 So everybody, who did Cobra Commander 788 here, it's time for another vintage GI Joe Toy Review and this week we are looking at an often requested vehicle and figure. It is none other than the 1984 Shark and Deep Six. So we're moving on from Cobra and looking at GI Joe again and it's about time and you know what, I think we're done with cameos for a while. I'm going to do this episode myself, solo, no guest appearances, I don't need any help, this one's all mine. Good, it's about time you stopped being lazy and letting everyone do the work for you. Sarge, what are you doing here? This doesn't have anything to do with you. It used to be about the toys, man! No drill instructors in this episode, there are no Marines in this episode, I don't need you guys. Don't you think it's time to review something from the 90s? Get out of here! This ain't my scene anyway, I'm out of here. The gratitude, thumbs down. This is the Shark GI Joe's Flying Submarine from 1984 and the Driver Deep Six. This figure and vehicle set were available first in 1984 and then in 1985 and were discontinued for the year 1986. The Shark was available as a mail away offer from 1987 to 1993. Shark is an acronym for submersible high speed attack and reconnaissance craft. Obviously, there are problems with the Deep Six action figure, particularly with the articulation, we will get to that later. There were four versions of Deep Six in the vintage line and all three of the later versions were better than version one. Deep Six version two from 1989 is a really nice figure. This is my favorite version of Deep Six. Version three from 1992 was in the Eco Warriors subteam, it's not terrible, but it suffers from the crazy colors and wacky gimmicks that were typical for Eco Warriors. In 1993 there was a recolored re-release of version two that was exclusively available as a mail away offer, I do not have that version. The Cobra water vehicle from 1984 was the water moccasin, which does not match up well against the Shark. The commercial even shows the Shark battling the water moccasin, but that's not a fair fight. The water moccasin can't fly, it can't dive underwater, Cobra wouldn't get its own submarine until 1988 with the Cobra Bug, which was more of a submersible tank than a traditional submarine and it definitely couldn't fly. It was much bigger and much better armed than the Shark, but the Shark looks like it's much faster and more maneuverable underwater. Let's set Deep Six aside for now so we can look at the Shark. The Shark is not based on any real world vehicle and it's easy to see why. A flying submarine is extremely difficult to build because the properties needed for flight conflict with the requirements for submersion. The Soviets attempted a flying submarine design in World War II, but they couldn't make it work. They didn't even build a prototype. In the early 1960s an American designer created a rudimentary flying submarine, but it would not be practical for military use. The Shark appeared in the comic book mini-series G.I. Joe Order of Battle issue number 4 and in this they tried to resolve the conflict between flight and submersion by explaining, transition from water to air is accomplished by extendable hydrofoil legs which allow high takeoff speeds attainable with twin turbofan jet engines, while the toy did not have extendable hydrofoil legs. Normal submersible movement is accomplished by a silent electric water impeller, which I guess explains why the Shark does not have a traditional propeller. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Shark starting in the front where we have a sticker, headlight, and we have a clear canopy which opens to the side. A problem with this canopy is it is hinged on very tiny tabs that are very easy to break off and that has happened on mine, so when this opens it wants to fall off. The canopy itself is a very angular design and not very aerodynamic. Inside the cockpit we have a radar or sonar screen. We have a flat surface. We have some additional details and texture. In the back we have a sticker that says absolutely no access. Absolutely no access. This means you. You place the pilot in the vehicle by putting him face down flat on the floor with his head directly on the radar screen. This is something I consider to be a major flaw in this vehicle design. You have this nice clear canopy with a wide field of vision but your pilot can take advantage of that because he is lying face down. This is exactly the same problem I had with the driver's position for the Havoc. Why have a giant glass canopy when your driver can take advantage of it because his back is to it? The entire vehicle has a very angular design in a very light gray, almost white, and we have a reasonably cool Shark logo that is a blue shark with wings. It gets the point across. We have some engine intake vents attached to the wings and those are pretty cool. And then on the top of those engines we have the main play feature on the vehicle which is the pop-up guns. On the underside of the vehicle there is a slide on each side and you operate the pop-up guns by sliding it to the forward position. Looking at it from the top the guns pop up when you push the slide forward. There is a set of twin pop-up guns on each side and the blueprints call these twin 30 millimeter tidal wave cannons. These guns are a little bit dinky but one problem I have with them is that they pop up from the engines. So if the guns are hiding down there how are the engines supposed to work? We have short wings attached to the engines. They don't look like they would provide very much lift in flight. Then on top of the engines on each side we have a very squared off fin. We have two more fins on the top of the vehicle very close together and on the back of them we have a pair of moving rudders. They are not synchronized they move independently and they're a little bit too loose in my opinion. A bar connecting them that allowed them to move together would have made a big difference. Between the two top fins we have a removable engine cover and under that some engine detail. Not bad. On the underside of the shark we have three tabs that function as landing gear for the vehicle. The shark does not have any other form of landing gear. It does though have a lot of molded in detail on the underside. Also on the underside we have two removable torpedoes which the blueprints call Shark Series 1 Acoustic Homing ASW torpedo. They each have a shark logo sticker on them and they peg in with a single round hole not on the usual dumbbell shaped peg but there's a reason for that. If you remove the torpedoes on the underside of the shark you have back pegs for figures. So you can peg on scuba divers like torpedo and wetsuit. Unfortunately on my example they don't fit very well so I have to use mounting putty to keep them on. In fact the torpedoes for the shark don't fit very well either. This is a nice idea for a feature but the execution may not quite be there. The overall look of the shark reminds me of the Kenner Star Wars Snow Speeder which was on the market at the time the shark was being designed so I think there is some influence there. Can it float? Alright let's see. Is it floating? It is actually floating pretty well. Let's give it a second to see if it starts to take on any water and sink. It took on a little bit of water in the back but then it's stabilized and now it's floating very well. It doesn't seem to be sinking any further. The box for the shark does say it is supposed to float so I am glad it works. Now let's look at Deep Six. The term Deep Six is a nautical expression that means something is irretrievably lost. It refers to a depth of six fathoms. An object tossed overboard at such a depth would be difficult to recover. So a lost object would be called Deep Six. Deep Six is wearing an atmospheric diving suit and that is a real thing. And they look similar to what we see on this figure. They can be used for deep dives where pressure would be too great for traditional diving gear. It is basically a submersible vehicle in the form of a suit. They keep a stable internal pressure of one atmosphere so divers don't have to worry about decompression sickness. Real atmospheric diving suits look about as restrictive as the figure does. So I can't fault them for realism. This is a realistic design. With the bubble helmet he looks a little like Buzz Lightyear. But based on the Toy Story cartoon, Buzz Lightyear had better articulation than Deep Six. Let's look at Deep Six's accessories and he didn't come with any traditional accessories. But he did come with this bellows and tube that worked with his diving gimmick. He has a total of two points of articulation at the shoulders only. He could swing his arms at the shoulder and that is it. This makes him the worst articulated vintage GI Joe action figure that they made. The loss of articulation is for the purpose of having an airtight suit for the diving gimmick and this starts an unfortunate tradition in the GI Joe toy line of losing articulation for gimmicks. Let's take a look at the sculpt design in color of Deep Six starting with his head and under his bubble helmet we can see he has red hair with an elvish face. Unfortunately this helmet is not removable so even if he had articulation at the head we can't use it. He has some detail on his chest and a nice splash of color with the yellow and he has some dark gray tubing and that's some nice detail and color. I really can't fault them for that. It's probably not worth losing articulation points for but it'll serve. On the back we have some more color and a little bit of detail and of course we have the peg for the hose. On the arms we have sculpted but non-functioning joints at the elbow. We have some gray shoulders not too bad. We have the hands which are very angular and blocky and really that's actually kind of realistic for atmospheric diving suits. It is realistic but it still doesn't look too good on an action figure. We have some minimal detail on the legs with some non-functioning knee joints in gray and yellow and we have gray again on the feet. With no knee joints he would walk like the robot from Robot vs. Aztec Mummy. One of the weirder things about this figure which is saying a lot with such a weird figure is that they gave him foot pegs but this figure absolutely does not need it. He is a block of plastic. He stands perfectly well without a figure stand. Let's take a look at Deep Six's file card. It has his faction as G.I. Joe and a portrait of Deep Six here. He's the shark driver and his codename is Deep Six. His file name is Malcolm R. Willoughby and I haven't found a reference for Willoughby that could be a source for Deep Six's name. There was a U.S. Army general named Charles Willoughby but I don't think that's it. His place of birth is Baltimore, Maryland and his grade is P.O. Second, Master Divers Rating and this P.O. Second means Petty Officer Second Class. This paragraph says Deep Six never won any awards for being friendly, became a Navy diver so that quote I could be alone, enjoys bottle cap collecting, solitaire and the New York Times crossword puzzles. In other words, hobbies he can do alone. Only 12 out of 50 Navy divers passed these strict requirements for the coveted diver position on the Joe team. Eight washed out in the practical application testing. Of the four finalists, Deep Six could hold his breath the longest. Down here we have a quote. Torpedo says, down in the depths where the light doesn't reach and the water pressure can crush you like an eggshell, that's where Deep Six likes it. This is a somewhat unique file card. It is not one of the typical best of the best of the best stories we get on some GI Joe file cards. Nor is it one of the file cards where the subject is just born to do his job. Deep Six is a very solitary person and he took this job so he can be away from people. I do appreciate that this file card really says something about Deep Six's personality. Deep Six doesn't like people. It has been suggested by some that he may be on the autism spectrum and that would be an interesting aspect of the character to explore. But as far as I know that was never explored in the cartoon or comic book series and I doubt that was intended by the creators. Okay, let's demonstrate Deep Six's diving feature and this is a little bit difficult because this is the biggest bowl that I have. I don't have anything bigger than this that will hold more water and will fit on the table and it's just not quite deep enough for Deep Six to completely submerge. So we'll just have to do the best we can with what we have. You have this long tube and then you have this bellows and then you have attached to a string a plug and this is a one-way valve and I'm going to attach the valve to the bellows with the end that looks like a cross. I'm going to press that in as tight as I can and then we're going to put Deep Six in the water and then we're going to pump the bellows and see what happens and yeah, this way definitely makes him surface. He's rising to the surface and look at that, he's even making bubbles. Everybody out of the pool, Deep Six is making bubbles. So to make him submerge I'm just going to pump the plug out and put it the other end into the bellows and then start pumping and this doesn't seem to be doing much of anything except for squirting water out of the plug. I don't know if it's supposed to do that. I'm just merging a bit so maybe it is working. This part doesn't seem to work very well. The surfacing feature works a lot better plus, you know, bubbles. Looking at how Deep Six and the shark were used in GI Joe media in the cartoon series there was a sea craft that looked very much like the shark and may have been a prototype shark design. In the first GI Joe cartoon miniseries, a real American hero in part three, Worms of Death. Deep Six had not been introduced at that point. The shark, as we know it, first appeared in Revenge of Cobra part three again before Deep Six was introduced. Deep Six first appeared in the cartoon episode Cobra Stops the World. In the cartoon, the shark was depicted as having seats and carrying two people rather than having a one man cockpit where the pilot has to lie down. The shark appeared more often in the cartoon series than Deep Six. Deep Six appeared in one cartoon PSA that is often ridiculed in which he emerges from a lake to tell kids not to swim during a thunderstorm. In the Marvel Comics GI Joe comic book series, Deep Six first appeared in issue number 25 and when we first see Deep Six, he is not wearing his diving suit. It's hard to write a guy who lives in an egg shell. They gave him a sweater and a Gilligan hat. The shark in that issue doesn't look anything like the toy and it may be another prototype design. The issue does show Deep Six's introverted personality. Deep Six appeared again in issue number 26, again outside of his diving suit. I would not count that among my favorite issues, but it has one of my favorite scenes. When Destro, flying in the Rattler attacks the whale, Deep Six is shot and Roadblock's machine gun is hit. Roadblock puts Deep Six's machine gun on his back and Deep Six shoots down Destro. It's a great dramatic scene that is also a character moment for both Roadblock and Deep Six. Deep Six and the shark had another important appearance in issue number 40, but there's a flub. The shark is shown launching from the whale, which is not possible. Looking at the shark and Deep Six overall, this figure and vehicle seem to have a fan following. I've received a ton of requests to review it. For me, the shark is a middle-tier vehicle. It's not bad, but I have a few problems with it. On the good side, it is very well detailed. There's a ton of molded-in detail on this vehicle. There's a lot of wires and panels and vents. The idea of a flying submarine while impractical has a ton of play potential. The back pegs for the torpedoes is a fun idea. It allows you to carry two extra figures. I just wish the execution were a little better on that. The pop-up guns are small and don't make a lot of sense, but they're kind of fun. On the bad side, it is very angular. The design doesn't flow. And those pop-up guns, although they are fun, don't make a lot of sense. Popping up from where the engines should be. You may expect me to dislike Deep Six because of the articulation. And if you think that, then you know me pretty well. Deep Six is pretty terrible. One of the defining features of GI Joe since its inception has been great articulation. But that is all sacrificed for a diving gimmick, which, on my example, doesn't work all that well. I don't think it's worth the loss of articulation. Deep Six is basically a plastic block with arms. I think a better idea would have been to allow that suit to open up and let us pull out a real figure, an articulated Deep Six figure. I think he would have looked great in the uniform he had in the comic book. And if the suit sealed tightly enough, the diving gimmick may have still worked. That was my review of the 1984 Shark and Deep Six. I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed looking at it. And finally, I've reviewed this thing. This takes care of a lot of requests. I'll be back next week to look at a figure, and it's another one that has been requested many times. So I hope you'll tune in for it. Don't forget to visit my website, hcc788.com, follow me on Facebook and Twitter, and support the channel on Patreon. And next week I am doing the review by myself. No guest appearances by anyone fictional or non-fictional. You sure you can handle a review all by yourself? You are a two-dimensional digital puppet, and don't you forget that. Thank you, everyone, for watching. I'll see you next time. And until then, remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe. Plus, you know, bubbles. Call me bubbles dialing, everybody dials.