 Hello everybody, Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, and I'm back with another Vintage GI Joe toy review. And this time, to give us a little break from summer, I'm going to look at GI Joe's Arctic Trooper snow job. Before we get started, I want to remind everybody to smash that subscribe button. And if you liked this video, give this video a thumbs up. If you don't like this video, give it a thumbs down. If you're watching this video from any website other than YouTube, I would greatly appreciate it if you take a little trip over to the Hooded Cobra Commander 788 YouTube channel and go ahead and subscribe. I've got a lot of great new GI Joe toy reviews coming up, and you don't want to miss them. This is snow job. He was released in 1983. He was also sold in 1984 and 1985. He was discontinued in 1986 when he was replaced by iceberg. Let's get this out of the way up front. The name snow job, it really just sounds awful, doesn't it? I mean, there's just no way to say it without sounding dirty. Let's take a look at snow job's accessories, and he came with a lot of accessories. Let's first look at his weapon. The car refers to this as an XMLR3A laser rifle. This laser rifle is significant in the GI Joe universe because the cartoon used this rifle as the standard laser rifle for all of the GI Joe team. As I've mentioned before, I was not a big fan of the GI Joe cartoon, and one of the reasons was because of the excessive use of science fiction weapons, and this guy right here was the main culprit. I don't understand why you give a laser rifle to an arctic trooper, but it doesn't make sense for more than one reason. This XMLR3A laser rifle is supposed to be an updated version of the XMLR1A laser rifle that came with flash. Of course it looks nothing like the original rifle that came with flash, and a flash of course was the laser rifle trooper. So by giving snow job an updated laser rifle, he effectively makes flash redundant. Again, I'm not a big fan of the excessive use of science fiction weapons in GI Joe, and this is entirely a fantasy weapon. This is entirely a science fiction weapon, but I also don't like how the universe that the toys are supposed to occupy is not internally consistent. I mean, this really doesn't make any sense. I don't know why this weapon would be appropriate for an arctic trooper. The most prominent accessories that Snow Job came with were his skis. His skis connected to his backpack. The skis had pegs that fit into the holes on the bottom of the action figure's feet, and the backpack also had holes, so you'd peg in the skis. I'm taking these off very carefully, and I have to warn you two things about these skis. They are subject to yellowing, as really is all of the plastic that's light colored on GI Joe action figures. You see a lot of snow job action figures that have a lot of yellowing. This one fortunately is still pretty white, but you do see a lot of them where the white plastic has turned yellow. And on these skis and the backpack, as the plastic turns yellow, it also has a tendency to become very brittle. So be very careful with these, they can break very easily. As you can see, it's a very thin piece of plastic, and that will easily snap on you. To connect the skis to his feet, you just put the peg in the foothole on the bottom of the foot, one on each side, one for each foot, and then he was ready to ski into an arctic combat zone. Other accessories that he came with that complimented his skis were the ski poles. The ski poles also connect to the backpack in these slots. As you can see, these ski poles are very, very thin. They're somewhat bendable, but they can break, so be careful with those. The ski poles fit in his hands easily enough, but be careful when placing them in his hands. They are a little bit thick, and they can strain the thumbs a little bit. And again, they are very, very thin pieces of plastic, and you don't want to end up breaking the ski poles. Snowjob's final accessory was his backpack. The backpack had a peg, and it fit in the hole in the back of the action figure, like any other G.I. Joe backpack. As you can see, there are some sculpted-on pockets there, holes for the foot pegs on the skis, and slots for the ski poles. As I mentioned before, these backpacks are subject to yellowing, and can become very brittle as they become yellow. In fact, one time I had one of these notches here where the ski pole goes in, really just snap off with really no effort at all. I was just trying to put the ski pole in the backpack and applied very little pressure, but that's all it took, and it just sheared right off. So do exercise extra caution with these white accessories. They do tend to become very, very fragile. I think one very obvious missed opportunity on the backpack or on the rifle is that Snowjob has no way of holding his rifle when he is holding his ski poles. The backpack can hold all of the accessories except for the rifle. So if they had made a slot for the rifle, or if they had just put a strap on the rifle so that he could sling the rifle over his shoulder, then he would be able to carry all of his accessories all the time. Let's take a look at Snowjob's articulation. He had the typical articulation for 1983 G.I. Joe action figures, which means that he could turn his head from left to right. Later versions of G.I. Joe action figures had a ball joint in the neck, so they could also look up and down, but in 1983 they could just turn their head side to side like that. The figure was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around inside of it, which allowed him to move at the torso a little bit. His arm at the shoulder could swing up like that, and it could rotate all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow that could move his arm up about 90 degrees, and he had a swivel at the bicep, which they referred to as swivel arm battle grip, so his arm could swivel all the way around, and this allowed the figures to hold their weapons with a two-handed grip. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could move his legs at the hip about 90 degrees, and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt of Snowjob. He is wearing winter gear. He's got some sculpted-on pockets on his chest and arms, some very nice detailing on his gloves. He's wearing black goggles and a fur-lined hood, and as you can see he has a very prominent red beard. The figure is mostly white, offset with a little bit of black and brown, just to keep it from being boring. Now this white plastic, as I said before, is subject to yellowing. There are some tricks to reducing the yellow in some of the plastic that has already yellowed, but I haven't had a lot of success with those, so I can't vouch for them. As I mentioned in a previous video, Snowjob really stood out on the shelves, and I really had to get him when I saw him. I mean, he was a white GI Joe figure. He seemed very special. He was unique. But after I got the action figure as a kid, I really didn't play with him all that much, and that's mainly because, well, I live in Oklahoma, and in the winter we do get some snow, but we don't really get a lot of snow. So there really wasn't a lot of opportunity to play with an Arctic trooper outside. This entire mold of Snowjob was reused in the year 2000 to create a new character called Whiteout, who looked exactly like Snowjob, except he had a brown beard instead of a red beard. Overall, I would say this is an undeniably good-looking action figure, but it does have some bad points. Bad points, of course, being the yellowing of the white plastic, the very brittle accessories, and the lack of a strap on his rifle so that he can't hold his rifle when he is holding his ski poles. Even though Snowjob did not come with a vehicle, I think most collectors would agree that he is perfectly paired with the 1983 Polar Battle Bear, the first GI Joe Polar vehicle, and it just fits perfectly with Snowjob. It's almost like he was meant to drive this thing. In the comic book, he did drive this vehicle and he appears on the box art for the Polar Battle Bear. Since they go so well together, I always display Snowjob driving the ski mobile. But even this obvious pairing has a downside in that the Polar Battle Bear did not have any place to store Snowjob's accessories. So you can't wear his backpack while he's driving and there's no place to store the backpack and the skis and the ski poles and the rifle. So you just have to set those aside somewhere when he's driving the ski mobile. Let's take a look at the file card. These file cards were printed on the back of the card on which the figure was packaged. There's a little bit of the front of the card there. And you were encouraged to cut these out because it contained a short biography of the character represented by this action figure. Up here at the top it says Arctic Trooper, code name Snowjob. His file name is Harlan W. Moore, primary military specialty Arctic ski patrol, secondary military specialty rifle instructor. His birthplace is Rutland, Vermont and his grade is E6 Sergeant. This middle section here says, Snowjob was a major Olympic biathlon contender. Now weirdly, I think the word biathlon is misspelled on the card. A biathlon is an Olympic event that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting, which I guess is perfect for the character of Snowjob. He enlisted initially for the special training and support privileges that the Army gives to Olympic champions. However, to the consternation of Army PR Flaks, Snowjob volunteered and was accepted into the GI Joe team. Qualified expert, all NATO long range sniper rifles and the XMLR 3A laser rifle. The file card makes Snowjob out to be an expert marksman and he may be considered GI Joe's first sniper. But if that's the case, then why not give him a sniper rifle, maybe something with a big scope rather than this science fiction weapon laser rifle? There's a quote down here at the bottom of the card. It says, submitted by rock and roll. You think we call him Snowjob because he does his job on skis? Negative, he's a con artist, pure and simple, except when he picks up his rifle, sure as heck something's gonna fall down. So the file card paints Snowjob as a con artist and a jock and generally not a very likable guy. The personality depicted in the file card came through in the comic books sometimes, but not a lot. So that's my review of the 1983 Snowjob and his file card. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, go ahead and give it a thumbs up. If you didn't, go ahead and give it a thumbs down. But whatever you do, don't forget to subscribe. I've got a lot of great new videos coming up. You won't want to miss them. And I've got some ideas for a few special things that you definitely want to be subscribed for. Thanks for watching and I'll catch you all later. ["Snowjob Theme Song"]