize lift tickets uniform. Normally reusing parts like this is a problem for an action figure, but if you're going to reuse parts, it helps to dramatically change the colors so it feels fresh and new. Looking at Airborne's head, he has blonde hair represented by yellow paint. He has slicked back hair with a Superman curl in the front. He has yellow eyebrows and black eyes. The head sculpt is very nicely done, well detailed, and I think it looks really good. This head is as different from the Franklin Taltree Airborne head as possible. They could not look more different. You cannot imagine these as the same guy. On his chest, he has a dark gray vest. The collar kind of pops up a bit. He has a silver microphone and cord on his right shoulder. He has a silver clasp on his vest just under the collar. He has silver jump wings on the left side. He has unpainted pockets and an unpainted pistol holster on his chest. That pistol is positioned for a left-handed draw. On the lift ticket chest, those pockets and the pistol holster were painted black, so we do lose a paint application there. On his arms, he has silver coverings over his shoulders. He has light gray sleeves with a camouflage pattern on those sleeves. At first glance, I thought that was a dark gray camouflage pattern, but I see a little bit of green in that color. It's kind of a greenish gray. That is a new paint application. Lift ticket did not have camouflage. On his right upper arm, he has a silver tampo with the Sky Patrol emblem. It's really hard to see, but it is there. He has dark gray gloves and dark gray painted pockets on his forearms. On his waist piece, he has a dark gray belt with some pouches on the hips and a strap that goes down on the right side. We have more of that camouflage pattern on light blue trousers. Again, I do think that's a greenish gray, not just a dark gray. His legs feature light gray trousers with that greenish gray camouflage pattern. His right thigh has a dark gray knife with a dark gray strap that goes around the right leg. On the left leg, he has a pistol holster that has the camouflage pattern that goes right over it. He has a dark gray pistol in the holster. His knees have knee pads. Those knee pads stick out a little bit, so those are good knee pads. I like them. The knee pads have silver paint on them. He has some pockets on his legs just above the boots. Then he has dark gray boots and boots covers. Airborne has a unified color scheme. It's simple, but it flows perfectly from top to bottom. The helmet even fits in, and the red goggles give it a modest splash of color. The silver spots tie it in with the Sky Patrol theme. Even though this figure has only one unique part, some effort and thought went into it. The body lost some of the paint applications from the lift ticket figure, but it also gained some with the camouflage. Let's take a look at Airborne's file card. The file card has his faction as G.I. Joe. No special Sky Patrol faction here. It has a portrait of Airborne copied from the artwork on the front of the card. His codename is Airborne. He is the Sky Patrol parachute assembler. He assembles shoots for the whole team. So if he doesn't like you, you may find your shoot doesn't open. In that case, I hope you have a good medic when you hit the ground. His final name is Robert M.6. No relation to Nicky 6 from Motley Crew. Primary military specialty is Sky Patrol parachute assembler. Secondary military specialty is Battlefield Medic. Oh, so he's the medic too. If he doesn't like you, you are toast. Birthplace is Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and grade it E7. This paragraph says, All paratroopers pack their own shoots so they'll have no one to blame, but themselves if their canopies fail to open. Assembling a shoot is another matter altogether. The maintenance of the canopy and shroud line is best left to a master rigger. And there isn't a man in the Army who knows more about the standard US T-10 parachute than Airborne. The T-10 parachute is the real parachute used by the US Army. It has been modified and updated over the years. To my knowledge, it has never been issued in Chrome. Once the patrol is safely on the ground, Airborne becomes their combat medic. He's a real lifesaver in more ways than one. This paragraph says, Airborne is one of the most popular guys in the patrol. You have to like him. He makes sure your parachute opens every time you make a jump. Airborne's also the individual who has to go out, usually under heavy enemy fire to save you from an unfortunate encounter with a bullet or from a run-in with a landmine. Through thick and thin, Airborne is always there when you need him. They are implying that you have to like him, or maybe things don't turn out so well for you. Looking at how Airborne was used in G.I. Joe Media, the original Airborne made a few appearances in the Sunbow era of the animated series, but he wasn't the most popular character. Of course, we're not talking about that Airborne. Sky Patrol Airborne had two brief appearances in the Deke era of the animated series. Alongside his Sky Patrol buddies. In the series, Sky Patrol characters piloted the Sky Patrol vehicles. They were shown doing that more than parachuting. To my knowledge, neither Sky Patrol nor this version of Airborne made appearances in the G.I. Joe comic book series published by Marvel Comics. Looking at Sky Patrol Airborne overall, this is a good figure. The colors are subtle and appropriate for an urban or night mission. Even though it reuses the body of an earlier action figure, the color change makes a huge difference. It adds a few new elements that freshen it up, like a new head, new accessories, and a new camouflage pattern. The silver parachute is a cool idea, and I have an affinity for shiny objects. It's not exactly realistic. You wouldn't want to drop into a combat zone with a parachute that reflects the sunlight and could be seen for miles. Even so, I am mesmerized by shiny objects. As far as how the parachute works, well, you saw how that went. The MailAway parachute pack had the extra strap to hold it on, and the Sky Patrol parachute pack really needed that. For me, though, this is not the real Airborne. There's only one real Airborne, and he was issued in 1983. The reuse of the codename is lazy and unimaginative. Why not just give this guy his own codename? Or make this a true second version of Airborne? The real Airborne would have fit perfectly in Sky Patrol. That was my review of Sky Patrol Airborne. I hope you enjoyed it. In case you hadn't noticed, yes, my videos are coming out a little less frequently lately. That's just life, but there is something important I wanted to let you know about. The podcast, Watson Joe Mind, is doing a virtual Joe Con from May 4th to May 10th. I will put a link in the description of this video. Please check it out. They are also raising money for a charity World Central Kitchen. I have already donated, and I will be donating more during the virtual Joe Con. Thanks to Watson Joe Mind for helping bring back some Joe Con memories for us. Thanks for watching. I will try to be back next week with another G.I. Joe review. It really just depends on how much time I have to work on videos, but I really will try. In the meantime, I will be doing the live stream on Tuesday evening. So I hope to see you then. Thank you for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, I'm making more like it. So please give this video a thumbs up on YouTube. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Hit the notification bell so you don't miss any future videos and share this video with your friends. That's what helps this channel grow. You can find me on social media on Facebook and Twitter and I have a website hcc788.com If you want to know if I've already reviewed a vintage G.I. Joe item, that's a good place to check. Special thanks to all my supporters on Patreon, including the names you see on the screen now. Support on Patreon helps keep this show going. So if you like this show and you'd like to support this show in that way, please consider checking out Patreon. You can get some special rewards, including early access to reviews and you can find out how to decode the secret messages you see in these videos. Thank you for joining me on this adventure of collecting vintage G.I. Joe toys. I'll see you next time. And until then, remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe.