 Commander 788 here, and it's time for another vintage GI Joe Toy review, and the last few reviews we have looked at action figures, well it's time for us to look at a vehicle. And the vehicle we're going to look at is a pretty well-known vehicle from 1986. We're going to look at the Havoc and the Driver Cross Country. I think you're going to enjoy looking at this vehicle. It's big, it's green, it's weird, but it has some surprises. So let's check it out. This is the 1986 Havoc with its Driver Cross Country. Havoc H-A-V-O-C is an acronym that stands for Heavy Articulated Vehicle Ordinance Carrier. I've expressed my dislike for acronyms as vehicle names before, and this is why. Havoc is a perfectly fine name for this vehicle. You do not need to turn it into a nonsensical acronym. The Havoc and Cross Country were first introduced in 1986. They were also sold in 1987. They were discontinued in 1988, and in 1988 it's really hard to say if it had a replacement that year. I guess the closest to a replacement would be the Mean Dog, but that's not exactly the same kind of vehicle, but I guess it's the closest thing in 1988 to this Havoc. The Havoc was worth four flag points. It came with the Driver Cross Country. I'm going to take a closer look at the Cross Country action figure a little bit later, so I'm going to set them aside for now. The Havoc is very close in size to the 1983 APC, Amphibious Personnel Carrier, with the APC being slightly larger, but they are pretty close, and these two vehicles would probably be considered to be in the same size class. One quick note about the name Havoc. In the Marvel Comics mini-series, G.I. Joe Order of Battle, on the page that features Cross Country the Driver, it shows him as the Rhino Driver, not the Havoc Driver. Rhino would have been a prototype name for the Havoc, but this is also a mistake, because later on the same page it does refer to the vehicle as the Havoc. So on this page the name was changed down here, but the prototype name slipped by up here. Another anomaly on this page is it has a prototype file name for Cross Country, but we'll talk more about that when we look at the figure. Look at the parts and the features of the Havoc, starting up at the front here with these two orange guns. These guns, as far as I can tell, are not listed on the blueprints for the vehicle, so I don't know what exactly these are supposed to be. They could be machine guns, they could be laser guns, really just who knows. They do both of them pivot independently, and as you can see they are bright orange. And a lot of the smaller features on this vehicle are this bright orange color. Now this is something that kind of bothers me a little bit. From a design perspective I understand the need to have a bit of color to sort of offset the very muted colors, the greens and the grays on the rest of the vehicle. But from a real world perspective, of course it makes no sense to put bright safety orange on your military vehicle. And as a kid, you know, I had a hard time overlooking that, I still have a hard time overlooking that, these orange accessories really do stand out. In the front we also have some headlight stickers, and I think these are misplaced on my Havoc. I think these stickers should be down here, not attached to the clear plastic canopy. Then of course we do have this clear plastic canopy, this very large clear plastic canopy. To access that, to open it, you have to kind of move these guns, tilt them back in order to tilt the canopy back to access the cockpit. There's one obvious thing to point out here, this clear plastic canopy would essentially be a glass dome over the cockpit, and this is very impractical. It would leave your drivers in the cockpit completely vulnerable to enemy fire. It really makes no sense to have this heavily armored vehicle like this, but to leave the nerve center of the vehicle really completely unarmored. There is a potential practical use for a big glass dome like this. If this were an anti-aircraft vehicle, if these guns up here were anti-aircraft guns, then this big glass canopy would give the driver almost an all around view of the sky. You'd have almost no obstructions to your view with this big glass canopy. One problem with this theory is the driver is supposed to drive this vehicle face down, looking at this monitor here. So he doesn't get to take advantage of this very wide field of vision. So that makes this canopy, again, completely useless. Here's a look at the cockpit of the Havoc, and you can see it does have some fairly good detail in there, nice control panels. Unfortunately, it has this little depression right here, and that is where the front tread clips on to the vehicle on the underside. It just shows right through there, and I do not like that. That just kind of looks cheap to me. I kind of feel like that should have been covered up somehow. Yeah, that's not my favorite thing. The way you're supposed to orient the driver inside the cockpit is a little bit unclear. It has these joystick things on either side of the control panels, on both driver spaces, and it kind of looks like you're supposed to put the action figure's hands on those joysticks, but then the canopy has a little bit of trouble closing, because the figure's head is too far up. If you close it, it kind of pushes the figure toward the back. It does have this space back here, and down in the bottom there, there is some sculpted detail. It looks like a little pedal back there, and so I guess you can put your figure all the way back there, and his face is more lined up with the monitor on the control panel, and you can close the canopy better, but he's a mile away from these joysticks, so I guess you're not supposed to use those at all. This seems to be the correct way to put the figures in. You have front and back treads. The back treads are larger than the front treads, and these are fake. They're fake treads. Turning the vehicle over, you can see the wheels that it rolls on. These orange wheels, that's an interesting choice to make those wheels orange, but whatever. You can't really see them when the vehicle is upright. Now both the front and the back treads have these removable armor panels, and you can see some of the bogies inside there and the suspension system. That's really cool. I like that a lot. Now there are four of these, two front and two back, so make sure you watch out for those when you're trying to get a Havoc vehicle. If you want a complete one, sometimes these are just missing and people don't realize that they're missing, because this does look pretty cool and pretty detailed without them. Both the front and the back treads turn independently. The front treads can turn quite a bit more than the back treads can, but that would give this vehicle a pretty tight turn radius for such a long vehicle. Up at the top here we have this hydraulic gun seat, and it's on these two support arms, one on each side, and that does move a bit. It can elevate with a bit of a ratcheting like that. That's about as high up as it'll go. And of course, since it has a pivot point right here, it can pivot up and move right over the canopy. The gun seat has some impressive details. They're really not skimpy gun details here. There's a little joystick for the figure to hold on when he's operating the gun. I'll give you some very impressive detail, I'll give it that. According to the blueprints, these big guns are leveler, dual, recoilless 75mm cannons, and they are huge in comparison to the figure. These are some massive guns, but these are supposed to be cannons, but they don't really look like cannons. They have this sort of slotted barrel like this, and it looks kind of like it's supposed to be some kind of an energy weapon, a laser or something like that. One very disappointing thing about this whole gun system here is that it does not pivot. It will not turn side to side at all. It is articulated somewhat. You can elevate it, you can swing it forward, but that's all you can do with it. You can't turn it side to side, which means to aim this thing, you have to turn the entire vehicle. That to me is very impractical. The gunner fits comfortably in the gunner's seat. You can put his hand on the control joystick like that, and he can operate the cannons. Now, this obviously is insane. You would never want a military vehicle like this. This is a death seat. He's completely exposed up there on the top, and the enemy just has to take him out, and they don't have to worry about these guns anymore. It would be insane to actually put somebody in that kind of position. You just never do it. Some GI Joe vehicles made the mistake of hiding the action figure inside the vehicle. When you put the figure in the vehicle, you really couldn't see him in there, and I do want to see the action figures when they're inside the vehicles. But this goes way too far in the other direction. Just because I want to see the action figures operate the vehicles doesn't mean that I want them impractically exposed up here at the top. This is just crazy. When we move the top cannons out of the way, we can access the engine cover. Remove that. It's got a little bit of detail on there. It's got some tools. That's kind of cool. Remove the engine cover, and you can see some engine detail. This is the engine detail, and it's pretty well detailed, and it looks like a pretty powerful engine. It would have to be to run a big vehicle like this. That's pretty cool. Excellent detail there. In the back, we have these rear-facing guns. They pivot independently, and they are identical. You can swap them out. There is no left and right one. The blueprints call these repeater 9mm auto-loading machine guns, even though they don't look like machine guns. I guess they look more like laser guns, and they are in this bright orange color, and this bright orange color is probably the main thing that sort of brings down the value of this vehicle in my estimation. That orange color, man, that's a really tough one. Have a hard time looking past that. I don't know who is supposed to operate these rear-facing guns. Maybe it's the pilot of the Recon car. We're going to look at that a little bit later, but there is a pilot that sits back there, so maybe he's the one who's supposed to control these, or maybe these guys up front control them on their monitors. I'm not really sure. And speaking of bright orange, we have four orange missiles, two on each side. These missiles peg into the side of the vehicle on this sort of universal dumb-bell peg here, and they usually depict it as being rear-facing. Oddly, this vehicle has a lot of armament facing rear. I guess it expects to be attacked from the rear pretty often in order to have everything essentially facing backwards. But you can take these missiles off and flip them around and put them facing forward. You can do that if you want to. Here in the back we have a standard GI Joe universal tow hook, and that is excellent. That should be on all vehicles, but it's not. Another added bonus, all the way around the back here. We have these troop carrying platforms, and there are foot pegs. Those foot pegs you can use to have the figures ride along, just put the foot peg and the hole on the bottom of the action figure's feet, and the figure can ride along so you can carry a whole bunch of additional figures on this vehicle. That's a very nice feature. It's very difficult to use these back two pegs on the side with the missiles on, so it works a lot better. If you take the missiles off, then it's much easier to put a figure on one of those back two pegs. Now we finally get to one of the main features on this vehicle. This shroud in the back here opens up to reveal a sub vehicle. It works better if you kind of move the cannons out of the way. You can open up this shroud that's around the recon vehicle, and this, for all intents and purposes, is a flying car. Now I know this isn't really a practical real world vehicle, but I loved this thing as a kid, and yes, we did treat it as a flying car. Even though that's probably not what it's supposed to be, but it looks like a flying car. Underneath it has two non-working fans, and this whole fan assembly here kind of slides. It slides along the bottom, so it kind of looks like the recon vehicle is steering. It has a really fierce looking engine here in the back. It looks like a very powerful engine with exhaust pipes coming out the side. That looks great. It does kind of look like there should be an engine cover that fits on there, but it did not come with an engine cover for this engine. It does sort of look like there should be one, but there isn't. It's just an exposed engine, and it's really nice detail. Very cool looking. Really not much detail to speak of in the cockpit, and the figure just sort of sits in there very simply, very plainly. No control panel is in there at all, but you can just pretend that he's driving, and really, just love this sub-vehicle. It is well known that I prefer the more realistic military vehicles in G.I. Joe, but I have to admit this thing is really fun. It has these orange guns on the side, and really, who cares what they're supposed to be? They're orange. The color scheme on this really precisely matches its parent vehicle with the balance of green and gray and orange. This is what the inside of the Havoc looks like without the reconnaissance vehicle in there, and there is some nice detail. It's pretty impressive. That's pretty cool. I apologize, it is a little dusty in there, and there's a little dusty out here too. Then, of course, you can close it up without the recon car in there, and of course, it does kind of look like there's something missing, but the vehicle is still fully functional without it. It still has all of its armaments, and it still looks pretty good. Let's take a look at the driver cross country. He came with no accessories, so let's take a quick look at his articulation. He had the typical articulation for 1986 G.I. Joe action figures. That means he could turn his head from left to right like that. He could also look up and down. His neck was on a ball joint. He could move his arm up at the shoulder about so far. He could swivel it all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow that allowed him to move at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep that allowed him to swivel his arm all the way around. The figure was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside, so he could move at the torso a little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could move his legs at the hip about 90 degrees, and he could move at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt designing color of cross country starting with his head. And on his head he has what looks like an American Civil War Confederate Army Keppie. Cross country is a Southerner, and he's wearing Confederate headgear. We're getting dangerously close to stereotype territory. On his chest is this green vest, and it does have some decent detail, but it is a very light green and it's getting very dangerously close to neon green. This vest is very reminiscent of the one on version 2 of roadblock. Even has the same sort of red and black accent colors. In fact, cross country's whole color scheme is reminiscent of version 2 of roadblock, with the gray pants and the light green vest and even the white sleeves. There's some weird stuff going on with this vest though. It's got this sort of black hose thing that goes from this pocket here over to this red shoulder pad. I have no idea what the function of this red shoulder pad would be, and I have no idea what this is. It's just sort of a strap that goes nowhere, and that does not continue to the back. It has this sort of clip here on the shoulder, but no such detail on the back. So I don't know what this is supposed to be, it's just a weird thing that doesn't seem to do anything. It also looks like we have an unpainted detail here. It looks like we have kind of a name patch or something like that right here, but that is unpainted. And on other figures that had these, a lot of them were painted like the one here on roadblock. And then on Dusty, even those patches were painted white. But not on Cross Country. They kind of skimped on the paint applications there and left that detail unpainted. A couple of my pet peeves are unpainted details and bright colors on GI Joes. So we're really not off to a good start here. Cross Country's arms feature white rolled up sleeves, and this very unusual sculpted feature here on both shoulders. I do not know what that's supposed to be. It doesn't look like it's supposed to be part of his white undershirt. It looks like it's some kind of a shoulder covering. It doesn't look like it's intended to be like a rank chevron or something like that. And even if it was, that would be the wrong rank for Cross Country. So I don't know what that is, but by golly that looks like another unpainted detail to me. On his forearms he has gray arm guards and brown gloves. And those are reasonably well detailed. On his waist piece he has some gray trousers, some pockets in the back, a brown belt with it looks like a black patch and perhaps some bullets here, and a belt buckle. And now that would not be a Confederate battle flag belt buckle, would it? Of course it is. If there were any doubt that it was, it's drawn in great detail here on Cross Country's entry in the Order of Battle. We have driven straight into the heart of Stereotype City. I still have to finish looking at this figure, don't I? I can't get out of it, can I? Alright, let's do it. On his legs he features those gray trousers, and he has these teardrop shaped pockets here on the sides that have zippers on them. Those just look really weird. It's a strange detail, it's just a splash of red here on the gray, and the shape is just odd. Then starting at the knees, his knees are white. And you might think these are knee pads, but they are not knee pads. These aren't the cool knee pads that I like. These are just painted knees, so those don't count. And then he has what looks like white boot coverings with a red strap on them. Why is he wearing boot coverings? I don't know. I don't want to look at this figure anymore, so let's look at his file card. This file card for Cross Country would have been printed on the back of the box that they have it came in. You're encouraged to cut these out and keep them. There's nothing on the other side, it's just the back of a box. This artwork, the portrait here of Cross Country is not from the front of the box of the Havoc. This is one of the very rare ones where he has a portrait that is different from the front of the package of the vehicle that he drives. The reason for that is probably because on the front packaging for the vehicle he has shown face down driving the vehicle in the cockpit, and that doesn't make for a very good portrait. It says his code name is Cross Country, hyphenated. It says he's the Havoc driver, and then it doesn't say filename here as it normally does, it just says his name. That's kind of weird. His name is Robert M. Blaise. Referring back to Cross Country's entry in Order of Battle, this is where we see a difference in his name. Here it has his prototype filename, which is Arland W. Slaughter, and that Arland W. Slaughter name also comes up in the Marvel Age issue number 34 where there's a preview of the new Joes for 1986, and Cross Country is in there, again, as Arland W. Slaughter. So why would they change his filename? Well his last name was Slaughter, and he's an E5, which is a sergeant, so they probably didn't want him to get mixed up with a certain other sergeant with the last name of Slaughter. His primary military specialty is armor, well he's not very good if he thinks hiding behind a plate of glass is a good idea. Secondary military specialty is heavy equipment operator. His birthplace is Greensboro, North Carolina. With respect to people from North Carolina and people from the South in general, I know you don't all fit certain stereotypes, but that's not going to stop Cross Country from embodying every single one of them. This section says Cross Country's father was a bulldozer operator and his mother drove a grader. You might say he was born to drive big yellow things that run on diesel. Coupled with his natural affinity for heavy machinery, his uncanny sense of direction and fearlessness under fire make him the man you want at the controls, whether you're riding into a hairy situation or trying to get out of one. Qualified expert with heavy laser cannon M16A2, M250 caliber machine gun and 45 auto pistol. This top section reflects something that was done on some of these GI Joe file cards. It tells a story of how any skill that the character has that is useful to GI Joe came about from some kind of childhood experience or some kind of innate ability in them. They're just a natural at whatever they do. And maybe that is a way that they wanted to show that, I mean he's just really good and really skilled at his particular specialty, but really that's, I don't care for that too much. I'd much rather see somebody who didn't grow up with the particular skill set, who isn't a natural at it, but trained and worked hard and became proficient at it. That is a much more interesting story than a guy who grew up driving big machines and is still doing it. This quote down here says, Crankcase might be a wild man behind the wheel of his awe striker, but Cross Country will steer that havoc of his across terrain that would break both axles of the RTV. This section is referring of course to this vehicle, the awe striker and its driver, Crankcase. Of course, a tracked vehicle has natural advantages, but it is Cross Country's talent for sensing the most favorable grade, the shallowest mud and the firmest sand that makes the difference. So I guess Cross Country has a talent for off-road driving and that's good, I guess, but I really think what is interesting is that it sort of has a cross promotion here for the awe striker, a vehicle that came out a year before the havoc. In the G.I. Joe animated series, Cross Country made some appearances and the havoc made a lot of appearances. The G.I. Joe team was depicted as having a lot of these vehicles and they could be driven by anybody, not just Cross Country. In the cartoon, though, the havoc was often shown being driven from up top in the gunner's seat like that. If the havoc is supposed to be driven in the gunner's seat like this, then what are the two guys in the cockpit supposed to do? In the G.I. Joe comic book series, Cross Country and the havoc were introduced in issue number 51, an issue in which the dread knocks rescued Zartan from G.I. Joe headquarters. In that issue, the havoc was set up as a rival to the dread knocks thunder machine and that is really not an obvious rivalry. These are very different vehicles with the thunder machine being sort of like a cobbled together Mad Max kind of vehicle with a jet engine on the back so it looks like it would be really fast whereas the havoc is a big green machine with treads and doesn't really look like it would be very fast at all. So what do I think about Cross Country overall? I really do not like this action figure. I don't like his hat. I don't like his face sculpt. I don't like his green vest with the unpainted details. I don't like his white boot covers. I don't like his belt buckle. I just dislike this figure from top to bottom. Let's look at the havoc overall. This thing is weird. It looks like some kind of big piece of farm equipment. It's got this seat up on top that makes absolutely no sense. It's got the glass canopy that makes no sense. It's got the guns that elevate but they don't traverse and that makes no sense. It's got these orange accents and guns and weapons which good grief. It's just so strange despite all that. And you guys know I prefer the realistic military vehicles in G.I. Joe. As a kid I still really like this vehicle. I had a ton of fun with it. It has a lot of features. The little flying car in the back. That was just like a little bonus and yeah I used that quite a bit. I sort of just left behind my preference for realism with the havoc. And I just sort of went into fantasy land and I just really enjoyed this vehicle even though really even at the time I recognized that this was completely impractical as a military vehicle. I think one of the reasons I liked it is because I really wanted more tanks in G.I. Joe. We had a few tanks but I wanted more and really they weren't producing a lot of like more traditional style tanks at the time. This was about as close as we could get to a tank and this of course is not a tank at all. But I could roll this thing with my tanks and you know it would kind of fit in pretty well. As an adult collector I'd have to say you probably would enjoy having a havoc. Really even though it has a lot of features and a lot of parts there are really that many parts that are easily lost. You really just have to look out for these armor plates on the treads, the missiles, the engine cover and that's about it. That was my review of the Havoc and its driver cross country. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did make sure you give it a thumbs up on YouTube and don't forget to subscribe. Got a lot of great new G.I. Joe tour 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. Tune in next time for another vintage G.I. Joe tour review. I'll see you next week. This is the new G.I. Joe Havoc.