 Hello everybody, HoodedCobraCommander788 here and it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here, so we're going to look at an appropriately wintery vehicle, the 1983 Polar Battle Bear, and we can't look at the Polar Battle Bear without also looking a little bit at GI Joe's first Arctic Trooper snow job. Wait a minute, in last week's review video the action figure had a beard. No job has a beard, Santa Claus has a beard, I think we have a theme month introducing beard months in December 2015 only on the HoodedCobraCommander788 channel. We got all beards, we got them all month, no channel dares to focus on facial hair like this channel does, all of December 2015, all beards all the time, all the beards you can handle. It's not going to be beard month, that's stupid, I suck at theme months, let's just look at the toy. This is the 1983 GI Joe's Schemobile, the Polar Battle Bear. It was introduced in 1983, it was also available in 1984. It was discontinued for the year 1985 when it was replaced by the 1985 Snowcat which was a much larger vehicle and it came with an action figure, Frostbite. The Polar Battle Bear was later available through mail away offers like this one in this catalog, you can see it right there and you can just send in five flag points and three dollars and get one. The Polar Battle Bear was worth two flag points and it did not come with an action figure but it is usually paired with Snowjob, GI Joe's first arctic trooper and the only cold weather specialist in GI Joe at the time. Even the box art for the Polar Battle Bear shows Snowjob driving it. The box for the Polar Battle Bear calls it a Schemobile but this type of vehicle is usually referred to as a snowmobile, a snowmobile is a small tracked vehicle with front skis for transportation over snow and ice and they're usually used for recreation and sport. I have searched for modern military uses of snowmobiles and I've mainly found them used in other countries. In the United States the main military use I've found for snowmobiles is in the context of racing and not combat. When I searched for real military vehicles that were used in arctic environments it seemed like they were mostly painted green not white. This is a mostly white vehicle but it does have several large areas of solid black and I think that's an unusual choice. Now my Polar Battle Bear is white but it has in my eyes almost an ashy color especially if you compare it to a white figure. It has almost a very very light gray color. I don't know if this is discoloration over time but I have owned several Polar Battle Bears now and they all seem to have that sort of ashy color. The Polar Battle Bear came with an instruction sheet and on the flip side of it was blueprints and that describes some of the features and I will be referring to this as we look at this vehicle. Let's look at the parts and features of the Polar Battle Bear starting in the front and in the front here it has what the blueprints call synchronized twin 55 millimeter cannons and they can be moved from left to right with this slide on either side just move that back and forth and the guns will move left and right. The front of the box for the Polar Battle Bear call these twin laser blasters and I'm not a fan of including lasers in GI Joe any more than necessary. They look like machine guns and the blueprints call them cannons so I think we can just go with that. The entry for the Polar Battle Bear in GI Joe order of battle issue number four refers to these guns as 50 caliber machine guns with 650 rounds each. So whether you want these to be 55 millimeter cannons or 50 caliber machine guns or twin laser blasters just take your pick. The Polar Battle Bear's other armament was a pair of missiles mounted on the skis. They mounted on this slot here and these are small missiles the blueprints just refer to them as heat seeking missiles. They are pretty easily lost they don't stay on very well. So watch out for that these can pop out very easily and get lost. In the front it has these skis for steering and they can turn left to right and they are mounted on this single point right here and I see a lot of these skis broken at that point so do watch out for that. It has a single halogen headlamp with a sticker and it has the Polar Battle Bear insignia and that's kind of a cruddy sticker for which I apologize but that is a really cool symbol right there with the Polar Bear and a red dagger through it that's pretty awesome. I would have loved to see this insignia somewhere on the snow job action figure that would have made a pretty cool patch for the figure. This large black section the blueprints refer to as a bullet proof acrylic windshield. I'm not sure how well this works as a windshield it's awfully low but from a design perspective I do like the large block of black offsetting the white. That's not really very practical as snow camouflage but from a design perspective that does look nice. Winging it around we have this grey control yoke with some sticker instrument panels and there are some more instruments down by the knees of the driver. The driver's seat has ridges and it has kind of an unusual shape it kind of dips down here and the blueprints call this body contoured but it does make it a little bit difficult to get the action figure in the driver's seat. Let's put the snow job action figure in the driver's seat as he should be. Now because of the shape of the driver's seat it doesn't give a lot of clearance for the feet of the action figure but you can get him down in there he sits comfortably in the seat and the hands of the action figure will fit on the control handles. Behind the driver there is this grey bar and it has two hand grips and those hand grips do work. They are small enough that they can fit in the hand of the action figure you don't have to worry about breaking the thumbs on the figure. Related to this grab bar is this troop carrying platform running board on each side and there's a foot peg on each side so you can carry two additional action figures on this vehicle. Just put the foot peg in the hole in the bottom of the action figure's feet and there's this square hole in the back and you can put the action figures other foot in there. Just mount him on there like that and he will hold on very securely. With the figure holding on to the grab bar as well he's on there very securely he's not going to fall off very easily. Behind the grab bar is this engine cover with a tail light and that can be removed. These tabs just slot into these slots on either side and these tabs can break off in the slots so be careful when you're removing this. Under the engine cover there's some nice engine detail. The polar battle bear has fake treads with these sculpted on bogies. It actually rolls on these wheels. This one has some scuffing on the underside. The way this is sculpted it looks like it's driven on a single tread and there are single treaded snowmobiles that's very common but the way that this is designed with the bogies sort of attached from the inside I think this would really be a two treaded vehicle. Finally in the back it has a universal tow hook which most vehicles should have that is good but I'm not very clear on what it should be towing. G.I. Joe did have some towed weapons but a lot of them were the same size or bigger than the polar battle bear and it will look kind of odd for the polar battle bear to be towing one of those. So it should tow something small and the smallest towed weapon that I can think of is the 1982 mobile missile system the MMS. Now I'm not very fond of this pairing but if the polar battle bear is towing anything larger than this it's going to look like the tail wagging the dog. The polar battle bear did appear in G.I. Joe media in the 80s and the cartoon it first appeared in the G.I. Joe a real American hero miniseries part two. I really liked those snow scenes in the G.I. Joe cartoon mainly because we got to see snake eyes and we did not get to see nearly enough of snake eyes in the G.I. Joe cartoon. In the G.I. Joe comic book it first appeared in famous issue number 11 which introduced a lot of new characters and vehicles for 1983 and there it is right there on the cover. I like to display the polar battle bear recreating that famous cover from issue number 11 with snow job driving and with Doc holding on to his hat. Looking at the polar battle bear overall it is not the most memorable vehicle it would later be overshadowed by larger vehicles that sort of took over its role. Also although I did have this vehicle as a kid I didn't play with it very much. In Oklahoma we do get snow but not very much of it so this vehicle may have been more important to kids who grew up in a colder climate. For the size though it is an excellent vehicle it's realistic looking it's adequately armed and it gave snow job something to do as he was the only arctic trooper at the time so it enhanced his role on the team. Rating this vehicle I have to put it in the middle tier there just isn't enough going on here for it to be a top tier vehicle in my mind and it was indeed overshadowed by later vehicles like the snow cat which was much larger and had a lot more features. Also it came with an action figure and since the polar battle bear had skis on the front they really only worked in a snowy environment it's not a very versatile vehicle whereas the snow cat had wheels so it could go anywhere. The polar battle bear did have an important role in the evolution of GI Joe though it opened them up to a new environment they weren't all green at this point and if you did like snow missions then you could put the polar battle bear with some of the figures and vehicles that came later like the snow cat and frostbite and iceberg and you can form kind of a nice little arctic squad. That was my review of the 1983 polar battle bear I hope you enjoyed it and if you're thinking of getting one I hope you found this video informative. If you liked it make sure you give it a big thumbs up on YouTube and don't forget to subscribe. I've got a lot of great new GI Joe toy reviews coming up you don't want to miss them and don't forget to like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter you get a lot of updates there you don't get anywhere else. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review. Cobra's attack near a winter outpost. Calling the members of the GI Joe team. And here's Gung Ho, Airborne, Doc, and Snowjob and every Joe has a two-handed battle grip. Get aboard the battle bear. It's GI Joe to the rescue. GI Joe battle bear Joe and Cobra figures each sold separately from Hasbro.