 This episode of HCC 788 brought to you in part by The Dicast Enterprise. Join us each week as we discuss the sexual proclivities of Commander William T. Riker. The bravado comedy of Lieutenant War. And the adorable monkey shines up one Wesley the Sweater Crusher. Or maybe we'll just talk about the golden girls. Or hairstyles. Or cartoons. That's equally likely. We also like G.I. Joe. There. We tied that in nicely. Well done everyone on that. By all our play sets and toys. Commander 788 here. Back. Here. So. Great. Top. Here. Love. G.I. Joe. Swatter. Rising. March. March. Raid. Ready. Ready. Ready. Silence. Kill. Commander 788 here. It's time for another vintage G.I. Joe toy review. But before we get started, I have to do something special in this video. Mr. Philip Hanks is supporting this channel on Patreon. And at his level of support, he gets a code name to be provided in a special segment of a video. So here it is. This is the special segment for Philip's code name. Mr. Philip Hanks. You share a last name with a famous actor. Maybe you've heard of him. Tom Hanks. And one of my favorite Tom Hanks movies is Joe versus the Volcano. And since it is Joe versus the Volcano, I think your code name must be a Cobra code name. So that makes this decision easy. I think your code name is obvious. Mr. Philip Hanks, you shall forever be known as the Volcano Viper. Volcano Viper is ready to explode. Ooh, yeah. For this week's review, I'm going to look at the Dragonfly helicopter and the Pilot Wild Bill. Now this is one that I have reviewed before. But when I reviewed this vehicle before, it was one of the first videos that I ever uploaded on this channel. And that video was pretty primitive. There's essentially no editing at all. I think I can do a little better at it now. So this is one that is due for an update. Oh, but before I do that, I have an idea. Hey Susan, do you want to play Airwolf with the Dragonfly? Oh, yes, please. It's the Dragonfly. Okay. I'll be Jan Michael Vincent. You be Ernest Bortnight. What? I do. I want to find the helicopter. Well, you see, I have to be Jan Michael Vincent because I have the sunglasses. The sunglasses too. So I should get splot. My dear wife, I love you dearly. That's why it pains me to say I have dibs on the pilot seat. Get you for this. You'll have to catch me first. This is the Dragonfly Helicopter and the Pilot Wild Bill. They were first available together in 1983 and they were on the shelves all the way through 1985. They were discontinued for the year 1986. There was a replacement for the Dragonfly in 1986, the Tomahawk Helicopter. And the Tomahawk is a pretty awesome helicopter in its own right. Some of you have been urging me to review the Tomahawk and I'd really like to. Scheduling it has been a bit more complicated than I hoped it would be. But in the meantime, here is a look at the Tomahawk for your viewing pleasure. The Dragonfly is based on the Bell AH-1 Cobra. The AH-1, which is sometimes called the Huey Cobra, has been in service since 1967. So it was a well-known military aircraft by the time this toy was released in 1983. It has been noticed by other Joe fans that Wild Bill may be loosely based on Robert Duvall's character, Colonel Bill Kilgore, in the movie Apocalypse Now. And there are some visual cues that do call back to that character, especially the hat. There were later versions of Wild Bill in the vintage line. In 1992, version 2 of Wild Bill was released as a single-carded figure. He was not included with a helicopter. Yojo.com says there was a third version of Wild Bill released in 1993. But I consider that to only be a color variation of version 2. This version of Wild Bill has a removable hat. That's kinda cool. There have been some adaptations of the Dragonfly as well. In 1988, it was recolored and used as the Tigerfly for Tiger Force. It was also re-released a couple times after the vintage line. I'm gonna take a closer look at Wild Bill and his file card later in this video, but I'm gonna set them aside for now so we can take a closer look at the Dragonfly. The Cobra equivalent to the Dragonfly helicopter in 1983 was the Fang helicopter. But as you can see, there is quite a size difference between the Dragonfly and the Fang. This isn't even close to a fair match-up. It wasn't until 1987 that Cobra had a really large helicopter to go up against the Dragonfly, the Mamba. But by then, G.I. Joe had the larger Tomahawk helicopter to go up against the Mamba. Let's take a look at the Dragonfly and let's take a moment to look at the color. It is mostly green with a few spots of dark gray. It looks like it's designed to be a ground attack helicopter. And this color scheme is absolutely perfect. It really gives the vehicle a sense of military authenticity, which I love. Let's take a look at the parts and the features of the Dragonfly starting in the front. And we have this black nose tip and that is a slightly softer plastic. Also here in front, we have the chin turret and that can rotate. It doesn't turn all the way around. The turret has two types of weapon. It has this. The blueprints call it a 25mm Vulcan Gatling Cannon. And this is based on the M61 Vulcan. The M61 is 20mm, not 25. And that weapon has been in service since 1959. Next to it is what the blueprints call an M34 grenade launcher. And an M34 is a type of grenade. It is a wide phosphorous smoke grenade, also called Willy Pete. The M34 was a hand grenade, but it could be adapted to fire from a rifle. So this launcher apparently is designed to fire M34 grenades. There is an early variant of this chin turret. The earliest releases of the Dragonfly had a chin turret that would allow the gun and the grenade launcher to elevate. Those were separate pieces in there. They were able to reduce the cost of producing these by making this just one solid piece and the gun turret would turn, but the gun would not move up and down. Sculpted onto the side, there is yet another gun. The blueprints call this an X551 60mm Mini Cannon. Next we have the canopy, and the canopy does open and it will hold open, so that's nice. It has stickers on it with kill marks. The cockpit is pretty simple. It has two seats. It has a couple sticker instrument panels for the front and the back seat. And it really has no other cockpit detail at all. The blueprints specifically state that the front seat is the pilot seat and the back seat is the gunner's seat. In fact, that's how it appears on the box art for the Dragonfly. However, on a real AH-1, the gunner's seat is in front. Let's put a couple figures in the cockpit and let's do it in what I consider to be the right way. I find it's best to bend Wild Bill's legs and just slide him into his proper pilot seat. He sits all the way down in there. There's no back peg or seat belt or anything like that, but he does fit in there very securely. Now let's add a gunner in the gunner's seat and we'll use the figure that I think is the right gunner for the Dragonfly, Airborne. I usually find it best to partially bend his knees, not all the way, and slide him in there. He will sit all the way in the seat. You can close the cockpit and they both fit in there very well. No need to force them in or anything. They fit just perfectly. The name's on the side and this sticker is worn, but what it used to say is Lieutenant W.S. Hardy. And this does refer to Wild Bill, whose real name is William S. Hardy. However, that's the wrong rank. Wild Bill is not a Lieutenant. He is a Chief Warrant Officer 4. This other name here, Master Sergeant W.C. Colbert, is not the name of any G.I. Joe character. In fact, this is a reference to Bill Colbertson, a Hasbro designer. So this is just a little wink and nod to a Hasbro employee. This really nice Dragonfly logo on the side here was designed by Ron Rudat, who designed a lot of the G.I. Joe action figures in the early days. This is a nice design, I do like it. To me, this looks like a high school football mascot. The Fighting Dragonflies. We have landing skids and on each side we have a foot peg, but these foot pegs I think are a little thick and so I would not try to put an action figure on there. It has a risk of breaking the heel. There's an unintended feature with these skids. They are spaced just far apart enough to fit Doc's stretcher, which had these little feet here at the bottom. And so you can slide that in and kind of attach the stretcher to the Dragonfly. Then you can airlift your wounded Joe's to the nearest mash unit. On the port side of the helicopter, we have this, which the blueprints call Laser Guided 160mm Cannon Pod. It connects to the Dragonfly by a pin that goes into the landing skid and a couple hoses that connect to the side of the helicopter. If there is a weak point on this vehicle, this is probably it. The pin that goes into the landing skid can break, but honestly I find most of these intact, so I guess they weren't that easy to break. There is a little play in this, so you can turn it a little bit, but this is supposed to be a fixed forward-facing cannon. We're not done talking about armaments on the Dragonfly. On the sides, it had these weapons pylons, and each of these held three missiles. The missiles are the same on both sides, so we'll just look at one side. Each side had one of these Sidewinder HE missiles for a total of two, and they fit on with this universal dumbbell slot and peg. This is a very unique looking missile. Each E stands for high explosive. It has this bulbous front end which is hollow underneath. I have not been able to identify a real-world missile that looks like this. It almost looks more like a guided bomb. Each side has two of these Sidewinder air-to-ground missiles for a total of four. These look like the real-world AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, but those were not air-to-ground missiles. Those missiles were used to attack other aircraft. The slots on these missiles are the same size, so you can interchange them on whichever peg you want. I can figure them really any way you want. Next, we have a couple removable engine covers. Best removed by pulling down from the top. Then we have some engine detail, and we have the same on each side. There's some nice detail in there. Of course, it's all green. The same color as the body of the helicopter. There's no paint in there or anything like that. Then, of course, we have exhaust in gray plastic. When we were kids, of course, we would pretend these were jet engines, which would make the helicopter go super fast. Over on this side we have an important feature. We have this white trigger, and if you push this trigger forward, it causes the blades to spin. And if you time it just right, you can get those blades spinning pretty fast. The blades themselves are green, and they are susceptible to drooping, but they have some excellent detail on them. And on the tips they have these orange caps, which you can remove. I assume these were added for safety. But what I like about them is that they have some sculpted lights on them, a little bit of sculpted detail. And that is nice. They're not just plain orange caps. They added a touch of detail there when they didn't have to, and that really is going the extra mile. Working our way back, we have a long tail with a couple stabilizers. Then we have this really interesting V-shaped tail fins. They're kind of in a V-shape with this one going off to the side like that. There in the back here we have what the blueprints call a counter-rotating turbine. And this performs the function of a tail rotor. There's no tail rotor on here, so whatever this thing is apparently does that job. It may seem like we have looked at endless features on this vehicle, but we're not done. There's one more left, last but not least on the bottom. There is the rescue hook and winch. This is a working winch. You can just spin the wheel and play the line out. And it has a good amount of black rope, and pretty thick and solid. And it has this hook at the end, which you can wrap around the jose that you want to rescue or connect to a vehicle. And of course, you just spin the wheel the other direction to reel that hook back in. One thing you might use this hook and winch for is the 1982 flak cannon, which unfortunately didn't have any wheels or any other way to move it to the battlefield. So you can use the dragonfly to airlift it in. Let's take a look at Wild Bill. Wild Bill did not come with any accessories, so we can skip that part. So let's look at his articulation. He had the articulation that was standard for G.I. Joe Figures of 1983. His head was on a swivel, so he could turn his head from side to side. 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, so he could bend out the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep, so he could swivel his arm all the way around. The figure was held together with a rubber o-ring that looped 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 he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpted design and color of Wild Bill starting with his head and on his head he has a Civil War era Union Cavalry Stetson and this is almost identical to the hat worn by Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now. It has the rope braid that goes all the way around and instead of having the crossed sabers it has what looks like Captain's Bars. However, Wild Bill is not a Captain he is a Chief Warrant Officer 4 which it has a different rank insignia. So this is the second time they got Wild Bill's rank wrong. There's a rumor that this head sculpt is based on Robert Redford and I can kinda see it. It's not a perfect likeness. He's wearing silver sunglasses and he has ginger hair and a mustache. This Union Cavalry hat, in addition to possibly being a reference to the movie Apocalypse Now, is also probably an allusion to the Air Cavalry. This refers to the use of helicopters as troop carriers, medivacs and aerial rocket artillery. This was an innovation started by the first Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam. Moving down to his chest he has a green shirt with an open collar looking very casual. He has dog tags which are unfortunately unpainted. Over his green shirt he has a brown vest, kind of a western style vest, not very military looking. He does have a brown knife and he has this brown strap with a device on it that is probably supposed to be a radio but honestly to me looks more like a TV remote. The arms are entirely green. Long green sleeves with green gloves and there's no paint application on the arms at all. Honestly the arms seem a little bit lazy like they went with green gloves the same color as his shirt just so they wouldn't have to paint anything. They really could have used a little bit of color. His waist is also green. His entire uniform is this green color. There's a little bit of detail on the belt but he does have a white long horn belt buckle. His legs are a little bit more interesting even though they are that same green color on each thigh he has a brown holster with a white pistol grip and these grips are facing forward so they would be cross drawn while Bill would reach across and draw them that way. These are probably 45 Colt single action army revolvers based on the information in the file card. These look like ivory handles. His lower legs have pockets and then he has these brown boots and these are probably cowboy boots. They don't look very military but that fits with his overall cowboy motif. Let's take a look at Wild Bill's file card. It was printed on the back of the box that the Dragonfly came in. There's nothing on the other side. His faction was G.I. Joe. It had a nice portrait of Wild Bill here. It said he's the helicopter pilot and his codename is Wild Bill and Wild Bill is named after Wild Bill Hickok who was an Old West folk hero. His file name is William S. Hardy. His primary military specialty is helicopter pilot. His secondary military specialty is fixed wing pilot and aircraft armorer so he can fly an airplane as well. His birthplace is Brady, Texas and Brady, Texas is a tiny town in central Texas with a population of less than 6000. It is referred to as the heart of Texas because of its central location in the state. His grade is CW 4 or chief warrant officer that would be a chief warrant officer and so finally we have Wild Bill's correct rank. Here is Wild Bill alongside a couple other G.I. Joe warrant officers, Flint and the pilot of the Tomahawk lift ticket, but Wild Bill was the first. This paragraph says Hardy served as a combat infantryman and participated in L.R.R.P. Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol operations during Southeast Asian debacle. This is a reference to Vietnam, of course and I have scoured G.I. Joe file cards from 1982 and 1983 and this is the first reference I can find to L.R.R.P. Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol would play an important role in G.I. Joe history, but it was first introduced to the G.I. Joe universe through Wild Bill's file card. Re-enlisted for flight warrant officer school and has since remained in service. Specialized training classified. Qualified expert M1911A Autopistol in parentheses prefers single action 45 long-cult revolvers and that's probably what these are then of course the XM16 attack rifle. This bottom paragraph says amiable and slow talking fancies himself a country western singer so he has both types of music country and western totally honest in personal dealings but not beyond spinning a tall tale for the amusement of comrades. Wild Bill and the dragonfly made many appearances in G.I. Joe media. Both the dragonfly and Wild Bill first appeared in the G.I. Joe cartoon in the real American hero miniseries part one. He had numerous appearances in the series. He was voiced by Frank Welker with a high pitched voice and an exaggerated Texas accent. The uniform for Wild Bill in the cartoon was totally different from the toy. He had a blue jumpsuit and an orange vest. In the G.I. Joe comic book series Wild Bill first appeared in issue number eleven but he wasn't flying the dragonfly. His uniform was miscolored there too. He appeared again in issue number fourteen. Again not flying the dragonfly but at least he was wearing the right uniform. The first appearance of the dragonfly in the comic book that I can find assuming I'm not missing anything was in issue number sixteen. The issue in which Cobra attacks the U.S. Treasury building at night and the baroness is seriously burned while trying to save Destro from assassination. Both Wild Bill and the dragonfly made many appearances in the comic book. He wasn't central to the main storyline but he was an important role player. He had a story arc in issues number sixty nine through seventy one in which he, Crazy Legs and Maverick cooperated with Zarena and the Dreadknocks to escape the fictional South American country of Sierra Gordo. Looking at the dragonfly overall it is a nearly perfect vehicle. It is the right color. It's based on a real world vehicle. It has plenty of weapons and it has a well functioning action feature. It was in my list of top ten vehicles and it will probably stay there. I can't see how anything would not get out of that list. I can't even talk about a lot of fragile parts. It's pretty solidly built. The realism adds to the sense of power around this helicopter. It isn't just a cool toy. They gave us a replica of something that really existed. The dragonfly has reality behind it. There is a contrast between the dragonfly and Wild Bill. Whereas the dragonfly is realistic Wild Bill is stylized. He's a cowboy, complete with a big hat, boots and belt buckle. There are a few problems with Wild Bill. His head is a little oversized and his arms without any paint on them look kind of blank. Despite the drawbacks, Wild Bill has a lot of character. The figure is distinctive and well loved. I consider him a middle tier figure but one for which I have a lot of affection. That was my review of the dragonfly helicopter and the pilot Wild Bill. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you all enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday. Thank you Phillip Hanks and I hope you like your new code name. Thanks everyone for watching. We'll be back next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review and until then remember only GI Joe is GI Joe. Go Pats! GI Joe Dragonfly Copter comes with Wild Bill figure. Major Blood Gun Ho and Cobra Copter each sold separately from Hasbro. There's always got to be one in there. Okay. Alright. Deep breath, deep breath. Why it pains me to say I have dibs on the pilot seat. You almost made it through that one. You almost made it. You almost made it. We can do this. We can do this. You need to stretch first. I think it's because you're dramatically slicing it. Hey Susan. I'm done shooting. You still want to go out to dinner? I just have to shut everything down.