 HCC to Treckyards, HCC to Treckyards, come in Treckyards. Captain Foley here, Treckyards read you loud and clear. Go ahead, HCC. I'm piloting the USS Thunder Road to the far reaches of the galaxy. I'm really far out now. I'm investigating territory where no previous Earth person has here to for explored. God, I wish I could be up there. I envy you, hoodie. I wish I could smell the aroma of unexplored planets, meet some alien species, encounter women with extra glands. Who knows what kind of alien I could meet out here. It could be pure energy, or it could be thought waves. It could be something we can't even imagine. How about a species of Amazon women who want to breed a new race? Hang on, I'm getting a transmission from an extraterrestrial source. What's up, doc? HCC to Treckyards, nothing to see out here. I'm heading back. See you at the pub. Commander 788 here. This is the show where we review every vintage G.I. Joe toy from 1982 to 1994. This week I have the privilege of giving a codename to another patron. One bad devil dog added his support on Patreon. Really, his screen name is a pretty good codename, but I still need to give him a new one. He was a marine, so I want to give him a codename that has something to do with the marines. G.I. Joe had some great marines. They had Sargeant Slaughter, Leatherneck, Gung Ho. One bad devil dog needs a codename that combines all of those great marines together. One bad devil dog, your codename is Sargeant Leatherhoe. Thank you for your support. To get through this review, I'm going to need a few drinks. I'm trying something new this week, drunk toy reviewing. We are venturing into outer space. I'm reviewing a G.I. Joe space alien. Yeah, you heard that right. I also invited an expert on outer space to join the show this week. Please welcome Captain Foley from the YouTube channel, Trek Yards. Hey guys, I'm Captain Foley from Trek Yards. We are a YouTube-based Star Trek show. We talk about the ships and tech primarily. But we also do episode reviews, breaking news. We look at all the new series. We have a lot of fun in our channel, lots of lives that are either reviews and or getting to know you guys or just late night hangouts with me where I answer your questions and comments. There's myself and Commander Cockings, and we really love Star Trek. We really love all sci-fi. We have a spin-off channel called Fleet Yards as well. So if you're on YouTube and feel like joining up, please join the ranks. Hit subscribe for Trek Yards. Thanks guys. I want to make a drinking game out of this. Every time we run across something weird or stupid, we have to take a drink. Alright, cool. Let's do it. I have bourbon. The bourbon is cheap, and so am I. What you got? Um, well, I have this. It's, uh, it's, well, it's, uh, it's green. Order is ready as will ever be. HCC 788 and Captain Foley present, Carcass. This is Carcass, G.I. Joe's Star Brigade Alien Destroyer from 1994. This figure was available only in 1994 because 1994 was the final year of the vintage G.I. Joe toyline before it transitioned to Sergeant Savage. This is the only version of Carcass ever produced. He is a Lunar Ticks Empire space alien. Yes, a space alien in the vintage G.I. Joe toyline. A Carcass is a dead body of an animal. Yeah, that's about right. The aliens in the Star Brigade subset were from the Lunar Ticks Empire. You heard that right. They are Lunar Ticks. Drink. Carcass was in the Star Brigade subset, which was introduced in 1993. It was a series of space themed G.I. Joe figures and vehicles. In 1993, the Star Brigade characters were mostly human. There was one android and some armor tech characters that were part machine, but they all had their origin on earth. In the 1994 Star Brigade series, G.I. Joe jumped over all the sharks in the ocean and brought us aliens from outer space. Obviously, this isn't the first time science fiction appeared in G.I. Joe. Science fiction elements have been present in the line since the relaunch in 1982. For instance, Flash was a laser rifle trooper and Grand Slam had a big laser cannon. In 1984, the Zartan figure had color changing powers. In the comic book series, his camouflage and disguise abilities were partly explained with holographic technology. 1986 was a big year for science fiction in G.I. Joe. That year saw androids, two color changing figures, a mad scientist, and a composite clone emperor. In 1993, G.I. Joe had a couple mutant creatures in the mega marine subset, but the line managed to make it all the way to the final year without having literal space aliens. There were three Star Brigade aliens in 1994, Carcass, Lobotamax, and Predacon. I already reviewed Lobotamax. He had a long, veiny tail with a fist on the end and a long, veiny neck and a ball sack on his head. Drink. Carcass, well, look at him. Of the three, Predacon is the least weird. There was another series of aliens planned for 1994, but they were canceled before production. The Manimals were alien figures that transformed into monsters. Some of the Manimals were eventually released in the year 2000 as exclusives to KB toy stores. Thanks to Brandon Knight, I have a sealed Carcass figure, so let's look at the unopened figure and see how Carcass was marketed back in 1994. The card has a vertical G.I. Joe logo, and above G.I. Joe it says Lunar Ticks Empire. It has the Star Brigade logo in the corner, and in very tiny it has the Lunar Ticks Empire logo. That is so tiny, it's almost like they were ashamed of it, as they should be. This guy's mama named him Carcass. He is the alien destroyer. The card art is fine. It enhances some of the details on the figure. For instance, the card art shows him with claw feet, and those details are just sort of sculpted on the top of regular feet rather than make the figure's feet that shape, and he is holding a weapon that is an accessory that comes with the figure. He has bendable monster arms, and this figure was $4.49 when he was on the pegs in 1994. You can see through the plastic bubble, this figure came with an accessories tree, this plastic piece here, and all the accessories are attached to the tree, so the purchaser would have to cut the individual accessories off of the frame. Flipping the card around the back, we have the cross-sell with some other Star Brigade figures that were available at the time. There's Carcass right there. There are instructions on how to use the figure stand, and then there's this caption, coming soon, Power Fighters and Manimals. Power Fighters were released in the vintage era, but the Manimals were not. They were released later, though. This was worth $1.90 style flag point, and this figure was apparently sold at Target. Then we have the file card. This is the reduced-size file card. It's about baseball card size. They started doing this in 1994. The card has this to say about Lunar Ticks aliens. Watch out. Alien bounty hunters joined the Galactic battles as they stalked the stars in search of alien or humanoid prey. These are all alien bounty hunters, and so were the Manimals. Did the writer of these cards not know what a bounty hunter is? I think they heard it on Star Wars, and assumed it had something to do with bad aliens. Drink. Ew. That is... not smooth. That's... oof. Let's take a look at Carcass' accessories. As mentioned a moment ago, they were all connected to a green plastic frame, so they are all the same green color. This was common with 90s figures. There is no spring-loaded missile launcher, though. None of these accessories are original. They are all reissues of accessories that came with earlier action figures. Let's start by looking at this one. This sort of looks like a traditional assault rifle with a grenade launcher attached. It feeds from top and bottom. It has two magazines. This lower magazine looks like it might feed into the underbarrel grenade launcher. The details are not bad. It is not based on a real-world weapon, but you can kind of imagine this working as a real firearm. This is a reissue of the rifle that originally came with 1990 Sky Patrol Air Wave. That rifle will fit in the action figure's hand without any problem, and it fits quite snugly. It won't fall out very easily. Next, let's look at this other rifle. This is also in that green color. It has a magazine under the grip. It has what looks like a folding stock and a scope and a vented barrel shroud. This is a reissue of the rifle that came with 1991 Lowlight Version 3. This is the accessory featured on the card arch. Even though this isn't based on a real weapon, it still looks like a traditional firearm. Looks like something from Earth, not from outer space. Next, we look at his pistol. This pistol is also in that green color. It is not based on a real-world weapon, but it kind of looks like just a generic pistol. It has details that you might see on any number of semi-automatic firearms. This is a reissue of the accessory that came with 1990 Sky Patrol Sky Dive. And like the others, even though this isn't based on a real weapon, it looks like a traditional firearm and not something from outer space. Next, we have this knife. The knife is in that green plastic color. This is not a science fiction weapon. It's a pretty basic knife. Although, of course, aliens could have knives. If they can invent space travel, I'm sure they can invent a stick with a sharp thing on the end. So an alien could have something like this. But in this case, this alien has borrowed this knife from 1988 Hidden Run. Hidden Run had that knife first and in a much better color of green. The knife will fit in the figure's hand, but just barely. The base of the handle is wider than the handle itself. So you really have to press it in to get it into the closed fist of the figure's hand. Next, we get to this accessory, and this finally looks like a weapon that might be appropriate for carcass. This looks like a laser gun. It looks like a weapon that might be used by a space alien. This is a reissue of the accessory that came with 1991 Mercer Version 2. But there's a problem with this accessory. A big problem. A big, big, big problem. This is the only accessory that looks science fiction enough to be used by an alien like carcass. But carcass can't hold it because this weapon has a closed loop on the grip and carcass has closed fists on both hands. It is not possible to put his hands on the grip of the one accessory that looks like it's right for him. The best you can do is try to get him to hold it by the stock. You can kind of fit it in his hand that way, but wow, that looks stupid. Drink. Look, I'm on record as saying these accessories trees that came with 90s figures were lazy and cheap, and they didn't even care if the accessories were appropriate to the figure they came with. And this is an example. It's not just that he came with accessories that don't look like they would be used by an alien from outer space. He came with an accessory that he can't use at all. This indicates to me that nobody at Hasbro cared what accessories these figures came with, as long as they were cheap. The final accessory is the best one probably. It's the figure stand. 90s figures came with figure stands. 80s figures did not. So that is one point that 90s figures will always have in their favor. Let's take a look at the articulation on Carcass. He had articulation that was unlike any other GI Joe figure. He could turn his head from left to right. He had a swivel neck, not a ball-jointed neck. The arms are bendy. There is a bendable metal wire inside a softer plastic sleeve. They don't bend very well. They are kind of stiff. Also, the arms are one piece. They are connected. So they move together. You can kind of get the arms to move independently if you twist them. But because they chose to make the arms all one piece, they want to move together. Believe it or not, this is an O-ring figure. So he can move at the torso like a traditional O-ring figure. And the lower half of the figure is standard GI Joe articulation. So he can move his legs apart about so far. He can bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt design in color of Carcass and I'll start by saying he is very orange. If you don't like orange, you may not like this guy. If you do like orange, you probably will like the guy. I can't see any other reason why you dislike him. His head is orange. He has this oval ring, I guess, around his head. He has these open loops at the side of his head. The top of his head kind of looks like a T. On the outside of those loops, he has black eyes. Lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. He has what looks like an alligator snout and some sharp white teeth. The white teeth and the black eyes constitute the only paint applications on the entire figure. The chest, he has an orange claw-like rib cage. The file card calls these mutated claw ribs. They are made of a slightly softer plastic and they will bend a little bit. I expected these to be hinged so they could open up and maybe grab some prey, but they are not. Behind the claw ribs, he has a clear plastic chest piece and behind that clear plastic chest piece, you can see red lungs and green guts. You can see the tip of the screw that holds the figure together. The internal organs add the only non-orange color to this figure with the exception of the minimal paint on the head. The back piece is pretty plain. It's just an orange piece with a checker pattern and what I think maybe spikes here along his collar. I think maybe this is supposed to be some kind of shell. The arms are orange. They are bendy, but they don't bend very easily. They're kind of stiff. A ridge pattern on the inside a texture pattern on the outside and a fringe on the top and bottom. On the end of each arm is a closed three-fingered fist. There is a hole in each hand for the accessories, but the holes in the hands are angled to the outside which makes posing awkward even for the accessories he can hold. The waist piece is orange with no paint applications, there is a ridge pattern on the front. There is a ridge pattern on the back which I interpret as corduroy. The legs are orange with no paint applications. They have some nice details though. They look like crustacean shells. The knees have little knobs on them. Not quite knee pads, but some additional crustacean-like details. There are ridges on the back of the lower legs with spikes on the heels. Those look pretty cool. He could use those as weapons. I don't want to get a back kick from this guy. The feet have pincer details sculpted on the top of normal-shaped feet. Unlike the card art which make the feet look like actual pincers. The bendy arm feature is similar to the bendy tail and neck on Lobotomax, and the bendy arms have a lot of the same problems, but at least the bendy arms are not as gross as the bendy tail and neck on Lobotomax. Drink! We'll give them credit for one thing. They did get away from the standard buck that was used to sculpt most G.I. Joe figures, so it stretches the creativity. That's faint praise though, because that doesn't mean it's good. It's just wildly different from the usual G.I. Joe figure. If the figure were in a larger scale, I could see it existing in the masters of the universe line. At a larger scale, he could even have another gimmick, like spring back hinges on those claw ribs. I see this as a G.I. Joe figure. If the brand wasn't on the card, I would assume it was from something else. We're going to look at the construction of this figure. Even though this segment is going to come more toward the middle of the video, I'm shooting it last because I'm going to take this figure apart and because I don't know what the inner workings are like, I don't know if I'll be able to get it back together. I have to do it though. I want to know how this figure is constructed. I want to know how the arms connect and I want to know how they got the color on the internal organs. Let's use a trusty screwdriver and take out the back screw. Seems to come out like any other G.I. Joe action figure. Just unscrew the thing. Let's see if this guy will come apart. There's a possibility that it's glued together so he may not disassemble. Oh, no. There he goes. Alright. There's two pieces. There's the head with the neck post. Alright, guy. Let's keep coming apart there. Okay. Alright. He is apart. Alright, cool. It looks like the claw ribs are one piece as well. The arms have this bar in there and you can actually see some of the metal bendy wire right there between them. What I'm really curious about is this chest piece and how did they get those organs in there? It looks like they actually painted that so this counts as additional paint applications. Those aren't plastic pieces in there. They painted the inside of this clear plastic chest piece. The rest of the figure appears to be a standard O-ring figure. Now let's see if I can get it back together. It should just be a matter of lining it up and pressing it together but it's it's a lot of pieces more than the average figure to line up but hey, I think we may don't quite have it. There we go. There we go. And we may be back in business here. Yeah. Hey, I reassembled it. Cool. Everything works. Everything's as tight as it should be. Alright, so now we know how Karkis is constructed. Speaking of the card, let's take a look at the file card. It was the smaller baseball size file card with a purple background. It has his name as Karkis. It has a copy of the card art with some of the features pointed out. Karkis is number 52 in series 1994. The numbering on these cards is a little weird. Early 1994 Star Brigade figures were numbered 20 through 27. 1994 Star Brigade figures were numbered 49 through 54 and Karkis is number 52. But there weren't 54 figures released in 1994. Only 45 figures were released that year including mailaways, a convention exclusive, and 30th anniversary figures. So what accounts for the missing numbers? Maybe some of the unreleased figures? This top section says his codename is Karkis so is that his codename? Or is that his real name? I don't know. He's an alien destroyer. I don't know if that means he is an alien who destroys, or if he destroys aliens. His birthplace is quadrant 4 planet Mertonia. His primary military specialty is mercenary hunter. So is he a hunter of mercenary? Or is he a mercenary who hunts? Secondary military specialty is planetary slash alien destruction. So is that destruction by aliens or destruction? Oh, you get the idea. This paragraph says, leaving nothing but broken bones and smashed dwellings in his wake, Karkis is a born menace to the universe. He has stomped through alien towns destroying all he can and making prisoners of its fearful inhabitants. He has even gone so far as to mistakenly attack a star brigade outpost, narrowly escaping capture by ducking into an asteroid belt. His mutated body which may account for his overly hostile attitude is considered ugly even to other lunatics aliens more hideous than he. If they are more hideous why do they consider him ugly? If they are uglier than he is Karkis should be like a beauty queen in his species. This file card is generic sci-fi stuff. It's uninspired and phoned in. Drink, hang on hang on, I got a refill. Alright drink looking at how Karkis was used in GI Joe media that won't take very long. He did not appear in the animated series and he did not appear in the comic book series published by Marvel Comics. He did appear much later along with the other Lunatic alien in the 2007 Devil's Do comic book GI Joe vs. Transformers Black Horizon. I'm a huge GI Joe fan and I got a huge collection of GI Joe stuff but it's the earlier stuff, the later stuff I wasn't into. This Karkis figure I didn't even really know about until recently and good God man. I know here in the Federation we're supposed to be accepting of other species but what is this abomination? It looks like somebody glued a bunch of Cheetos together I don't understand what happened to GI Joe in the 90s the mid 90s bright colors everywhere weird premises or premise I don't know how you'd say that but why? What is happening to GI Joe? It's an interesting figure I'll put it that way would I have it in my collection? Nope I wouldn't but I'd like to thank you for having me in this review. I really appreciate it but I'm looking forward to hearing what you say about this thing Looking at Karkis overall I have to give Hasbro credit for creativity. This is unlike any other GI Joe figure they broke away from the standard structure and articulation and shit like that that's one point for creativity Is it a good figure? Well all the extra effort that went into sculpting and materials came at the cost of paint paint the bottom half of the figure is entirely orange the top half of the figure top half of the figure is almost entirely orange all of the accessories are reused from other action figures and most of them are not appropriate for a space alien maybe he stopped off at Walmart to pick up his guns stopped off at the gun department in Walmart get him some earth guns I don't know it doesn't look that much weirder than the average Walmart customer I know there's a market for this stuff I know there are some GI Joe fans who love this and this figure could be used in your Star Wars Cantina or some other space toy so maybe you think this figure is awesome so there are some people who love carcass cool cool cool cool cool but real me this what does GI Joe add to this figure it's not in any of the comic books he's not in the cartoons he doesn't even fit in most GI Joe vehicles because of the bendy arms does Star Brigade need this guy as a bad guy to fight against no because Star Brigade already had Cobra bad guys to fight against they don't need any space aliens on the other hand what does this figure add to GI Joe not in any of the media the file card doesn't put him in any story line or anything so it's like totally separate it's not like this guy is Duke's other half brother and if he was holy s*** who the f*** is Duke's mom f*** if you like this figure great I would not take this it's a moth in here there's a moth in here I would not take this figure away from you I want you to have this figure that you like I just don't see what it has to do with GI Joe it has the GI Joe label on it only because the suits at Hasbro saw that science fiction toys were trending and they wanted the cash in they're trying to find a trend to save the line from cancellation but the line got cancelled anyway and now we have these weird ass aliens in GI Joe that was my review of Carcass hope you liked it thank you to Sergeant Leatherhoe thank you to Captain Foley from Truck Yards I am never doing drunk toy reviews again it's too dangerous if I do a review of something like Carcass I could die I could die of lead poisoning I could die of alcohol poisoning I could die of alcohol poisoning there's no lead in this right I could die of alcohol poisoning it's just too many drinks yeah I feel fine I can drink Syntha Hall all day and it doesn't affect me Syntha Hall Syntha Hall yes Syntha Hall I'd be crazy to do a review like this with real alcohol you were drinking Syntha Hall right? drink thank you for watching this video if you enjoyed it I'm making more like it so please give this video a thumbs up on youtube subscribe to the youtube channel hit the notification bell so you don't miss any future videos and share this video with your friends that's what helps this channel grow you can find me on social media and I have a website HCC788.com if you want to know if I've already reviewed a vintage GI Joe item that's a good place to check special thanks to all my supporters on Patreon including the names you see on the screen now support on Patreon helps keep this show going so if you like this show and you'd like to support this show in that way please consider checking out Patreon you can get some special rewards including early access to reviews and you can find out how to decode the secret messages you see in these videos thank you for joining me on this adventure of collecting vintage GI Joe toys I'll see you next time and until then remember only GI Joe is GI Joe this shit is still recording look here this is not an act I actually drank all that and I'm not I'm not acting