 Hello everybody, HoodedCobraCommander788 here. It's time for another vintage GI Joe toy review. I was planning this week to review a small vehicle. I've reviewed several action figures over the last few weeks and I thought it might be a time to change it up. However, I got a request and this time we are going to look at the 1983 GI Joe medic, Dock. Dock was first introduced in 1983. He was also sold in 1984. He was discontinued in 1985 and he did not have a replacement in 1985. There was no GI Joe medic action figure released that year. However, in 1986 he was somewhat replaced by Lifeline. Lifeline was not exactly a medic, he was a rescue trooper, but he fulfilled the same role basically as Dock. In 1986-1987 Dock was available as a male away exclusive offer. Dock's specialty as a medic is referring to his role as a US Army combat medic, which in the US Army has an MOS of 68 whiskey. And just a coincidence, I'd kind of like to drink 68 whiskeys. Let's dive right in and look at Dock's accessories. Starting with his helmet, he came with this unique helmet. It did not come with any other action figures and it is very similar to the standard GI Joe helmet. You can see it's got some special things molded onto the side. This is the standard GI Joe helmet here, of course this one is in green. You can see that it's basically the same helmet, but it's got some extra lines on here and it's got these pill bottles. Yojo.com calls these flares that are strapped to the sides of his helmets here, but they don't look like flares, they look more like pill bottles to me. You can see they kind of have like a ridged cap to them. The second accessory is his rescue flare launcher, another unique accessory. This looks like it works almost like a mortar in that this end is planted in the ground and you angle it to fire this flare that's sculpted on there, launch that up. I have not been able to find a real world analog for this rescue flare launcher, so I don't think it's based on a real world design, but it does look like it would be pretty realistic. It looks like something that would really work. At the base there's a very tiny peg to help stabilize it in the ground when it's being fired and this is a really nice accessory for two reasons. For one it has a strap and it's nice that it has a strap, I wish more GI Joe accessories came with straps so you could sling it across their shoulder or back when they're not carrying it in their hands, but when he is carrying it in his hands it has this handle and this handle is a nice size. It secures in his hand very well, it doesn't slip too much and it's not too thick so you don't have to worry about breaking the action figure's thumbs. The strap does have to go across his shoulder though, it doesn't stretch enough to sling it across his body and it does slip off sometimes, but hey that's better than no strap at all. It's made out of pretty solid plastic so there's not much give in it, a little bit but not very much. Doc's final accessory is this stretcher and this thing is huge, it's one of the most impressive and possibly the biggest accessory in the 1983 GI Joe line. This thing is huge, it's meant to fit an action figure on it. It has some very nice detail on the underside, it has some medical gear and equipment sculpted onto the underside of it there, it even has a sculpted on cross. The attention to detail is so impressive, if Hasbro had chosen to not put anything on the underside of this stretcher it still would have been a pretty cool accessory but they went through the trouble of just giving this added detail and that's very nice. This means Doc has plenty of medical equipment with him even though he does not come with a backpack. These C-Clips on the arms of the stretcher are designed to clip onto the wrists of the action figures so the action figures, two of them, can carry this stretcher. This is how the stretcher is supposed to clip onto the wrists of the action figure so they can carry it. I have noticed that it doesn't work well with every figure, if the action figure has some sculpting on the wrist that makes it a little bit thicker, the C-Clips don't fit on very well. So for instance like Alpine has this stuff sculpted onto his wrist, that makes his wrist quite a bit thicker and he's not going to be able to carry the stretcher like this. There are two weak points on this stretcher, first of all these handles are very small thin pieces of plastic so those tend to break off so watch out for that, but also on the underside we have these tabs, one on each corner and these little tiny tabs do tend to break off as well and that's happened on mine, this one is sheared clean off, you can't even really tell that there was something there, but watch out for that if you wanting one that's unbroken, look at these tabs on the bottom and make sure all four of those are still there. There's a cool little bonus feature with this stretcher that involves the 1983 G.I. Joe Dragonfly Helicopter, these four tabs on the bottom are perfectly spaced to fit right across the landing skids of the Dragonfly. Now you can pretend that your wounded soldiers are being airlifted to safety on the Dragonfly, that's pretty cool but this is probably a coincidence, it doesn't look like an intentional feature but it's pretty cool nonetheless. Let's take a look at the articulation on dock, you have the typical articulation of 1983 G.I. Joe action figures, meaning he could turn his head from left to right, he could not look up and down, his head was on a swivel, not a ball joint, his arm he could move up at the shoulder about so far, he could swivel it all the way around, he had a hinge at the elbow, he could move at the elbow about 90 degrees, he had a swivel at the bicep, he could swivel his arm all the way around, the action 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 leg at the hip about 90 degrees and he'd bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of dock, starting with his head, and his head as you can see, he's African American, he has a pretty plain face and a neutral expression, which was pretty typical of G.I. Joe action figures at that time and actually I kind of prefer that when they got into doing the expressive faces, not all of those turned out too well, so it's not a bad thing to have just a neutral expression, not a lot of detailing on his hair or his face, but he does have those really nice green sunglasses and I always kind of dug those, those are pretty cool looking. On his chest he has a khaki shirt that looks like it zips up in the front, he has a white undershirt, he has some pockets on the shirt as well as these smaller pockets that may also be for pill bottles, he really can't get enough pill bottles, he needs all of them he can get, and there's this sculpted on orange cross and that's not just a paint application that is raised on there, so that's nice. This orange cross is meant to be a stand-in for the red cross, the symbol of the international red cross, which was historically worn by combat medics like Doc. Now why is the cross orange instead of red? Well the first Geneva Convention Article 44 protects the usage of the red cross by the national red cross societies, so maybe Hasbro was concerned about using the symbol of an organization that could possibly sue them for intellectual property, or maybe Hasbro just thought orange would work better with this color scheme. Doc's arms are pretty plain, they feature partially rolled up sleeves and another painted on orange cross, and his back is pretty plain too, and this back and his arms both were reused for Duke, as you can see Duke shares Doc's arms, just recolored skin color, and they both have the same back. This is a fairly popular back piece, it was also reused for Spirit, you can see Spirit also has the same back piece, but in blue plastic. Doc's waist piece features an orange belt, a bright orange belt with a white buckle and white pouches continues to the back, and this is a different shade of orange than the orange cross on his chest, that's more of a brighter orange, and this waist piece also was reused for Duke. Duke reused a lot of Doc's parts. Doc's trousers are tacky, continuing the theme, and on his right leg he has what looks like a sculpted-on pistol, and this has caused some consternation among collectors. Doc is a non-combatant as part of the rules of war, he's not allowed to carry a firearm, and according to his file card, he is a pacifist, so why does he have a sculpted-on pistol? Well, the answer to that is it's not a pistol, this is a flare gun. I believe you can tell this is a flare gun by the extra thick barrel, and it has what appears to be a sculpted-on flare. This looks like a flare to me right there. So the mystery of this pistol is not why he's carrying a pistol, because I don't think he is. The mystery is, why does he have this flare gun while he has this huge rescue flare launcher? This seems a little bit redundant. On his left leg he has two pouches for pill bottles, which are orange, and on his boots, his boots are brown, and they're mostly covered by his trousers, so that's a little bit unique. You didn't see that a lot on these action figures. So some fairly plain legs, at least on the bottom half, but it does fit with the theme of the action figure as wearing a khaki uniform. Let's take a look at Doc's file card, and the file card was printed on the back of the card on which the action figure was packaged. You can see some of the artwork from the front of the card here. It has a portrait of Doc, and it has his factionist G.I. Cho. He says it says he's the medic, and his codename is Doc. He's a doctor, and his codename is Doc. That's not the most original codename ever. It says here his filename is Carl W. Greer, and I kind of wonder if this may not be inspired by Carl Weathers, Carl W, and Pam Greer, although it would have been a different spelling than this Greer. Both Pam Greer and Carl Weathers start in a lot of black exploitation movies in the 70s. His primary military specialty is Medical Doctor, appropriate. His secondary military specialty is Chaplain's Assistant, and this actually doesn't make any sense. In the G.I. Joe comic book, the secret G.I. Joe base was located in the Chaplain's Assistant's motor pool in Fort Wadsworth, and the Chaplain's Assistants were portrayed as kind of tea sipping dandies. However, among the duties of the Chaplain's Assistant is to provide force protection for the Chaplains, because the Chaplains, like the medics, are non-combatants and are not allowed to carry firearms. So as the Chaplain's Assistant, Doc should be carrying a firearm, which he cannot do as a combat medic. Perhaps what they really meant here is that he's a Chaplain, and that might make more sense. His birthplace is Concord, Massachusetts, and his grade is O3 Captain. Now this is a pretty high rank O3, and as far as pay grade goes, that puts him as one of the highest ranked officers in G.I. Joe. That would put him right between the first version of Hawk, who is an O6, and Steeler, who was an O1. However, medical doctors are in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, and O3 is the entry-level rank for medical doctors, and he is not a line officer, so he would not command any line troops such as Steeler. This top section says he graduated from Harvard Medical School, completed residency at Johns Hopkins, hoped for a guarantee of a G.I. Joe assignment upon enlistment, told flatly that the army made no such deals, Doc enlisted anyway, and achieved his goal through ordinary channels, graduated airborne school, mountaineering school, and desert training unit. Doc's education background as an Ivy League trained medical doctor makes him the highest educated of all G.I. Joe characters. Harvard Medical School is of course located in Boston, Massachusetts, which is Doc's home state. Just out of curiosity, I did some checking to find out when the first black students were admitted to Harvard Medical School, since Doc is African American, and in 1850 actually, Harvard Medical School admitted three black students. However, they were quickly withdrawn because of complaints by the white students. Johns Hopkins Hospital is located in Baltimore, Maryland, and it is a very famous teaching hospital, and a number of traditions in the medical field, such as residency, originated at Johns Hopkins. This bottom section says, an avowed pacifist, Doc believes that the G.I. Joe team is the best we have. We send them into the worst situations imaginable, because that's where we need them the most. When the going gets rough, they need something more than a pill roller. I'm their main man. Some G.I. Joe fans have expressed some consternation at Doc's pacifism. I mean, he's a pacifist in a combat unit, which I guess doesn't make a lot of sense to a lot of people. However, I really like it, and I have to admire it. He's a person of conviction, and he's able to maintain his convictions in a working environment that is as hostile as it could possibly be to a pacifist. To me, that's a sign of a person with a great deal of personal integrity. Also, as a medical doctor, he's going to want to go where his life-saving skills are going to be the most needed, and so it kind of makes sense that as a doctor, and even as a pacifist, he would want to be assigned to an elite combat unit like G.I. Joe. So what do I think of Doc overall? For me as a kid, it was kind of the same as with a lot of G.I. Joe collectors in that Doc was kind of an underused figure. He's a medical doctor, he's not a troop, he's not a fighter, and most of my play time was organized around battles and things like that, so Doc just didn't really have much of a role, and of course when I was playing, sometimes my G.I. Joe characters would get wounded in battle, but fixing them was just never integrated into my play time all that much. I have a lot more respect for the character of Doc, and I like the action figure much more as an adult collector than I did as a kid. My main knock on the action figure is kind of the same as with Lady J. It's kind of a plain action figure. It's all one solid color of tan plastic. There's not a lot of detail on here. However, it was 1983 and that was pretty much par for the course. There wasn't quite as much detail on the figures at that time than what we saw in later years. In the early years of 1980s G.I. Joe, like with the female action figures, we usually got one African American action figure per year. Of course that started in 1982 with Stalker. It continued in 1983 with Doc. In 1984 we got Roadblock and in 1985 we got Alpine. The accessories, however, are top notch. He has a unique helmet. He has this cool little flare gun and he has a stretcher that's bigger than he is. So you can't really ask for much more as far as accessories go. In the G.I. Joe comic book, Doc had a great first appearance in issue number 11, which also introduced a lot of other new characters for 1983. And in that storyline, he was pivotal in the success of G.I. Joe against Cobra in that he saved an antidote from Destro and he did so without violating his pacifist principles. Essentially, he allowed Destro to beat the crap out of him, but he refused to relinquish the antidote. For display purposes, I like to put Doc on the back of the polar battle bear, recreating that famous image from the cover of G.I. Joe number 11. In the G.I. Joe animated series, Doc was voiced by Buster Jones, who unfortunately passed away recently on September 16th of 2014. That was my review of the 1983 G.I. Joe medic Doc. I hope you enjoyed this video and if you're thinking about getting a Doc action figure, I hope you found this video informative. If you did, make sure you give it a thumbs up on YouTube and make sure you subscribe. I've got a lot of great new G.I. Joe tour reviews coming your way. You don't want to miss them. Also, don't forget to like the Facebook page. You get some updates there that you don't get anywhere else. Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you next week with another G.I. Joe tour review video. G.I. Joe Battle Bear. Joe and Cobra figures eat so separately from Hasbro.