 Hello G.I. Joe fans, this is the second review of the year 2020 and as announced last week, this year we will be focusing on G.I. Joe from the 1990s. This week we are looking at Incinerators. How can I describe this figure? Imagine this, but the whole face. Commander 788 here, this is the show where we review every vintage G.I. Joe toy from 1982 to 1994. There is a rift in the G.I. Joe fan community between fans of 80s G.I. Joe and fans of 90s G.I. Joe. Although I am definitely a fan of 80s G.I. Joe, I don't think there should be a rift between us. There's plenty to like about both decades. The figure we're looking at today though will not build bridges. It has a lot of elements of the 90s style that 80s fans find so distasteful. I will struggle to find good things to say about it. But we always strive to be fair on this show, so we will give Incinerators a fair look. And before 80s G.I. Joe fans comment too harshly on the 90s stuff, keep this in mind. Fans of 90s G.I. Joe are mostly younger than us. As we age out of the hobby, they will eventually become the majority. As our families sell off our collections to pay for our nursing homes, they will be the ones buying it up. So be nice to them. They may be deciding what nursing home we go to. HCC788 presents Incinerators. This is the 1991 Incinerators, the Cobra flamethrowers. This figure was first available in 1991 and it was sold in 1991 only. It was discontinued for 1992. This is the only version of Incinerators in the vintage line. Incinerator was Cobra's first dedicated flamethrower. G.I. Joe's first flamethrower was Blowtorch in 1984. G.I. Joe was eight years ahead of Cobra in the flamethrower department. G.I. Joe even had a second flamethrower, 1988 Charbroil, before Cobra even had its first. There were some predecessors to Incinerator, though they weren't dedicated flamethrowers. The 1983 Snake Armor had a flamethrower attachment. The 1985 Dreadnock Torch was sometimes depicted as using a flamethrower, though his accessory is really an acetylene torch, not a flamethrower. The 1986 Cobra Bat had a flamethrower arm attachment. It's weird, Cobra had a reptile trainer and a bird man before they had a flamethrower. The flamethrower is an especially cruel and brutal weapon, so I would expect Cobra to get right on that. In 1989, Cobra had the Heat Viper, but despite the name, he had nothing to do with fire. The US used infantry-held flamethrowers through the Vietnam era. They haven't been used since 1978. They have a few problems. Their effectiveness as an infantry weapon was limited. Also, certain uses of the flamethrower are restricted under Protocol 3 of the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons. Of course, Cobra isn't a signatory to the treaty, so they wouldn't care about that. Flamethrowers have some limitations which could be a problem in the field. The fuel is heavy and the range is limited. It makes more sense to put it on a vehicle like a tank. If you can get close enough, though, it's an effective way to clear a pillbox. And it roasts your enemy to death, so there's that. Let's look at Incinerator's accessories, and let's start with that flamethrower. It is the star of the show. The flamethrower is molded in silver plastic. It has a foregrip, and it has a peg in the back for connecting the black hose. It is a pretty good-looking weapon. This accessory was reused numerous times. It was reused for the 1993 Crimson Guard Commander. It was also reused for the 1993 Eels Version 3, 1993 Mega Viper, and 1993 Cyber Viper. Here has a black hose that connects to that peg, and that black hose then connects to the backpack. But the instructions on the card are wrong. If you will note, on the card, it shows the backpack on the figure with the fuel tank at the bottom, and the peg is at the top on the right side. But on the figure, when the backpack is oriented that way, the peg is on the left side. Let's pop out that black hose and take a look at that backpack. The backpack is molded in black plastic, and it has some nice detail on it. It's got what looks like fuel tanks for the flamethrower, some hoses. It has a couple pegs at the top, and those pegs will fit that black hose. So if you want your incinerators carrying their flamethrower in the right hand, you can peg it into the backpack that way. Also, even though the backpack is supposed to be put on the figure like this with this tank on the bottom. It looks pretty good the other way, so you can really put this on any way you want. You are probably wondering what this is. Well, this, my friends, is a catapult. The card contents call it a catapult incendiary grenade launcher. The catapult itself is in silver plastic, and it has four parts. The catapult arm, this brace piece, the base, and this lever that serves as a trigger. The catapult is rubber band powered. The accessory originally came with its own rubber band. Well, I don't have the original rubber band, and even if I did, it probably wouldn't be any good anyway. So this is a substitute rubber band. I will demonstrate how this thing launches in a moment, but I will warn you, this rubber band is a bit underpowered, so it doesn't really launch very well. This catapult can launch these two included flame canisters. They are these translucent orange balls, and I guess once they launch off of the catapult, they become great balls of fire. Let's go ahead and demonstrate how to use the catapult. These flame canisters on one side have slots, and this center slot lines up with the head of the catapult. It just slides on there. Then you just pull the arm of the catapult all the way back, and then move the lever forward to hold it. Then when you're ready to launch, you just push the lever back, and it will launch. I'm going to bring out Dr. Meinbender as a target. I am not sure this catapult will knock him down, but we're going to try to aim it. This is going to be a little harder to aim than the spring-loaded missile launchers, but we'll give it a try anyway. Let's see if we can take Dr. Meinbender out. Fire! Honestly, that worked better than I expected. GI Joe did a couple other catapults similar to this. The 1992 General Flag included a catapult with basically the same mechanism, but instead of firing great balls of fire, it fired a missile. Another catapult showed up on a vehicle, the 1992 Parasite, which had a catapult that was very similar to incinerators. Let's take a look at the articulation on incinerators. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures before 1992. 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. Because of how wide the chest is, the arms will not rest all the way down to the sides. Some other 90s figures had that problem too. This is an o-ring figure, meaning the figure is held together with a rubber o-ring that loops 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 sculpt design and color of incinerators. Incinerators had a gray helmet. It's kind of a silvery gray. He has a plain red face mask. I think his face looks like a marble. The gray helmet comes to a point in the center. If it had two points, it would have looked like fangs. Instead, it looks kind of like a heart. I should have done this review for Valentine's Day. There's something not quite right about this head. That plain red mask just doesn't look like it has a human face behind it. GI Joe figures have had featureless face masks before. Of course, Cobra Commander has a mask that showed none of his features. It's a plain featureless mask similar to incinerators. But that mask had a better shape and you could imagine a person's face behind it. And of course, the 1986 Viper had a plain face mask. But he also had a helmet that gave the head some depth. Incinerator's mask is relatively flat. There is no contour for a human nose or chin. Maybe his nose is pressed up against the inside of it. Incinerator looks more like a robot to me. It just doesn't look like a human head. 1988's Star Viper had a similar helmet. But the black helmet and the mouthpiece give it a better overall shape. 1989 Track Viper had a similar head with a plain red face mask surrounded by a helmet. I think it looked odd there too. Moving on to the chest, we have a red vest with a quilted pattern. We have silver crossed straps with silver shoulder pads. We have a red cobra emblem on a silver disc in the center of the chest. That sculpted cobra emblem there on the chest is pretty nice. Other than that though, it's kind of plain and lacking in detail. He has orange arms and the arms have silver strips running down the upper arms and the forearms. Because of the articulation, the silver strip does not continue over the elbow joints. That orange plastic has a texture on it, a bumpy texture. He has silver forearm guards and red gloves. On his waist piece, he has a silver belt. He has a buckle there in the center. And on the sides, he has silver strips that run down to his legs. And once again, that orange plastic has texture to it. But once again, it also doesn't have much detail besides that. He has orange legs with more of that texture on them. He has silver strips that run down the length of both thighs. He has silver shin guards and protruding knee pads. And he has black boots with silver armor on top. I like the idea of texture, but texture is not detail. When texture takes the place of detail, the figure looks kind of plain. That's the problem with Incinerator. He has big blocks of color without a lot of detail to break it up. I understand the texture is supposed to represent heat resistant material, but the figure needs more than that. Contrast that with blowtorch. The colors are much more broken up, and there are details and areas of interest all over the figure. You get the idea of the heat resistant suit through the details, not just texture. Let's take a look at Incinerator's file card. The file card has his faction as Cobra, has a portrait of Incinerators here. The shape of the head in the artwork is a little different from the figure, and I like it a little better. The codename is Incinerator's. It's plural. This is an army builder. It's not an individual. He is the Cobra flamethrowers. One thing I notice on this file card is the text is kind of sparse. There's not a lot here. Vehicle proficiency Cobra Grade 6 and license to operate Rage and Piranha. Vehicle proficiency is a new thing. I don't recall seeing that on any other file cards. This is an early attempt to cross sell vehicles on a figure file card. The Rage and the Piranha were vehicles that you could buy. Unfortunately this has the same problem as other attempts to cross market the vehicles on the figure file cards. The Rage and the Piranha were released in 1990 and were discontinued by 1991. So by the time this figure was released in 1991, it was too late to buy those vehicles. As Tom Paragraph says, Incinerators are flame weapon and arson specialists of the Cobra legions. They are equipped with state of the art fluorocarbon propellant flame projectors which not only spew burning streams of jelly gasoline, but also destroy the ozone layer. In case from head to foot in fire resistant air conditioned fighting suits, incinerators can take the heat as well as they can dish it out. Their anti-environmentalist side effect suggests they could have been in the eco-warriors sub-line. They could have worked for cesspool. This bottom paragraph says, GI Joes, who have confronted incinerators in the field, report that if the wind is right you can smell them. A pungent whiff of gas, charcoal and hot metal. You can also hear the gas sloshing in their tanks and the metallic scraping sound of their spark igniters is a clear warning to take cover. This second paragraph is a bit better than the first. It's more colorful and descriptive. Looking at how incinerators were used in GI Jo media, there's not much to look at. They appeared a few times in the geek era of the animated series, but they had very little exposure. Their longest screen time was in the episode Cobra World. Their impact on the animated series was minimal. They had no appearances in the GI Jo comic book series published by Marvel Comics that I can find. Looking at incinerators overall, I am not a fan of this figure. I know a lot of you are. I've heard from some of you who really dig this guy. And that's good. You should not let some schmo on the internet dissuade you from enjoying something. For me, this figure has a lot of elements that I usually find distasteful. The colors are obnoxious. I can usually overlook bright colors on Cobra action figures, but in this case the colors are just so over the top. The figure doesn't have any unpainted details, which is usually good, but that's because it doesn't have a lot of details. The texture is a fine idea, but it shouldn't be a substitute for detail. One detail that is there, and is excellent, is the molded-in Cobra emblem on the chest. That's better than just a stamp. There's no question what faction this guy belongs to. The head is just odd. Cobra has a lot of full face covering masks. That's not what's odd about it. This mask doesn't look like it has a human face behind it. It looks like a red marble with a helmet. I'm not the biggest fan of the spring-powered weapons that came with 90s G.I. Joe, while here we have one that is rubber band powered. Is that better? I don't know. It just didn't fit with my play pattern with G.I. Joe, but it worked for a lot of other kids, so okay. Fans of 90s G.I. Joe do not be distressed just because this figure did not build bridges between us. We'll be looking at a lot of 90s toys this year that will. That was my review of Incinerators. I hope you enjoyed it. As I was getting this figure ready to review, as with some other figures, I had to get multiples in order to piece together one complete one. So I ended up with four extra incinerators. I do not need four extra incinerators, so I'm going to give them away. I do a live stream on this channel every Tuesday evening. This Tuesday I'm going to do a little trivia quiz and I'm going to give away my four extra figures. I have to say something about FormBX257. He is my favorite G.I. Joe toy reviewer on YouTube. And by coincidence, the first two items I reviewed this year have been items that he has already reviewed in the past. I purposefully did not go back and watch his reviews before I recorded mine because I didn't want to subconsciously plagiarize him. I did go back and watch them after I recorded these and I was struck by how good they are. Kevin covers everything so thoroughly and so well. It's hard to add anything to what he's already done. I want to give him credit for his hard work and dedication. If you are not watching FormBX257 on YouTube, I strongly suggest you do. I've worked with him a few times and he's a great guy. 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 GI 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 GI Joe toys. I'll see you next time and until then remember, only GI Joe is GI Joe. Great balls of fire.