 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review and this time I am getting started on one of the videos that was requested by a viewer. As you know if you watch my older videos I have asked you to let me know which GI Joe toys you would like for me to review and the first request I got was for the Dread Nox. In the GI Joe universe the Dread Nox were a motorcycle gang led by Zartan. There were three original Dread Nox, Buzzer, Ripper and Torch. I'm not going to review all of the Dread Nox in this one video, I'm going to review Ripper and Torch a little bit later so I'm going to set them aside for now so that we can look at my favorite Dread Nox, Buzzer. The introduction of a motorcycle gang in the GI Joe universe may seem a little bit strange. I mean it did take the GI Joe toy line in a non-military direction but I really liked it. I first learned of the Dread Nox through the comic books so when I saw the action figures on the shelves I was really jazzed and I definitely wanted to get them. Often when GI Joe introduced non-military elements it usually leaned towards science fiction and so I liked the Dread Nox as a way of introducing some other non-military aspects to the GI Joe universe without going straight sci-fi. It would be incorrect to say the Dread Nox were not influenced by science fiction because they do appear to be inspired by the movie Mad Max. Oddly enough the Dread Nox were a motorcycle gang that did not come with motorcycles. Later on we did get a toy Dread Nox cycle but it was kind of a three-wheeled vehicle and I'm not a big fan of it. They also did get the Thunder Machine which was a really cool kind of Mad Max style car and I did really like the Thunder Machine but again it's not a motorcycle. Let's take a look at Buzzer's accessories starting with his backpack and his backpack was actually two parts. You can see that mainly it's just a gas can and it fits on this rack by this peg, the hole in the back of the gas can and of course the gas can is hollow. I'm not a big fan of this backpack. Buzzer did not come with a motorcycle so he wouldn't have had a motorcycle to fuel up with this gas can and they may have intended it as fuel for his chainsaw but his chainsaw doesn't appear to have any place to put fuel in so it doesn't really work for that. I just think it's kind of useless. Buzzer came with his chain axe and this is actually made out of a pretty rubbery material and I really like that. I wish more of the accessories were made a little bit softer out of a slightly softer plastic that would have prevented breakage of some of the accessories and it probably would have prevented some breakage of the thumbs of the action figures as well. This chain axe is a crescent blade on a chain and a handle and it's got this chip in it which I think is a nice detail, just something that they added to it so it looks good. I don't think this would be a very practical weapon. With this blade swinging around on a chain you're just as likely to cut off your own head or jab it into your thigh than to injure an enemy. This chain axe looks pretty cool but really who cares? Buzzer is known for one accessory and one accessory only and that of course is his chainsaw. The file card says this is a diamond tooth chainsaw which is used to cut through metal and it doesn't look like any chainsaw I've ever seen. It looks more like a chainsaw that's been placed on the end of a gun. It's got this buttstock here. It doesn't seem to have any kind of fuel tank. It does have this handle on the side so he can use it too handed to cut through things. It does have some really nice detail and I like it. It is a really awesome looking weapon. I think that probably you couldn't really make a chainsaw like this but who cares? It just looks really cool. Let's look at the articulation of Buzzer and Buzzer came out in 1985 but he had the 1984 GI Joe action figure articulation which meant that he could turn his head from side to side. Now most figures that came out in 1985 had a ball joint at the neck so not only could they turn their head side to side they could also look up and down like Bazooka here but Buzzer and the other Dreadnocks did not have that new point of articulation. They still had the 1984 swivel head and that I think to me it means that these figures were designed in 1984 but not released until a year later. Another 1985 figure that still had the 1984 articulation was Tolbooth. As you can see he also has the swivel head but he like the Dreadnocks came out in 1985. Buzzer could move his arm up at the shoulder about so far and he could swing it all the way around. He could move his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees and 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 and allowed him to move at the torso a little bit. The O-ring on this action figure is a little bit loose which also makes the legs a little bit loose. He could move his leg up at the hip about 90 degrees. He could bend at the knee about 90 degrees and he can move his legs apart about so far. Let's look at the sculpt and design of Buzzer. First of all on his left arm he has a really cool tattoo that looks kind of like a dagger with a snake coiled around it. Making action figures with tattoos was a fairly courageous thing for Hasbro to do. This is not something that you would typically see in toys designed for children. Also on his left arm is this black band and his right arm is Bear. Yojo.com says that Buzzer used all unique parts but this right arm looks to me a lot like Gung Ho's right arm and they are so close to the same that if they are not identical they are so close to being identical that I cannot tell the difference. Buzzer's face is kind of ugly let's be honest. He's got these silver sunglasses and he's got kind of a rubbery hair with a ponytail on the back and a very prominent widow's peak. Looking at Buzzer's chest he has a khaki shirt with the sleeves ripped off. You can kind of see the rips on the sleeves on the sculpting of the chest. He has a green strap with some green grenades and that does continue all the way around to the back. On this side he has some interesting pieces. It looks like he has US Army Airborne Jump Wings and this to me appears to be a Soviet officer's hat insignia and he also has some silver dog tags. Now these are not items that Buzzer would have acquired normally. These are probably trophies perhaps stolen or taken off of some of his victims. So these items I think tell a story. We don't know exactly where Buzzer got these but he must have gotten them through some kind of nefarious means. As I said the green strap does go around to the back and I really like that if you remember my review of Duke that was one of my knocks against that figure is that the strap kind of just disappeared but this one they actually got the back to match the front. Buzzer has a silver skull and crossbones belt buckle which I think is a very nice detail and a nice paint app. He has what I guess you would call a leather cod piece. On the back he has some pockets, a black belt. He's wearing blue jeans and on his thighs he has what I guess would be black leather armor and then on his feet he has some very nicely sculpted brown leather riding boots. Overall I think this action figure really looks great. I've always been a fan of the dread knocks. I love their biker gang look to them. He looks like he's something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. He's definitely very non-military which is a departure for G.I. Joe but it's not like he's wearing neon green or something. He still looks fairly realistic and he looks very unique. I love the dread knocks in general and Buzzer is my favorite. The dread knocks despite being a biker gang did not come with motorcycles back in 1985. But what you can do nowadays is you can go to your local toy store and get one of these 118th scale motorcycles and that is about the right scale to fit a dread knock. So you put Buzzer on there. Now I've found that using some sticky tack on the handlebars helps because his old vintage hands don't really like to fit over the handlebars but finally you can give Buzzer a motorcycle. So he looks like a proper motorcycle gang member. That's the way a dread knock should look. Let's take a look at the file card and Buzzer is another figure that has multiple versions of his file card. These file cards were printed on the back of the packaging that the action figure came in. You can see some of the front art of the packaging there and on the back these file cards were there. You're intended to cut these out and keep them. These four file cards represent three different textual variations and two different colors. So even though these are all file cards for the same action figure, they are all different. Let's start with the version of the file card that I believe to be the earliest version and this version says up at the top dread knock codename Buzzer and Buzzer is more of an alias than a codename. It has his portrait here and here down at the bottom it says the enemy and that's a little bit different from Cobra file cards. It would have a cobra symbol on here, but dread knocks are not technically cobra agents. They are independent. They are their own motorcycle gangs. So down here in the faction it just says the enemy. His file name is Dick Blinken in parentheses Richard Blinken Smythe and there's a bit of an inside joke with these dread knock file names. These are the file cards for the other two Ripper and Torch. If you put the file cards in this order and read the first names, the first names read Tom, Dick and Harry. And the last names read Winken, Blinken and Nod. Of course Winken, Blinken and Nod is a famous poem by Eugene Field. Back to Buzzer's file card, it says his place of birth is Cambridge, England, so he is British. This section says Buzzer was an extreme left-wing Cambridge sociology don who went to Australia to research the biker gang phenomenon only to be transformed into the very object of his research. A university don is basically a fellow or a tutor so Buzzer is highly educated in fact he is just short of being a professor. The fact that he went to Australia to research the biker gang phenomenon I think reflects the influence that the Mad Max movies had on the dread knocks. Years of intellectual displeasure caused repressed psychotic anger manifested in an intense desire to chainsaw apart the expensive giegos of technological society. Giegos is another vocabulary word for today and what the word means is basically something that is gaudy or useless. It doesn't say exactly what kind of extreme left-wing ideology Buzzer ascribed to he could have been a left anarchist or a communist but like many extremists in the political spectrum he found himself disillusioned with society and when that happens it can sometimes manifest in destructiveness. This bottom section has his specialty and MO and it says here that MO stands for modus operandi which is Latin for mode of operation. A scavenger of the swamps Buzzer can cut through steel, wrought iron and any metal except armor plate with his diamond tooth chainsaw. After this first version of the card they actually changed the text of this section here and the second version of the card had the changes of the text applied with this sticker and this is really strange it's the only time that I know of where they changed the file card by slapping a sticker on it you can even see the old text here under the sticker. This version still has him going to Australia to research the biker gang phenomenon but instead of repressed psychotic anger it says years of intellectual displeasure and extreme indignation at society's two-faced morality manifested in an intense desire to chainsaw apart the expensive yegaw's of technological society. I'm not certain about the reason for this change but I suspect they wanted to eliminate this reference to repressed psychotic anger and that may have had something to do with Zartan's file card which referred to him as an extreme paranoid schizophrenic and outrage over this line caused them to change the text on Zartan's file card and I think maybe they wanted to remove this psychotic anger essentially it's not a bad idea if gijo file cards stay out of the psycho analysis business changing the file card to avoid pop psychology may explain the first change to the file card but not the second change this one has a new text up here at the top instead of going to Australia to study the biker gang phenomenon this has him going to Australia for a short respite only to find himself one year later transformed into a vexated wanderer the rest of this version of the file card matches the second version and this change is a little bit harder to explain I really don't know what the purpose would be to change him from researching the biker gang phenomenon to just becoming a vexated wanderer it's the text from this third version of the file card that was transferred to the fourth version this is essentially the same file card but it has a gray color instead of the original peach color of the old file card the file card depicts buzzer as being one of the most interesting characters in all of the gijo universe he's definitely one of the most complex and multifaceted characters he is highly educated in fact his education level puts him somewhere between airborne who is a lawyer and doc who of course is a medical doctor that's what makes buzzer my favorite dreadnought he's not just a criminal with an appetite for destruction there is some intellect to him there is a philosophy behind his actions and that I think makes him exceptionally dangerous he's a highly intelligent individual but he is not limited by any moral philosophy that would stop him from destroying property and killing other people that was my review of the dreadnought buzzer I will be looking at the other two original three dreadnoughts ripper and torch and future videos and I hope you'll stick around make sure you subscribe because you don't want to miss those videos if you like this video there are three things that I want you to do first make sure you like this video on youtube second make sure you subscribe to the hooded cobra commander 788 youtube channel and third go to facebook and like the hooded cobra commander 788 facebook page that way you get a lot of updates that you don't get on the youtube channel and one more time if there's a vintage gijo toy you would like for me to review make sure you leave a comment and I will get to it as soon as I can thanks for watching and I'll catch you all later