 Hello everybody, Hooded Copercamander788 here and I am doing my first ever 1980s GI Joe vehicle toy review. And I wanted to start it out with one of my all time favorites, the 1983 Dragonfly Helicopter with its pilot, Wild Bill. The Dragonfly Helicopter was designated on the packaging as the Dragonfly X-H1 Assault Helicopter. And of course it was modeled after the US military's AH-1 Cobra Assault Helicopter. And about now I will cut in a non-copyrighted photo of the AH-1 so you can compare the two. I think the Dragonfly is a pretty good representation of the AH-1 Cobra. There are a few changes in the translation from a real military helicopter to a smaller sized toy like this but still looks pretty good. Now the Dragonfly was released in 1983 and it was discontinued in 1986 when it was replaced by the new GI Joe helicopter the Tomahawk. I will get to the Tomahawk a little bit later. On the packaging of GI Joe vehicles and action figures at the time they had flag points that you could cut out of the packaging and send in for special mail away offers. For example, I don't have the Dragonfly box but this Fang Helicopter box still has the flag points and as you can see that's a two flag point value. The Dragonfly here was worth four flag points, twice as many flag points as the Fang Helicopter. It was a more expensive toy and it came with an action figure so really the bigger and more expensive the toy was usually the more flag points you got from it. Now let's take a look at the different parts of the Dragonfly. Of course we have the gun turret. This chin turret of course is very prominent and it's pretty cool looking. There were two versions of this turret. I have the later version. There was an earlier version that not only swiveled from side to side like this but also would elevate. This later version they just made it one solid piece of plastic instead of having the internal part that would elevate the guns. It turns about this far as you can see it doesn't turn all the way around and on the chin turret it has what the Blue Planet prints call a grenade launcher this thing which actually looks more like maybe a radar array or some kind of maybe infrared sensor something like that more than a grenade launcher and a 25 millimeter Vulcan Gatling gun. I can tell you that was one of my favorite features on this vehicle when I was a kid. On the side here molding on there is what the blueprints call an X551 60 millimeter mini cannon and as if it didn't have quite enough guns on it it has this side gun here which the blueprints call a laser guided 166 millimeter cannon pod. This cannon pod came in two parts and it's often missing on these dragonflies because if you don't have this hose piece that connects to the side here pull that out so you can see what I mean without breaking it there we go. If this is missing the gun doesn't actually fit and stay on the side it needs the hose really for that second piece of support there is a hole in peg here but that's this peg is easily going to break off or it'll just fall off so it's one of those things where you really need both of the parts to secure the side cannon onto the helicopter it has removable engine covers if I can remove it without breaking it here and you can see the engine detail some nice engine details same thing on the other side now on the back here it has an engine exhaust which of course when we were kids these were jet engines so we would pretend that the helicopter was jet powered and would fly super fast through the air it has an opening canopy and of course the pilot wild bill we'll talk about a little bit later let's set wild bill aside for the moment the cockpit has some detail has some stickers there for instrument panels but other than that the seats are pretty plain there are no back pegs on the seats the figures pretty much just sit in there and they sit pretty deeply so they're pretty secure in there they don't need back pegs or foot pegs in the bottom to hold them in place but other than the the sticker control panels it was pretty plain cockpit let's take a look at the missiles the blueprints on this I want to be careful with this because they do they do go in very firmly and I don't want to break the stabilizer here this one the blueprints call a sidewinder he missile he I believe standing for high explosive and this one the blueprints called a sidewinder air-to-ground missile and there are the same missiles on the other side one of the nice play features on this helicopter was the rescue winch and hook which on the bottom had this little little wheel here that you can turn and would it would roll the the rope and winch hook out and then you turn of course the other way to reel it back in that was a very nice feature on this vehicle on the rear here a feature that I don't think was on the actual a h1 cobra helicopter is this mysterious thing here which the blueprints call a counter rotating turbine which I guess is supposed to eliminate the need to have a rear or a tail rotor to stabilize the helicopter instead of in the place of a tail rotor it has kind of this second sort of diagonal stabilizer these skids as you can see have foot pegs which you can use to place figures using the holes in their feet that would fit into foot pegs but really I think the foot pegs on this are a little bit thick you can squeeze a figure on there but they don't fit well and I would be concerned about cracking the heels on these figures trying to force them into these foot pegs so I would just leave those for show even though it has a sticker there that says it's a it's a step I would just not step do not step on that instead just have your figures right on the inside where it's nice and safe let's take a look at the blades unfortunately these helicopter blades like most of the helicopters of the gi joe toy line are susceptible to drooping and these are not nearly as bad as many that I've seen they're drooping a little bit but they can kind of be straightened out here if you're going to store this and not have it out on display then it might be a good idea to use secure these with something straight something flat that will kind of keep them out and kind of prevent some of the the drooping a little bit at the end of the blades we had these sort of safety cap things they're rubbery and those are also often missing I guess that was a safety feature for the kids because these blades could whack a kid in the eye a nice little detail on the end here looks like looks like they might be like running lights or something like that on the end of these so that's kind of nice but the main play feature that everybody loved was the automatic rotating helicopter blades which were activated by this trigger here on the side which you would push forward and it would cause the blades to spin let's get the nice view at that and you could get them going pretty fast if you timed the trigger right and caught it hold really good and those blades could really move however I do have to caution you the most natural way to hold this and activate the trigger is to hold the tail like a handle and push it forward like this however I've noticed that holding it that way your hand naturally tends to put pressure on this stabilizer here and mine as you can see is showing some white plastic strain and I'm concerned about this eventually breaking if I put too much pressure on it so I don't hold it like that anymore I usually always hold it from underneath another consequence of holding it like that is that it rubs the stickers off on both sides in fact there's some wear on the stickers because it has been held I think the most natural way so if you have a dragonfly first of all if or if you're looking for a dragonfly to purchase take a look at this stabilizer and see if it has some stress and if you can find one that doesn't by all means don't add stress to it if you want to activate the blades just try to try to hold it down here like this it's it's going to be much easier on the plastic and avoid breaking this nice collectible toy now I mentioned that the blades were susceptible to drooping and I also mentioned that the dragonfly was replaced by the 1986 tomahawk helicopter so let's look at the tomahawk just very briefly this is a review of the dragonfly not the tomahawk so we'll we'll just give the tomahawk a quick glance as you can see the tomahawk is a much bigger helicopter and it's got the two top rotator blades instead of the single bladed dragonfly it's got kind of an open cargo bay here and it kind of continued the trend of uh hasbro replacing older vehicles with bigger newer vehicles that wasn't always the case for instance they replaced the 1983 sky striker with the conquest jet which was in fact smaller but in this case we've got a really much bigger helicopter replacing the dragonfly and it's got it still has a nice military style look to it so it's still pretty cool but the feature that I wanted to point out was the blade drooping now I have the blades I've taken them out and I flipped them over to hopefully let gravity pull them back down but the tomahawk blades are even more susceptible to drooping than the dragonfly helicopter was I mean these are longer and even thinner plastic than the dragonfly and I mean just imagine these flipped over as they were when I got it they were very droopy and this this one in particular was at a drooped at a pretty extreme angle so that's something to think about when you are looking for a tomahawk helicopter check out those uh helicopter blades if you get one with droopy blades you will probably have to end up doing some work on them to uh make it look a little bit better now I want to before we move on to look at the action figure I do want to make one note about the sticker on the side of the dragonfly this says master sergeant wc culbert now you you may wonder who this person is it isn't wild bill that's not his file name nor is it the name of any member of the gi joe team this name is actually the name of the sculptor who worked for hasbro who sculpted the dragonfly uh his name was bill culbertson and um I guess in his honor he got his name on the dragonfly itself now let's look at the figure that came with the dragonfly while bill wild bill had the typical articulation of 1983 gi joe action figures he had the swivel arm which meant that his arm would swivel at the bicep he had uh articulation here at the elbow and unfortunately I have a crack on this elbow but fortunately wild bill is a pretty easy figure to find and so if you have problems with your wild bill chances are you will be able to find a replacement without too much trouble wild bill is made out of this light green plastic which unfortunately for hasbro uh historically uh has been susceptible to cracking it's it's fairly fragile but I think that they must have changed the plastic somewhat by the time they got to uh wild wild bill in 1983 because I don't see nearly as many broken wild bills as I do of zap and stealer and stalker who were also made out of light green plastic the light green plastic is subject to discoloration as you can see here in the elbows we've got some uh sort of yellowing uh it looks more slightly more brown than the rest of the arm additional articulation as with the 1982 83 and 84 gi joe figures he could turn his head from side to side um later issues of gi joe action figures had a ball joint rather than just a swivel so they could look up and down but not wild bill he can only look left and right these figures had an o-ring construction which means that there's a rubber band inside that holds the whole figure together and allows him to bend here at the torso allows his waist to bend a little bit not a great deal he's got a waist piece that allows his legs to move about about 90 degrees he's got articulation here at the knee and that's about it as far as the articulation goes now let's look at the sculpt of this figure the most prominent part of the figure that of course everybody's going to notice first is the hat it's kind of uh looks like a union cavalry hat from the civil war uh it's got a really nice kind of rope around the top here and it looks like a cowboy hat and of course wild bill is supposed to evoke the cowboy motif in addition he has a vest a brown vest and a knife sculpted in here he has dog tags sculpted on his open collar and bare chest and if you can see that try to get that on camera unfortunately the dog tags are not painted they're not silver as you might expect but they're just kind of molded on there and the painted the same color as his skin he's got some nice sunglasses which are silver metallic paint and as you may know anytime you see the silver metallic color colors on gijo action figures that tends to wear off very easily so if you're looking for a wild bill action figure take a look at his sunglasses and see if the silver paint has worn off very much on those he's got a pretty nice mustache a nice magnum pi mustache kind of reddish hair another very prominent feature and continuing with the cowboy motif is uh his six guns his six shooters that are molded on to his holsters so he could cross draw in case you can't articulate the character quite well enough to cross draw in case he could reach around here but nice night i that's a really nice feature it's pretty neat some white handles and he's got pockets here on his legs and and some boots that don't look like your typical um military issue boots i think they're also supposed to evoke the cowboy boot style and let's not forget the kind of uh bull's head belt buckle which again says that this guy is a cowboy let's take a look at wild bill's file card this file card was on the back of the box for the dragonfly and you were encouraged to cut that out there's nothing on the backing just plain cardboard because it was the back of a box it says his uh of course the helicopter pilot and his codename is wild bill his file name is william s hardy so his name is bill it's got a serial number uh his primary military specialty is helicopter pilot no surprise there secondary military specialty fixed wing pilot uh aircraft armorer so i guess uh as a fixed wing pilot he could fly a an airplane his birthplace is brady texas which um of course continues with the idea that this is a cowboy and up in this top section here it says hardy served as combat infantrymen and participated in l r r p long range reconnaissance patrol operations during southeast asian debacle in other words vietnam reenlisted for flight warrant officer school and has since remained in the service specialized training classified apparently he's got some secret training that we can't know about qualified expert uh m 11 9 1 a auto pistol uh prefers single action 45 cult revolvers which they've given them here and x n 16 attack rifle down here it says amiable and slow talking fancies himself a country western singer totally honest in personal dealings but not beyond spinning a tall tale for the amusement of comrades so that's wild bill and his file card some nice card art here i think that looks really good and we can't finish a review of the dragonfly helicopter without talking about airborne airborne of course did not come with the dragonfly helicopter and there was nothing um about his character a file card that really necessarily specified him as a companion to the dragonfly helicopter uh however i he really does fit well with the dragonfly and his file card indicates that his secondary military specialty is helicopter gunship gunner i think the best way to display the dragonfly helicopter with its full complement of crew is to have airborne as the gunner his feet will actually go down into the well that's created by the chin gun here and you have to kind of push him down a little bit and sometimes this this chin gun will pop off but get him in there and then have wild bill in the pilot seat which is actually the rear seat of this helicopter get in there wild bill and there you go pilot and gunner all ready to go well that's my review of the 1983 dragonfly helicopter i hope you enjoyed it if you're looking for a dragonfly to add to your collection i hope that this was helpful uh and uh thanks for watching and look for more videos in the near future