 Cobra Commander 788 here. Bacca! K.V.R. so great. Top Gear glove. G.I. Joe. Swatter rising! Sgt. Sgt. Wait a minute. Ready. Ready. Ready. Silence skill. Oh everybody, Cobra Commander 788 here. It's time for another vintage figure on the inside. Cool! Why could possibly go wrong? 257. All-time, favourite, classic, G.I. Joe, online reviewer. I'm sensing something. There's a stirring down below. My dimensionally transcendental time trousers are trying to tell me something. He's arrived. He's arrived. Hootster! How's my all-time favourite classic G.I. Joe reviewer? Cyber Tiger! Nice to see you, buddy. I'm glad to see that you have arrived safely. I trust that your journey was, um, comfortable. You brought me here? Welcome to my country. Wait a minute. England! Welcome to the United Kingdom, mate. Would you like a cup of tea? No, thank you. I would offer you a scone, but unfortunately, a raiding party of Silurians have eaten me out of house and home. I already ate. Aha! Would you like some Marmite? Would you like some of my personalised Marmite? No! Sorry for bringing you here without warning, Hootster. But I had a special need for your presence. Your G.I. Joe show is American-centric by its very nature, but there was a lot of G.I. Joe outside of the U.S. I know there are a lot of international Joes, but I haven't been able to review them. I'm trying to keep my collection limited to U.S. domestic releases only. Trust me, if I started getting the international stuff, I'd have nothing but toys from floor to ceiling in every room of my house. I'm failing to see the problem with this, Hootster. Anyway, you want me to look at non-U.S. toys? That's right. Now, as you may know, we had G.I. Joe here in the U.K. Before it was called G.I. Joe, it was called Action Force. And before it looked like American G.I. Joe, it had its own uniquely British origin. That is why I bought you here. Rather skillfully as well, I might add. I bought you here to review them. To review the original British Action Force. That sounds like a fantastic idea. I've always wanted to get a closer look at early Action Force figures. I'd be happy to review them, but you're gonna have to help me out. I don't know much about Action Force. Oh, not to worry, old bean. I'll help you through it. Great. Let's get started. HCC788 and CyberTiger Retro Showcase & Reviews present Action Force. For this review, CyberTiger generously loaned his Action Force figures. This review would not be possible without his help. This is as much CyberTiger's review as it is mine. Thank you, CyberTiger, for making this review happen. Thanks also to Jim Marshall from bloodforthebaron.com. Blood for the Baron is the primary destination for all Action Force information. It's like the yojo.com for Action Force. The archive is second to none. Jim generously provided images and background material for this review. Thank you, Jim. I was probably one of the few American kids who knew of the existence of Action Force. One of my childhood friends moved to London with his family and lived there for a year. When he returned, we reconnected. We were both GI Joe fans, so I asked him if they had GI Joe in England. He said they did, but it was called Action Force. I thought it was odd that they changed the name, but otherwise I didn't think anything about it. I didn't hear anything about Action Force again until, many years later, as an adult collector of GI Joe, I was looking into the international variations. At the first sight of Action Force, that childhood memory came rushing back. This was something I had heard of before. Action Force intrigues me, especially early Action Force, which was wildly different from the GI Joe we got in the US. Unfortunately, I have chosen to limit my collection to US releases only. So as much as I am drawn to Action Force, I must admire it from afar. The story of Action Force begins, as with all things related to GI Joe, in 1964. Hasbro released the first 12 inch tall GI Joe figure to the market. The 12 inch articulated soldier dolls, which the company rebranded Action Figures, were a smashing success. In 1965, a British company called Castle Lloyd negotiated with Hasbro to manufacture GI Joe in the UK. The British GI Joe would be called Action Man. It would be produced under the banner of Castle Lloyd's toy division, Palatoy. Early Action Man was very similar to his American counterpart, but Palatoy would add its own innovations in later years. GI Joe's lifelike flocked hair and kung fu grip both had British origins. In the 1970s, Action Man followed GI Joe's trend away from military realism. In 1974, Action Man got his own version of GI Joe's adventure team called the Action Team. Atomic Man, Bullet Man, and the Intruder were all included in the UK's Action Man lineup. In the late 1970s, toy trends changed. GI Joe passed away. Toy companies had more success with smaller, cheaper Action Figures. Fisher Price created Adventure People, miniature Action Figures that averaged 3.5 inches tall. More importantly, US toy company Kenner got the license to make Star Wars Action Figures. The success of Star Wars cemented the new standard Action Figure Scale, 1 18th or about 3 3 quarter inches tall. Independently, Hasbro in the United States and Palatoy in the UK were working to take advantage of the popularity of the smaller scale Action Figure trend. Hasbro launched GI Joe, a real American hero in 1982. That same year, Palatoy introduced a new branch of Action Man, Action Force. At this point, GI Joe and Action Force were more dissimilar than they were alike. They both aimed at full military realism. GI Joe figures, though, were highly articulated O-ring figures. Action Force figures had minimal articulation like their Star Wars cousins. In 1982, Action Force figures were mostly generic soldiers with different specialties. This is the ground assault figure. This figure is an unnamed soldier camouflaged for a desert mission. The articulation is limited, as Star Wars figures were, so 5 points of articulation at the head, at the shoulders, at the hip, and that's about it. However, there is an upside to less articulation. There aren't as many joints on the figure to break up the sculpting. And the sculpting is excellent. The two-tone camouflage pattern is better than what we got on most GI Joe figures. This is the Arctic Assault figure. It's just a recolored ground assault figure. The original sculpt is so versatile, it works well for an Arctic Trooper too. It also has that two-tone camouflage pattern, and in fact, it's the same camouflage pattern just in different colors. There's no reason to create a new paint mask when you can just reuse the old one. Also from 1982, we have the Mission Pilot. This is the plainest of the examples we have from 1982. There's not much to them, but at least Action Force had a flying vehicle in 1982. In 1982, Action Force had the AF-5 multi-mission vehicle. It was a land rover with pop-out wings. The closest GI Joe had to a flying vehicle in 1982 was the Jump Jetpack. In 1983, Action Force became more sophisticated. The figure sculpts became more detailed. They started to move away from generic military figures to individual characters within a defined universe. The Action Force team was divided into four units. SAS were Special Forces Commandos. In the real world, SAS is the British Special Air Service, a Special Forces unit of the British Army. Z Force were the Marines, and a very popular segment of Action Force. Q Force consisted of naval vessels and aquatic specialists. Space Force is self-explanatory. Like GI Joe, there were elements of science fiction in Action Force early on. Not surprising considering the popularity of Star Wars toys at the time. This is the Z Force infantryman. Look at how well detailed this figure is. That all-over camouflage paint job is beautiful. It has Z Force logos on the arms. They're kind of hard to see there. He has a sophisticated backpack with actual straps that wrap around the figure. GI Joe didn't have that. These straps here on the top fit on the peg on the back of the backpack. And that provides storage for his rifle. I love that feature. It still has that Star Wars articulation, but it is so well done that I would have been thrilled to get this figure as a kid. This is the radio operator codename Breaker. His country of origin is Italy. Although he takes his name from GI Joe's Breaker, he bears no further resemblance to his American counterpart. This is one example of an Action Force figure with arms locked in a rifle firing pose. This was apparently a way to compensate for the limited articulation and still allow the figures to hold their rifles with two hands. This is an unfortunate choice though. If there's any strike I would make on these early Action Force figures, they would be the permanently posed arms. Breaker has an even more sophisticated backpack than the infantryman. It has straps that wrap around the figure. It has an antenna. And it has a headset attached. And the headset can clip on to the side of the backpack. Breaker has a removable hat. That's a really nice feature and it fits well. And of course you can put the headset on the figure. This is a remarkably well done figure despite the fact that it has its arms frozen in this rifle firing pose. Of course that's not my kind of thing. But the rest of the figure and accessories are excellent. This is the sapper, codenamed Tracker. His country of origin is Spain. This is another one of those shooting posed figures. But despite that knock against it, it is a gorgeous figure. He has crisscross bandoliers with red grenades. He has camouflage trousers. Some of these Action Force figures had pouches that were sculpted on their legs that extended up to their belt. And this was a nice way to give the figure a geared up, heavily equipped look without adding additional accessories. It allowed Action Force figures to have bigger pouches than could be sculpted on the waist pieces of GI Joe figures. The downside is they would interfere with arm movement. Tracker has a black knit hat which is beautifully sculpted. It looks like he's ready to do combat in a cold environment. This is the Zed Force Captain codenamed Skip. His country of origin is Scotland. There's something about this figure that exudes leadership. He's actually a recolored version of the 1982 British Marine figure. But the camouflage pattern and the red beret makes all the difference. He has those unfortunate posed arms and he has the Action Force pouches on the legs. He has a sculpted pack on the back in lieu of a backpack. I have to say I love the camouflage. I always wish we got more camouflage in GI Joe. Action Force has plenty of it. Now we have the Zed Force Commander. This is the second version of the Commander codenamed Eagle. This figure was available as a mail away offer. It is a very plain figure but this character's fate was dark and tragic. By 1983 the days of plain nameless army men were going away. In the 80s toy properties needed universes in which to exist. Kids wanted characters they could relate to, storylines they could follow and villains to fight. GI Joe had Cobra. Action Force had the Red Shadows. The leader of the Red Shadows was Baron Ironblood. Baron Ironblood is depicted as a mysterious and charismatic leader wearing a Ned Kelly style helmet. Baron Ironblood was evil personified. He was every bit as evil as Cobra Commander. In fact in the Action Force universe he became Cobra Commander. More on that later. Behind the mask the Baron is a suavely handsome gentleman. He is intelligent but ruthless. A psychotic supremacist he wanted every free nation to fall under his thrall. He is fashioned in the style of early 20th century fascist dictators. The Baron Ironblood figure itself is somewhat plain. This one does not have his black helmet. There is something sinister about his bare face. The sculpt on the figure has his head tilted slightly downward. When turned to the side his head nods forward at a slight angle. He seems to be staring you down with his chilling gaze. His skull and crossbones emblem may not be as sophisticated as Cobra's emblem. But it gets the point across. Where this man goes death follows. The Red Jackal was Ironblood's weapons supplier and munitioner. Even Ironblood had no idea as to his real identity. As Jackal wore a beryllium steel mask at all times. Joe fans will recognize Red Jackal as Destro. This is the Red Shadow Trooper. These were the foot soldiers of the Red Shadows. Like the Cobra blue shirts they were nameless faceless fanatics. Their uniforms were directly inspired by the Nazi SS. Their helmets are copies of SS helmets with added face masks. The shape of the head doesn't look quite human. With the electronics on the back of the helmet it would be easy to mistake these guys for robots. He had a black version of Zaps Bazooka. This is Red Vulture. He is a slightly elevated Red Shadows Trooper and the driver of the Shadow Track Vehicle. He is virtually identical to the original Red Shadows Trooper except for the black gloves. Joe fans will find this figure very interesting. This is Red Laser. He was the operator of the Laser Exterminator. A red version of the 1983 GI Joe HAL heavy artillery laser. So he had Grand Slam's job. This figure may be the most striking of all the figures we've looked at so far. American GI Joe fans will recognize this figure instantly. Red Laser uses the exact same mold as Cobra Commander version 1.5. He is molded in red plastic with black highlights. He has a Red Shadows paint job. With the skull and crossbones on the helmet and the slot advisor they were obviously trying to approximate the look of the original Red Shadows Trooper. Red Laser was a portent of things to come. It was a transition from the Star Wars style early action force figures to later American style O-ring GI Joe figures. We've saved the best or the worst depending on your point of view for last. Does this figure look familiar? It is the same figure as the action force commander just recolored. In fact it is the same person. This is the black major. He was the leader of action force but he has been turned to evil. The commander was captured by the Baron and subjected to months of psychological torture and conditioning. He was brainwashed to become a stone hearted killer. This is an intriguing concept. GI Joe played with this idea a few times. In the Sunbow cartoon series Dusty joined Cobra. But that was only a ruse. Mercer was a Cobra Viper that defected to the Joes. In the Deac animated series it was revealed that Scoop was a Cobra agent. But he quickly learned the error of his ways. The defection of the black major would be more along the lines of Hawk joining Cobra and becoming a henchman of Cobra commander. Not just for one issue of the comic book or an episode of the cartoon. Permanently. His loyalty flipped never to revert. Through him the enemy would also gain the highest classified intelligence. 1983 and 1984 saw an influx of GI Joe molds being used for action force figures. Many of the figures would look very familiar to American GI Joe fans. Their translation to action force though was not one for one. Changes were made to make them fit better within the already existing action force universe. For example the figure we knew as Stalker was given a red beret, a Zed Force logo on his chest and was called Jammer. The figure Americans knew as Snake Eyes was given a gray paint job and called Stalker. Gung Ho was given an orange vest and renamed Goucho. His country of origin was Mexico but he still bore the US Marine Corps emblem on his chest. One of the most famous British repaints of an American figure was Quarrel which used the mold from Scarlet. At this point the figures were still marketed in the red, white, blue and yellow action force cards. This is an example of the old style action force card back. And you can see it has the action man logo here in the corner. It has a cobra logo here much different from the cobra logo that we're used to partially covered by the price sticker. And we can see this is Fireflies card back. GI Joe fans will be very familiar with Firefly. It has a shortened version of Firefly's file card text here. Flipping the card around to the back we can see the cross cell. And here we have a photo of the other action force figures that were available at the time. And as you can see from this photo they are GI Joe figures. They look more or less identical to what we got in the United States. There may be a different accessory here and there. But these are GI Joe figures. There's a mail away offer here for an infantryman and GI Joe fans will recognize that as Grunt. These newer O-ring figures were intermixed with earlier style action force figures with the five points of articulation. Did this bother kids who played with the toys? Did it seem odd that these figures with such wildly different styles and construction appeared in the same toy line? Action Force's early universe was constructed in a comic book called Battle Action Force. Action Force effectively invaded a pre-existing comic strip called Battle and took over. The stories were well crafted and exciting. The artwork was excellent. It was the comic book that helped fans accept the transition from the original purely British action force to the American continuity. In 1985 the transition to American style O-ring GI Joe figures was dramatic. The entire line consisted of reissued GI Joe figures and most of them had their GI Joe code names. Instead of Gaucho they had Gung Ho. Instead of Jammer they had Stalker. Some characters were renamed though. For instance Rock and Roll was called Ton Up. He was the driver of the action force version of the Wolverine. In 1987 through about 1989 the packaging changed to the GI Joe card art style that we had in the states. If an American kid walked into a British toy store and saw action force he would immediately know what it was. When the action force figures got released here in this country with the GI Joe style branding to me at the time it just seemed like okay this was the old Palatoy action force just re-released and slightly jazzed up you know better articulation on the figures awesome artwork on the packaging and it just happened to be made by the company that makes Transformers instead of the old Palatoy company. It didn't quite click at that point that it was American GI Joe. Obviously I love collecting comic books as well and I always collected avidly the small US format comic books from Marvel and DC. It was during one of those flicks through an issue I think it was one of my incredible Hulk issues. They were also available an advert for this thing called GI Joe and it had the red white and blue banner on it as well and it just looked similar to action force. And then on the front covers that they were advertising their Plainer's Day was that classic issue with the big Cobra Commander battle mask with like stalker on one side and I think the October guard on the other and I just thought that's Cobra Commander. What's this GI Joe thing? So I went along and I kind of tweaked in some respect that GI Joe was the American name for action force and instead of a real American hero our version was international heroes. Action force kept one important element from its original concept. The characters were not American nor were they entirely British. Action force was an international team. The characters were given diverse countries of origin. When GI Joe aligned with action force the evil Baron Ironblood is reputed to have gathered all of the red shadows high command together in one place and there he brutally executed them gunning them down where they stood all however except for the red jackal. Now from the ashes of the Red Shadows organization arose a new name in terror the Cobra organization. Baron Ironblood became the Cobra Commander and the Red Jackal became Destro. And in addition to that what Ironblood did in another mass act of evil he triggered the suicide impulse in all of his once loyal Red Shadows. All of the Red Shadow Troopers simply dropped wherever they were across the globe and thus made way for the Cobra blue shirt army that we all know and love. The comic book had to make a transition too. Marvel published a magazine sized action force comic book with new stories centered around the important GI Joe characters. Flint featured prominently as did Lady J, Footloose, Shipwreck and Barbecue. Cyber Tiger sent me some issues of that comic series and I really enjoyed them. The stories are fast paced, smart and engrossing. I found myself wishing they could be integrated into the Marvel Larry Hama comic book continuity. Unfortunately they can't really. There are too many inconsistencies with important characters and plot points. They just don't fit together. Some elements of the American storyline did find their way into the action force comic such as Storm Shadow's distinctive tattoo. The action force got an animated series too. In that case the translation between the US and the UK version was more literal. They got the same sunbow cartoon that we got in the states but dubbed with different voices. Instead of shouting yo-jo they would shout full force. Action force will dare. Action force. In 1990 action force was reduced to a subtitle for GI Joe. The packaging now had GI Joe in big bold letters with action force relegated to small text. At this point there was very little difference between GI Joe a real American hero in the US and GI Joe action force in the UK. The figures in the UK were released later. For instance Shockwave was released in 1990 in the UK. He was a 1988 figure in the US. Also Sergeant Slaughter was renamed Sergeant Slammer. By 1991 action force was no more. The toy line was marketed as GI Joe and was more or less the same as the US toy line but without the real American hero tagline. The toys that started out as unique little gems like Star Wars but military themed had been assimilated into its larger American cousin. I love GI Joe. I love action force too. I love them for different reasons. GI Joe was part of my childhood. I have no nostalgia for action force other than the single mention of it by my friend who lived in London. When I look at early action force figures though it reminds me of how much fun we had playing with Star Wars figures before the advent of GI Joe and how amazing would it have been to get Star Wars style figures with realistic military uniforms and equipment. It was the realistic military aspect of GI Joe that I enjoyed. I think I would have been an action force fan too. It is not fair to call action force the British version of GI Joe. That's what it became but it started as its own unique creation. It is that early era of action force when it was still its own animal to which I am drawn. I am utterly charmed by these figures. I had seen pictures of them. I had even seen a few of them in person at Jocon but I had never touched an action force figure until Cyber Tiger sent these to me and for that I am grateful. That was the HCC788 and Cyber Tiger review of action force. Thank you to Jim Marshall from Blood4theBaron.com. Your assistance has been invaluable. Cyber Tiger, did that review live up to expectations? Well, you're no form BX257 but I reckon it'll do mate. It'll do. Hey, that's not the line I wrote for you. Oh right. Yes, it was the most brilliant thing the internet has ever seen and will be remembered for all time, Woodster. All time. Thank you. You're too kind. Oh, you are shameless aren't you? I am. I truly am. So, is this your TARDIS? It is. All British people have a TARDIS. Didn't you know that mate? I did not. That doesn't make any sense but I'll ignore it. I enjoyed this little adventure and I don't care how you did it. Before you go, check in your pocket old friend. You'll find a little souvenir of your visit to the United Kingdom. Oh. Marmite. You really shouldn't have. Seriously, it was my pleasure mate. Now, off you pop. Back to Nebraska or wherever it is you come from. Just press the big red button and the TARDIS will take you home. Hurry along. I have an appointment with Her Majesty, you know. We're going rollerblading. Oh. Yes, well, goodbye, Woodster. Safe journey, my friend. Thanks, Cyber Tiger. Goodbye. Goodbye, England. I hope to return soon. Safe journey, my friend. According to my TARDIS tracking app, Woodster's TARDIS is spinning out of control in the diamond vortex. Thundering wire fronts. Woodster's immortal danger. They're old friend. Hang on in there. That TARDIS was in perfect working order. This could only have happened if someone has deliberately interfered with the TARDIS. It's sabotage. But who would do such an evil thing to such a beloved online reviewer? My best friend's in terrible danger. Alright, mate. You've got to be kidding.