 We're Commander 788, here's... BAAAARGH! Hey, dear, so great! Talk to your beloved G.I. Joe! SWATERIZING! SORRY, SORRY, G.I. Joe! Ready? Ready? Ready. Silence, kill me. 788, here is time for another vintage G.I. Joe Toy Review, and I'm proud to announce that the entire month of April 2017 will be Battleforce 2000 Months. This month, we are going to look at the entire first wave of Battleforce 2000 from 1987. Now, I'm no math scientist, but according to my phone app called a calendar, there appear to be five Sundays in the month of April. That means this month, instead of doing five reviews, we're going to do six. That means for one of the weeks in April, instead of doing one full review, we are going to do two full reviews for a total of six for the month. My God, what have I done to myself? But there are reasons we're doing it this way. For one thing, all of the vehicles in Battleforce 2000 had a gimmick. You could detach certain parts of them and put them together to form the future fortress. And so with each review, we will assemble part of the future fortress, and at the end of the month, we will look at the entire future fortress and see what we think about it. Also, Battleforce 2000 will be part of the Jocon 2017 Exclusive Figure Set. And some of you will be going to Jocon and picking up those exclusive figures, so I thought you might like to see the vintage versions of those figures before you go out and buy the new ones. Now, I don't know much about modern GI Joe action figures, so for each vintage figure that we review, Joefan82 will give us a preview of what to expect from the modern version of that figure. Hey guys, Joefan82 here. This year at Jocon, we'll be seeing the first modern versions of the Battleforce 2000 figures. So after HCC reviews the vintage figure, I'll be taking a look at what we can expect from the Collectors Club for Avalanche. Thank you, Joefan82, for providing the previews. Now, Battleforce 2000 is a divisive subject among GI Joe fans. Few loved it, some thought it was okay. A lot of people didn't like it very much, but I'm gonna try to be as fair as I can with these toys. One quirk about the Battleforce 2000 subteam within GI Joe is that none of the vehicle drivers were sold with the vehicles they were intended to drive. All of the figures and vehicles were sold separately, and that's not usually how GI Joe would do it. But despite that fact, for these reviews, both vehicle and driver will be reviewed together. Let's kick off Battleforce 2000 months by looking at the Dominator snow tank and the sold separately driver, Avalanche. This is the 1987 Battleforce 2000 Dominator snow tank and Avalanche the Dominator driver. Thanks to Lenny Allen for helping me complete the Avalanche figure. You helped make this video possible. As you can see, we have two Avalanche figures here. That means we will be looking at a variant. Battleforce 2000 was a new concept in 1987. It was a small team that would field test experimental equipment for GI Joe. Even though GI Joe had expanded its science fiction elements by 1987, Battleforce 2000 took it even farther with entirely futuristic looking figures and vehicles. The problem was GI Joe already had a lot of futuristic experimental vehicles and figures. So Battleforce 2000 was kind of redundant. I would like to direct your attention to a GI Joe Berg podcast episode that had an excellent discussion of Battleforce 2000. The Battleforce 2000 vehicles in the 1987 series had an added gimmick, parts of them would detach and you could put them together to form the future fortress. Hasbro set up Destro's private army, the Iron Grenadiers as enemies for Battleforce 2000. They even went so far as to put Battleforce 2000 logos on the Iron Grenadiers packaging. But as far as I know, the Iron Grenadiers were never used for that purpose in GI Joe media. There was another problem with Battleforce 2000. All of the 1987 Battleforce 2000 figures were vehicle drivers, yet none were packaged with the vehicles. They were all sold as carded figures. There was no reason to do this other than to squeeze more nickels out of the kids. It emulated what Kenner did with Star Wars toys. Their pilots and drivers were also sold separately much to the annoyance of many a Star Wars fan. I have a couple things for this video that I don't normally have. I have the box for the dominator. It's a bit beat up, but we can take a look and see how the dominator appeared on retail shelves. I also have the full card back for Avalanche. Let's set the action figures aside for now so we can take a close look at the dominator. Let's start by looking at the box for the dominator. Why not? And we have some artwork for the dominator. It shows Avalanche driving it. And these background colors of blue and purple that were standard for Battleforce 2000 are a little weak. They definitely did not pop as much as the explosion background for the standard GI Joe line. We have the GI Joe logo up here on top. We have the Battleforce 2000 logo under it. It says dominator in parentheses, snow tank, two battle units in one. We have the future fortress ad right here in the corner. On the bottom we have the same artwork and on the top we have basically just text and logos. On the back though we have a photograph of the vehicle and this looks like it's a photo of a prototype because there are some differences between this photo and the toy that we actually got. For one thing the antennae are two separate pieces and the hatch is flat rather than raised. So those are some changes they made to the vehicle before it went into production. As you can see the dominator is colored white. It is a snow tank. And this one is slightly yellowed, not too bad. These do tend to discolor over time. This isn't quite as white as it used to be but it's pretty close. Dominator was also the name of a later vehicle, Destro's dominator and there's no relation between the two. Let's look at the parts and the features of the dominator starting here in the front. In the front we have a grill and we have the GI Joe logo and the battle force 2000 logo side by side. We have a latch here for the split open gimmick and we will take a look at that later. We have two black guns which pivot and the blueprints call these twin terror dual pivoting 7.62 millimeter machine guns. 7.62 millimeter by 51 millimeter was the standard NATO round. Both guns pivot but do not elevate. We have foot pegs on the running boards on both sides so extra figures can ride along. Also on both sides we have toolboxes and these two open up, the covers pop off but on my example the covers are on there pretty tightly and they're kind of difficult to get off. I have used my trusty mini screwdriver to pop these covers off and they are very tight. To me it seems like they're made wrong. They have a tab here on the top so it seems like you should pull them off from the top but it actually seems to work better to pull them up from the bottom but it's not easy to do that because the tab is on the top. There is some detail on the cover itself and then you can see the inside of the toolbox. It really just kind of looks like some extra gadgetry there, maybe some engine detail. To put them back on it seems better to push them up from the top and then push back in at the bottom. That just seems to work a lot better. Same thing on the other side and that snaps back in pretty easily. We have the main turret and this is the most tank-like feature on this vehicle. It can turn 360 degrees. The cannon, the black cannon does elevate and has a pretty good range of motion on this. The blueprints call this cannon the Battle Dog 152 millimeter XM175 gun slash missile launcher. How does it launch missiles? I don't know. Attached to the main turret we have the antennae. They are green, they are swept back. They are attached at the base and like all GI Joe antennae they tend to go missing. On the main turret we have the hatch cover. It is also in green and you can pop that up and open it to reveal the cockpit. The inside of the vehicle has no detail whatsoever. It's just a big cavity in there for the driver. There are a couple different ways you can put the figure in the vehicle. You can stand the figure up so he is partially exposed and this is not a bad way to display the figure with the vehicle. The other way to put the figure in is to have him sitting inside the tank and it's easier to do that without the accessories. Just bend his legs and sit him down in there. He can go all the way down in there and you can close the hatch. So he is fully protected inside his tank. When the figure is sitting inside the tank his head still pokes out a little bit above the top of the turret. So I think this is why they changed it from a flat hatch on the prototype to a raised hatch on the production vehicle. So you can fit the action figure in there and still close the hatch. On the other side we have six wheels and we will take a closer look at those wheels when we look at the mini vehicle inside the shell. But since it does have wheels it's more like an armored car than a tank. Treads may have worked better for a snow tank than these tiny wheels. Now outside of the wheelbase we have blue skis and these are for unpowered downhill sliding. Not only would skiing with a tank be fun it would also allow the dominator to approach an enemy silently. These skis can swing up but that's really for fortress mode. The back is pretty plain. It has this large hinge that is not very aesthetically pleasing but this is for the split open gimmick. It also has this ZZ EHB3 and this kind of looks like backwards calculator typing. Was there somebody at Hasbro named Ed Hess? There is no tow hook here in the back and really nothing else at all. Finally it's time to split open the outer shell we have a latch here in the bottom and another one here on the top and we're gonna kind of squeeze it together and pop that open. It's not very easy unfortunately and it makes a horrible cracking sound. It's not breaking but it feels like it's gonna break but we split that shell open to reveal the sub vehicle inside. Here is the mini tank and this outer shell I guess you could use as its own sub vehicle. It does still have the skis but we're gonna show how this works for the future fortress later. We're gonna set that aside for now. The body of the mini tank is smaller than the outer shell of course but the cannon is the same size. This gives it a comical look. It looks like a tank that has shrunk in the wash. Looking at the parts and the features of the mini tank we have a brush bar here in the front that's green. We have a couple headlights and we have two small pivoting guns. The blueprints don't say what these guns are but the box says they are laser guns. It has a couple removable hatches for weapons lockers. It's best to move the turret to the side and like the ones on the outer shell these can be a little bit difficult to pop up. They can both come off like that and on this one on this side it has some molded in grenades. That's a nice touch there. And on this side it has some kind of cylinder which maybe are some extra energy rods for its laser gun or something like that I don't know but still interesting details in those weapons lockers. You can just pop those right back on. They should snap in there without too much trouble for you. Now they have these lock unlock handles here and these are all over the vehicle in several places there and there. They're also on the outer shell so that's just kind of a little detail they added to lock and unlock it I guess. This is the same main gun turret we looked at before. There's no reason to rehash that. On the other side we have those six wheels and we can see them better now. They have green hubcaps. They do roll pretty well. They roll better for the mini tank than they do with the outer shell on. Moving to the back of the vehicle just under the back port side corner of the gun turret there is what looks like it should be a fuel port but it has been filled in and I think that's too bad. Having a fuel port back there would have been a nice touch that would have integrated it more with the main GI Joe line. Finally in the back we have a troop carrying platform with two foot pegs and a tow hook which the outer shell lacks. Now let's take a look at that outer shell and see how it transforms to become part of the future fortress. You just split it open like a pistachio and swing it around to about a 90 degree angle and then flip the skis up and in this position it forms the outer wall of the fortress. It doesn't look too much like a fortress yet but let's see if it looks like a fortress by the end of these Battle Force 2000 reviews. Now let's look at Avalanche and the name Avalanche was reused for a vehicle in 1990 but there is no relation between this figure and that vehicle. They just shared the same name. In 1987 Avalanche was available as a single carded figure. In 1988 they started selling Battle Force 2000 figures in two packs. Avalanche was sold with his Battle Force 2000 teammate Blaster. This may have been done to make up for not packaging the drivers with the vehicles. Unfortunately this doesn't help kids who didn't have both of the vehicles for the figures in the two pack or if they had already bought one of them as a single figure. Let's take a look at Avalanche's card back and one thing I don't like about Battle Force 2000 cards is the large area of negative space just above the blister. Now you can't really tell on this card because it's peeled off but this entire area between the logo and the bubble is just plain black with no text and no art and to me this looks like poor composition. Another annoying thing is since the figures were not packaged with the vehicles we have card art that does not show the vehicle. In fact the vehicle does not appear anywhere on this card. Here at the back we have a partition for Battle Force 2000 in the cross cell. They did the same thing for Tiger Force. We have our single flag point and we have Avalanche's file card. We will look at that later. Let's take a look at Avalanche's accessories. He came with a large rifle and the card contents call this a P480 sub zero stun gun. It is in silver plastic. It looks like a futuristic laser rifle with a Buck Rogers aesthetic. Stun gun implies that this is a non-lethal weapon. Wait a minute, hold on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there it is. There's his lethal weapon. Avalanche's other accessory is his microphone and his microphone attaches to his helmet on a couple holes that attach to pegs on the sides of the helmet. And this microphone is pretty large as far as microphones go because it is removable it will frequently be lost. Thanks again to Lenny Allen for helping secure the accessory and making this review possible. The microphone just pegs in. You just line up the holes and push them into the pegs. And that's pretty much it. It does take up quite a bit of the side of his face. It is fairly large for a microphone. Let's look at the articulation for Avalanche. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures by 1987. Meaning he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder 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 figure was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside. That allowed him to move at the torso a bit. 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 sculpted design and color of Avalanche starting with the head. And the head has a non-removable helmet. I would normally complain about this but I will probably beat up Battle Force 2000 quite a bit during these reviews. So I'll give him a pass for the helmet. The helmet is white. It has a brown camouflage pattern and a texture pattern on it. It has a fin up here on top that may be a flashlight. The head sculpt or the face sculpt is kind of mediocre I have to say. His chest is white with that same brown camouflage pattern and there's a quilted pattern on here. Same on the back. This is probably for his winter gear. He has a silver shoulder pad on his right shoulder and across his chest he has a silver bandolier that doesn't seem to serve any purpose. On his right arm he has a silver shoulder guard. He has white sleeves with that same white and brown camouflage pattern. He has some very nice sculpting on his gloves. On his left arm he has some silver padding and then on his left wrist he has a white watch. On his waist he has more of that quilted pattern and the same white with brown camouflage and he has a belt with a lot of silver pouches Rob Liefeld style. On his legs we have white with brown camouflage. His right thigh is pretty plain. He has some padding on his inner thighs. Then on his left leg he has a device. On this figure it is gray. What exactly is this? Yojo.com calls it a knife but it doesn't look like a knife to me. There is a variant on this left leg detail. Some avalanche figures have that painted in gray. Others have it with silver paint. These figures seem to be the same otherwise. We finish up with some tall silver ziggy stardust boots with some white padding in the back. The toes are slightly upturned on those boots. Let's take a look at avalanche's file card and there is a variant of this file card too. When he was packaged as a two pack where it says Dominator Driver it said Dominator Snow Vehicle Driver. Otherwise the text was the same. On this single carded file card it has GI Joe and Battleforce 2000 logo and it's faction there and a portrait here from the artwork on the front of the card. We have a code name of avalanche and he's the Dominator Driver. File name is Ian M. Costello. Primary Military Specialty Armored Vehicle Driver. Secondary Military Specialty Cold Weather Survival Driver. That's kind of awkwardly worded. Birthplace is Madawasque, Maine. This is actually misspelled. It should be Madawasque, Maine. His grade is E-5 Sergeant. This paragraph says when avalanche came of age he declined joining the family business in parentheses, poaching, smuggling and bootlegging and opted for the US Army instead. Having spent most of his youth in the woods with a rifle he was quite well prepared for certain rigors of military life and totally unprepared for the discipline. He sounds kind of like a hillbilly. This paragraph says as part of a survival exercise avalanche and 20 other trainees were left in the wilds with a knife and a compass apiece. Most of the others staggered in, haggard and worn after a week. They found avalanche a month later and 200 miles away lounging in a motel and spending the money he had made from the furs he brought in. So he used Captain Kirk's solution to the Kobayashi Maru test. He cheated. Is this guy GI Joe material? What makes them think this guy should handle high tech equipment? The Dominator and avalanche made no appearances in the GI Joe cartoon series. Battle Force 2000 came out too late to appear in the Sunbow series. In the GI Joe comic book they first appeared in issue number 68. Battle Force 2000 made a fair number of appearances in the comic book series. Avalanche was in special missions number 20. An issue that featured GI Joe's cold weather specialists. He was not driving the Dominator in that issue. He was a passenger in the snow cat. Famously Avalanche died in issue number 113 along with most of Battle Force 2000. Now I'll turn it over to Joe Fan 82 for a preview of the upcoming Joe Khan exclusive Avalanche figure. Thanks HCC. Here is the mockup image for the new modern Avalanche figure. Right off the bat you can see they replicated and updated his white uniform with the brown camo pattern. He also has the silver accents across the uniform as well as the silver boots. As with the original figure he comes with a non-removable helmet. This is a bit of a disappointment for modern collectors as we're used to seeing removable helmets on the modern versions of vintage figures. One detail that is missing is the microphone attached to the helmet. I'm not sure why that wasn't added. Avalanche and the other Joe Khan exclusive figures come with retooled versions of their vintage counterparts weapons. In Avalanche's case it's his Sub-Zero stun gun made of white plastic instead of gray. The figure also comes with a removable bandolier, knife, assault rifle, and green figure stand. That's a quick look at the new modern Avalanche. Back to you HCC. Thank you for that preview Joe Fan 82 and don't forget to check out Joe Fan 82's YouTube channel for modern GI Joe toy reviews. So what do we think of the dominator and Avalanche overall? Both figure and vehicle are difficult to judge. Clearly a lot of effort went into both. They have good details, good colors, some special features but they also both have some problems. If Battle Force 2000 didn't exactly fit within GI Joe Avalanche and the dominator don't exactly fit in Battle Force 2000. This is a cold weather operation specialist with a snow tank and no other figure or vehicle in Battle Force 2000 had that specialty. Because of the specialty, the color scheme for the dominator is different from other Battle Force 2000 vehicles. The vector had a similar color scheme but the vector was a jet. Other Battle Force 2000 vehicles were in a metallic gray. So you will either have the entire Battle Force 2000 team operating in snowy conditions for which most of them are not equipped or you're going to have the dominator operating with the rest of the Battle Force 2000 team outside of its element. Either way, something is out of place. You could have the dominator operating solo in an arctic environment but without the rest of the team you can't form the future fortress. Avalanche is not bad. His weapon is totally sci-fi but that fits with the Battle Force 2000 theme. His head sculpt is bland and some of the details sculpted on the figure don't make any sense. But the figure has some extra effort put into it and the brown and the white and the silver work well together. I'm gonna say both figure and vehicle barely make it into the middle tier. I know I'm supposed to hate Battle Force 2000 but I don't hate the dominator or Avalanche. I just think they're out of place. Even in Battle Force 2000, they don't exactly fit. There are many aspects of Battle Force 2000 to talk about. For instance, how did my friends and I integrate Battle Force 2000 into our G.I. Joe playtime? And if the concept of Battle Force 2000 didn't exactly work, what could have been done to make it work better? We will talk about that in future reviews. Now, we can't talk about it all in the first review otherwise we won't have enough to talk about for the rest of the month. That was my review of the dominator snow tank and the driver Avalanche and that kicks off the first and only ever Battle Force 2000 month. Six reviews in five weeks. Six reviews in five weeks. You're asking yourself, has he gone out of his mind? Is he crazy? Yes, he's crazy. Crazy hoody has six reviews for the price of five. Get him now while supplies last. Thank you for watching. If you liked this video, please do a few things for me. First of all, give it a thumbs up on YouTube and subscribe to the YouTube channel and share this video to spread the word. Like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and support the channel on Patreon for some special perks. Don't forget to visit the website hcc788.com to see this review and all my other G.I. Joe toy reviews and we have t-shirts. Not this one, but other t-shirts. Thank you everyone for watching. Battle Force 2000 month will roll on to next week. I'll see you then and until then, remember, only Battle Force 2000 is Battle Force 2000. The Protect America Battle Force 2000 creates the battle vehicles of the future. Nobody beats G.I. Joe's Battle Force 2000. Sky sweeper, eliminator, vindicator. Nobody beats G.I. Joe's Battle Force 2000. Combinator, Vector and Perota, they split and recombine into the awesome Future Fortress. Nobody beats G.I. Joe, a real American hero. Battle Force 2000 figures and vehicles so separately collect all six vehicles to form the Future Fortress. Hello everybody, Hoonicover Commander 788 here. It's time for another Vintage G.I. Joe Battle Force 2000 review as we roll into the second week of Battle Force 2000 month. This week we are looking at the 1987 Vector jet and the pilot Maverick. And yes, I did think about dressing up as Tom Cruise again, but I've already done that gag in the Sky Striker review and I gotta try to keep it fresh. Unlike most G.I. Joe vehicle drivers, Maverick was not packaged with the Vector. None of the Battle Force 2000 vehicle drivers were packaged with the vehicles they were intended to drive. And yes, I know I said that last week and I'll be saying that in all of the videos this week, there will be a lot of repetition in these Battle Force 2000 reviews, but there's no way around that. Even if you watch Battle Force 2000 month from the beginning all the way through, so by the end you've heard the same thing six times. You have to keep in mind that any video could be someone's first HCC 788 video. So this will be the first time they've heard it. Also, in every review this month, Joe Fan 82 will give us a preview of the upcoming G.I. Joe Con exclusive Battle Force 2000 figures. Hey guys, so after HCC reviews the vintage Maverick, I'll be taking a look at the mockup for this year's Joe Con exclusive figure. Thank you, Joe Fan. Don't forget to check out Joe Fan 82's YouTube channel. I like it. I think you'll like it too. We will also be looking at the gimmick for the first wave of Battle Force 2000 vehicles. Parts of the vehicles could be removed and then reassembled into the future fortress. So in each review we will assemble part of the fortress and at the end of the month we will look at the complete fortress. With the preliminaries out of the way, HCC 788 presents the 1987 Battle Force 2000 Vector Jet and the pilot Maverick. This is the 1987 Battle Force 2000 Vector Jet and Maverick the Vector Pilot. These were each sold separately and they were available in 1987 and 1988. Maverick was available as a single-carded figure in 1987 and as a two-pack in 1988. He was packaged with his Battle Force 2000 teammate, Blocker. There were some Battle Force 2000 toys released after 1988. For example, DJ, the action figure and Pulverizer, the vehicle. But they had little to do with the core Battle Force 2000 team which had already been discontinued by then. It's odd that they were put in Battle Force 2000 rather than just folded into the main GI Joe line. The mission of Battle Force 2000 was to field test experimental equipment for the main GI Joe team. But since GI Joe already had plenty of experimental vehicles and weapons, they didn't really need Battle Force 2000. Hasbro struggled to make this team relevant to GI Joe. They tried to shoehorn Battle Force 2000 into the GI Joe universe in two ways. First, by including them in the comic book series where Larry Hama courageously tried to make them fit. Second, they tried to set them up as the enemy of Destro's Iron Grenadiers and included the Battle Force 2000 logo on Iron Grenadiers packaging. Although the figure and the vehicle were never sold together, they will be reviewed together in this video and we will set Maverick aside for now so we can look at the vector. The vector is a jet in white and the colors I think are pretty good. The orange canopies add a pop of color and the blue and the green balance the predominant white. I also like the name of the jet. A lot of GI Joe vehicles used acronyms as sometimes very strained acronyms but Battle Force 2000 refrained from that and just gave their vehicles cool names. I like the shape of the jet from the front and from the top, but from the profile it looks like it has camel humps. I don't normally have boxes for vehicles but I have the box for the vector so let's take a look at it. We have some box art here and this is not bad. I kind of like it. It is reminiscent of the box art for the sky striker. It says it is the vector and then in parentheses jet. In case you are wondering what it is, it's a jet. Two battle units in one. Down here it says six vehicles combined to form future fortress. The future fortress was an added gimmick of this first wave of Battle Force 2000 vehicles. Later Battle Force 2000 vehicles were not part of the fortress. In each review of Battle Force 2000 months we will assemble part of the fortress and we will look at the completed fortress at the end. We have already looked at the Dominator snow tanks contribution to the future fortress so this week we will look at how the vector jet contributes to the future fortress. Looking at the back of the box we can see the vector was worth three flag points and we have a photo of the vehicle here and it appears this was a prototype. There are some differences between the photograph and the vehicle that we got from the box. Among those differences we can see that the canopy for the battle turret is opaque rather than clear as we got in the production toy. Let's look at the parts and the features of the vector jet and for this vehicle I have the blueprints which were printed on the backside of the instruction sheet and I will be referring to these blueprints for the description of some of the features on this vehicle. Right here in front directly under the nose we have what the blueprints call quick blast twin 7.62 millimeter coaxial machine guns. They are black and they are often missing. I had to get a couple of different vector jets just to find one that had these guns. So if you're thinking of getting a vector make sure you check the underside and make sure it still has its guns here in the front. We have the orange canopy and this color is a bit loud but I don't mind this color with this overall color scheme. This is supposed to be a futuristic jet and there is something kind of space-agey about this color. The canopy opens to gain access to the cockpit and in the cockpit we have a pilot seat, we have some molded-in details and instrument panels along the sides and we have a sticker instrument panel there in the front. I'll show you how to put the action figure in the cockpit. Maverick does not need his weapon for this so we'll set that aside. I find it best to bend the action figure's knees about so far and you just rest him in there and it's a surprisingly tight fit for such a spacious cockpit. It's a little bit narrow for his arms but you can fit him in there and close the canopy. There is no control stick in there for the pilot to control the vehicle and really the whole cockpit is a little bit too small and probably the whole jet is slightly underscaled for three and three quarter inch figures. And what that means is Maverick's feet rest right up against the control panel and that just does not look right. It looks like Maverick is supposed to control the jet with his feet. This is one instance when Quick Kick might have an advantage because he can push those buttons with his toes. Moving back from the cockpit we have the jet intakes and here we have stylized US military aircraft nationality insignia and although there is some artistic license with these they do look a lot like the US Air Force's low visibility markings. We have two removable engine covers. They are green and I think this is a good choice. This green color kind of breaks up the monotony of the white. There is engine detail in there. It is the same engine detail on both sides just reversed. This engine detail is clean and angular and circuit board like. So that does kind of make it look futuristic. We have what the blueprints call wing mounted vertical stabilizers. They are blue and that's another good color choice. We're not going real radical with the colors here. We just have a few blocks of other colors to balance out the white. Battle Force 2000 logos on both sides. Mounted on the stabilizers we have what the blueprints call wing mounted aircraft pilot controlled or APC 20 millimeter cannons. They are in black. There is one on each side. They are fixed and forward facing and counting the two guns on the chin of the plane. The vector has four forward facing guns. Flipping the vector to the underside for a moment. Let's look at the landing gear. We have one front and two rear landing gear. They are in black plastic. They have plastic wheels. They are very small. The vector sits very low to the ground. So low that the rear stabilizers almost scrape the ground. They operate manually. You just push them up to close them and then pull them back down to open them up. They look pretty sturdy. So I don't think you have to worry too much about breaking them, but they are very basic. These are no frills landing gear. Also on the underside, we have what looks like was intended to be a fuel port, but unfortunately this is not compatible with standard GI Joe refueling nozzles. And that's a shame because the vector could land on the USS flag aircraft carrier for refueling. But the flags fuel trailer could not be used for that purpose. We have four missiles. They are all the same. And the blueprints call these AIM-33 narrow sparrow missiles and they fit on the jet with the usual dumbbell shaped peg and slot. These AIM-33 narrow sparrow missiles apparently take their name from the AIM-7 sparrow missile, which is a real world missile, but these don't look like the sparrow. A narrow sparrow does kind of have an authentic sound to it. It sounds like the kind of nickname military equipment is given sometimes. Rounding out our look at the underside of the vector, we have the GI Joe logo, the Battle Force 2000 logo and a very large US flag sticker. This is larger than the flag stickers we got with most GI Joe vehicles. In the back we have engine exhaust ports. They are in green plastic. They are squared off similar to the way the 1986 Conquest X-30 engines were. And I do like this. It may not be very aerodynamic, but it does look pretty cool. Finally we get to this big gun pod in the back. And the blueprints call this round off pivoting surveillance slash ballistics pod. It pivots and the gun turret does elevate. It is blue on the bottom, but a different color blue from the stabilizers. And we have a clear orange canopy. This is the most futuristic part of this jet. It doesn't look anything like a contemporary fighter jet. It can be removed just by pulling it off and we can open the canopy so we can take a look inside. The detail on the interior of this gun pod is mind blowing. It has an impressive array of instruments, a texture pattern on the floorboard. It has this really nice looking gun with a couple of control sticks on it. The blueprints call these dual 7.62 millimeter repeating auto load machine guns. They do elevate as we have seen. This is so well designed. This would be a good looking gun on any GI Joe vehicle. If you count each of these as separate machine guns, then this jet has a total of six guns. That's some impressive firepower using blocker to show how to put an action figure in this gun pod. He can bend his legs slightly but he can fit in mostly straight legged. He just sits down in there like that. There's plenty of room. You can close the canopy without any trouble at all. It's very spacious in there. Without the gun pod, the main jet does look like it has something missing but it does still function as a jet. Without the gun pod, it can also stand vertically on its stabilizers. Now let's see how the vector jet contributes to the formation of the future fortress. We've already seen that the outer shell for the dominator snow tank splits apart to form the outer wall. So to add the part for the vector to the future fortress, you just take the gun pod and set it right there. And that's it. It doesn't attach to anything. It doesn't do anything. It just sits there. Even though we don't have the future fortress complete yet, we can already see some problems with it. We have two parts of the fortress here that don't really interact together. They just sit near each other. Let's look at Maverick, the pilot for the vector, who did not come with the vector. Hasbro, if you're listening, please never do that again. Was Maverick named after Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun? Of course he was. Hasbro was not above wearing their influences on their sleeve. Despite this though, he doesn't look anything like Tom Cruise. The colors of the action figure match pretty closely with the colors of his aircraft. It's surprising they didn't give him contrasting colors, but I think it works well. Let's take a look at Maverick's accessories starting with his weapon and the card contents call this a semi-automatic machine pistol, but it's a bizarre design. I guess it could be a machine pistol. It's in silver plastic. Since Battleforce 2000 is futuristic, it's surprising they didn't call this a laser gun. His other accessory is his helmet, which looks a little bit like a space helmet. Doesn't look much like a fighter pilot. It is blue. The design is okay, but it doesn't wow me. It fits on the figure on this ring around his neck, and it fits pretty tightly. It does have a nice window here, so you can see the action figure's eyes through the helmet. Let's take a look at the articulation on Maverick. He had the articulation that was standard by 1987, meaning he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could move his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow, so he could move at the elbow about 90 degrees. 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. That allowed him to move at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far he could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt designed in color of Maverick, starting with his head. And on his head, he has brown hair in kind of an 80s style haircut. The face sculpt is fine. It's not the best looking face, and he bears zero resemblance to Tom Cruise. He has a white ring around his neck. The helmet fits over that. And on his chest, he has a silver vest over a white flight suit. The silver's on the back as well. He has pointy shoulder pads, and this is just over the top sci-fi. He looks like Riff Raff from Rocky Horror. On that silver vest, he has a green patch right in the center. On his arms, he has white sleeves and he has blue gloves. And on his gloves, he has some molded in circuitry or some kind of futuristic gadgets on them. Also kind of on the shoulders as well, on the flight suit. On his left arm, he has a silver band that looks like it has some kind of canisters on them. On his waist, he has a silver belt that goes around to the back. It had a couple of pockets in the back. White pouches on the side, and then he has a silver codpiece. You just don't see people wearing codpieces nowadays. His legs are white and they have more of that molded in circuitry on them. A couple blue pockets on his thighs. Then he has blue pouches above green boots. Let's take a look at Maverick's file card. And on his file card, it has his faction as Battle Force 2000 and GI Joe. It had a nice portrait of Maverick here that did not look very much like the action figure. This would have come from the artwork on the front of the card. It had his codename as Maverick, and he's the vector pilot. His file name is Thomas P. Kiley. His primary military specialty is pilot. He had no secondary military specialty. You hired him to fly planes, so that's all he's gonna do is fly planes. His birthplace is Ida Grove, Iowa, and his grade is O3 captain. This paragraph says, Maverick graduated at the top of his class from the Air Force Academy and promptly volunteered for every experimental program that came down the line. Consequently, he is one of the few pilots qualified to operate the entire range of multifunction, programmable keyboard controls, voice-actuated weapon systems, and open loop, biocybernetic situations analysis computers. He has the physical strength to withstand massive G-forces, reflexes of a gymnast, and a clarity of eyesight that reads off the scale. This second paragraph says, he's a natural flyer. He can't remember a time when he wasn't flying. Honest, you see, his mom flew a crop duster all across the corn belt, an old Stearman biplane. This was back before daycare, right? She'd just strap him in, hand him a water gun and a jelly sandwich, and take off for a day of dusting bowlworms. This old Stearman biplane is possibly referring to the Boeing Stearman Model 75, a biplane that first saw service in 1934. This file card reads as another best of the best of the best Joe's. Although I do like the story about his childhood around planes, it paints a colorful picture. I've never met his mom, but I already like her. Now let's turn to Joe Fan 82 for a look at the upcoming con exclusive Maverick figure. Thanks, HCC. Here's the modern version of Maverick that we will be seeing at Joe Con this year. Aside from the helmet, this looks like it is a direct repaint of the Matt Tracker figure, which was released in 2008. This most likely was done for budgetary reasons. Repainting a figure is a lot cheaper than designing a whole new sculpt, which would have been nice. They kept the white uniform and blue helmet, which is removable. However, the design of the armor for the chest and shoulders is considerably different than the original. The dark green has been replaced with gold on his chest and boots. He comes with a removable pistol and a retool of his semi-automatic machine pistol. This image doesn't show the head sculpt, but it's probably the same head sculpt we saw for the Matt Tracker figure. That's it for this preview of the new modern Maverick. Back to you, HCC. Thank you, Joe Fan 82. Everyone remember to check out his channel. Taking a look at the G.I. Joe media appearances for Maverick and the Vector, they made no appearances in the animated series. Battle Force 2000 was only animated for commercials. They did appear in the G.I. Joe comic book series. They first appeared along with most of Battle Force 2000 in issue number 68. He also appeared in issues 70 and 71, where a handful of Joes teamed up with the Dreadnocks to escape the fictional country of Sierra Gordo. That story focused more on Wild Bill, but it gave Maverick something to do outside of Battle Force 2000. Maverick and the Vector also appeared in special missions issue number 12. In that issue, the Joes perform at an air show and the Vector is stolen by Firefly. In that issue, the Vector is shown to have vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. Looking at the Vector jet and Maverick overall, both the figure and the vehicle have strengths and weaknesses. Looking at the strengths of the Vector, it is a nice vehicle with a fair number of play features for the size. It's close to the Conquest X30's size class, so I could see kids using it as some extra Joe air power, even if they didn't care about Battle Force 2000. And I think the colors were pretty well together. Among the Vector's weaknesses, it's a little too small for the shape they were trying to go for. It's a little undersized, so the cockpit creates a hump on the fuselage, as does the gun turret in the back. So it doesn't have a sleek aerodynamic look. I also think the landing gear is way too small. I think it makes the jet feel kind of cheap. Looking at the strengths of Maverick, the colors closely match the colors of the vehicle. There was some coordination between vehicle and figure design. I think he looks the part of a futuristic pilot. He even edges into astronaut territory. Among his weaknesses, the helmet is big and plain and just doesn't look cool. The gun is unnecessary and the pointy shoulder pads are kind of comical. I'll have to call this another middle tier Battle Force 2000 vehicle. And I will put Maverick in the middle tier, but only barely. I do like some of the sculpted details on the figure, and that's what saves it from the bottom tier. So why is this even in GI Joe? Usually when I ask that, it's because I'm wondering why some terrible toy was included in an otherwise great toy line. But in this case, I'm wondering why Battle Force 2000 wasn't its own separate toy line. As a kid, my friends and I did have some Battle Force 2000 items, definitely not all of them. But as I recall, we used to play with them separately from GI Joe, creating more space age play scenarios So far we have looked at two middle tier vehicles and two middle tier figures. They are not great, but they're not the worst. We're not looking at ice cream soldier here. And they even have some strong points. They don't fit with the GI Joe aesthetic and they were specifically designed not to. What Hasbro inadvertently created was not a sub team for GI Joe, but the beginnings of a separate toy line. Battle Force 2000 would have been a decent standalone line. But as part of GI Joe, Battle Force 2000 gets lost among greatness. GI Joe just didn't need them. And maybe they didn't need GI Joe. Maybe it even would have grown and evolved into something great. Remember the humble beginnings of GI Joe in 1982. Now I'm not saying Battle Force 2000 would have been the next mask or centurions or masters of the universe. But it had a head start and if it had been allowed to flower, maybe something great eventually would have come from it. It makes you wonder what might have been if Hasbro had the courage to release these toys without the security blanket of the GI Joe logo. That was my review of Maverick and the Vector. I hope you enjoyed it. And even if you didn't, even if I didn't, we're still rolling into week three of Battle Force 2000 Months next week. If you like what you see, I asked you humbly to do a few things for me. Please, like this video on YouTube. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. Support this channel on Patreon and share this video. And even if you don't do any of that, please in general be a good person. I'll see you next week. And until then, remember all the things you're supposed to remember. I don't know, I forget. The Protect America Battle Force 2000 creates the battle vehicles of the future. Nobody beats GI Joe's Battle Force 2000. Sky Sweeper, Eliminator, Vendicator. Nobody beats GI Joe's Battle Force 2000. Dominator, Vector, and Baroda, they split and recombine into the awesome future fortress. Yo, yo! Nobody beats GI Joe, the real American hero. Battle Force 2000 figures and vehicles sold separately. Collect all six vehicles. Hello, everybody. Hood and Cobra Commander 788 here. It's time for another Battle Force 2000 toy review. And we're rolling into week three of Battle Force 2000 Months. We are looking at the entire first wave of Battle Force 2000 figures and vehicles that came out in 1987. There were a few Battle Force 2000 items that came out later, but they will not be included in these videos. They will have to wait for their own reviews in the future. But this first wave of Battle Force 2000 vehicles had a gimmick. They worked together to form the future fortress. So that's why they need to be reviewed as a group. Also, none of the Battle Force 2000 vehicle drivers were packaged and sold with the vehicles they were intended to drive. They were all sold separately. But for the purpose of these reviews, they will be reviewed together. This week, we are looking at the Sky Sweeper anti-aircraft tank and the driver knockdown. And I have to give a special thanks to David Jones, who helped me with the accessories to complete knockdown. Also, with all these videos, we have a special guest. Joefan82 is going to give us a preview of the upcoming JoeCon exclusive Battle Force 2000 modern figures. Hey guys, stay tuned after the Vintage review for my look at the modern version of knockdown we'll be seeing at JoeCon this year. Thank you, Joefan82. Don't forget to check out his channel for modern GI Joe toy reviews. Now, let's get right into it. HCC788 presents the Battle Force 2000 Sky Sweeper and knockdown. This is the 1987 Battle Force 2000 Sky Sweeper and knockdown, the Sky Sweeper driver. This figure and vehicle were available separately. In 1987 and 1988, they were discontinued for the year 1989. Battle Force 2000 was released late in 1987, just in time for Christmas. The Sky Sweeper and knockdown were not sold together. This was GI Joe's first attempt to sell vehicle drivers separately from the vehicles they were intended to drive. This was standard practice for Star Wars toys. Although some GI Joe vehicles did not come with figures, usually if a figure was intended to drive a specific vehicle, that figure would be packaged with the vehicle. In 1987, knockdown was available as a single-carded figure. In 1988, he was available in a two-pack with his Battle Force 2000 teammate, Dodger. Battle Force 2000 vehicles had a gimmick. Parts of the vehicles could be removed and used to assemble the future fortress. We've already seen how the dominator snow tank and the vector jet parts fit with the future fortress. In this review, we will add the Sky Sweepers contribution to the fortress. Let's set knockdown aside for now and take a look at the Sky Sweeper. For this toy, I have the blueprints, which were printed on the back of the instruction sheet. And I will be using that to describe some of the features on this vehicle. The color scheme for the Sky Sweeper is typical of most Battle Force 2000 vehicles. It's a base metallic gray with blocks of blue, black, and green. This vehicle is supposed to be an experimental prototype in the G.I. Joe universe. So I think the metallic color is intended to make it look unfinished. If this vehicle passed inspection and became part of G.I. Joe's regular fleet, it would get a coat of appropriately camouflaged paint. I do have the box for the Sky Sweeper. I don't normally get boxes, but I do have the box for this one so we can look at it. Of course, it has the G.I. Joe logo up here, Battle Force 2000 logo under it. The Sky Sweeper is an anti-aircraft tank. Two battle units in one. Now we've got some nice box art here. We can barely see knockdown here on the front of the box, but we do have another G.I. Joe character. This is a non-Battle Force 2000 character falcon. Here in the corner, we have the promotion for the future fortress. And so that's what you can look forward to when we assemble the full fortress at the end of Battle Force 2000 months. Looking at the back of the box, we have a photograph of the toy here. And most likely this is a photograph of a prototype, not the production toy. There are some differences between this photograph and the Sky Sweeper that we got. For instance, there is some silver along the canopy here on the production toy that was blue. And it has different missiles than the one that came in this box. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Sky Sweeper. We have the Battle Force 2000 logo here, the G.I. Joe logo on that side. We have a canopy that opens here and it opens, it's hinged at the front. So you pull up from the back and swing it open. And then you can get access to the cockpit to put the figure in and take them out. That canopy is in blue plastic and there's some details on there. It has these head lamps up here with orange translucent plastic. That looks really nice. I like that little pop of color. And it has a three prong antenna here and that is removable. This actually goes on the battle station. We'll look at that later. And it also on the canopy, it has these lock unlock molded in details here. And it's on both sides. And I find that interesting because this lock unlock detail shows up on other Battle Force 2000 vehicles. In the cab, there are really no details at all. There are a couple of control sticks. There's the driver's seat. There's a metal pattern on the floorboard. And that's it. I thought this might be missing a sticker control panel here. But after looking at the instruction sheet, I don't think there was one. It is easy to fit the figure in the vehicle. You just put them in straight legged like that. And it's spacious enough that he can hold his weapon. Now you just swing it closed like that. But I've noticed that mine does not close all the way with the driver in the vehicle. He actually bumps his helmet on the inside of the canopy. So it just doesn't close all the way. I've tried this several times and it just does not work on mine. I have a couple of problems with this whole thing. For one thing, the cab is very plain. There's really no difference between the inside of the vehicle and the outside of the vehicle. And this canopy is totally open. It affords the driver no protection. It's not armored. He's totally exposed to enemy fire. On this side, on the running board, there is a foot peg. So you can have a figure riding on the outside right next to the driver. Those running boards have a metal texture pattern on them. And really most of the vehicle does. The Sky Sweeper has fake treads in green. And there's an impressive amount of detail that goes pretty deep inside there. Now these treads do not roll. The vehicle rolls on these black wheels, these dumbbell shaped wheels here. And the vehicle does roll pretty well. There is no additional sculpted detail on the underside. In the midsection of the vehicle, directly behind the cab, we have a couple of guns, one on each side. And the blueprints call these directed, zap energy laser guided weapons. These side guns do elevate. In fact, they can rotate all the way around and they ratchet, which is nice because it will fix pretty well in any position that you want. This midsection of the vehicle with the side guns actually detaches to become its own battle station. You kind of have to squeeze down here at the bottom, moving the canopy out of the way helps a little bit and pop that off. And you do have to take it apart and reassemble it in a different configuration for the battle station. These side guns slide into these slots and you do have to remove those. So you just slide those out carefully, not to break anything. Sometimes they stick a little bit, but just work with them carefully and you can slide those out. On the inside of the battle station, it says top right here. So reorient that with that part at the top. And then we're gonna put the guns back on. These side guns have a left and a right. Now keep in mind one thing, according to the instructions, you're supposed to put these on the side with the flat portion facing up, but I find it works better with the flat portion facing down. It fits better on the future fortress that way. You're gonna slide these side guns into these slots on the side of the vertically standing battle station. Just put those on one on each side, like so. It's almost finished. The only other thing you have to do is just remove the antenna from the canopy and place that on the top of the battle station. And there you have it. The blueprints call this outpost tactical personnel protection slash remote control battle station. And it looks armored on the outside, on the inside. It actually has some molded in instrument panel detail. That's not bad. It also has a foot peg in there. So you can put a figure in there inside the battle station. It's a little bit difficult to do with adult sized hands, but knock down can go in his battle station, stand on the foot peg, and he can man that. And he even has a viewing slot. So overall, this is fairly well thought out. Later, we will see how this connects to the future fortress. With the cover removed, we have this blue section, which I assume is the engine. And we have four missiles, two on each side. They are all the same. And these missiles don't actually peg in. You slide the fins into a slot. That actually makes it difficult to get the bottom missiles in and out. There isn't much room to play with there. The blueprints call these Jane, or jam and neutralize enemy radar homing tactical missiles. And they are very plain. There really isn't much to distinguish them. Once you have reconfigured the battle station to the mode in which it fits on the vehicle, you can just pop that back on. And when it's on, those missiles sit really deeply in there. So deeply that they are difficult to pull out and use. You almost have to take the cover off to use the missiles. Now you might think that one solution for this would be to just slot the missiles in a little farther forward so they poke out a bit more and it's easier to pull them out and use them. But if you do that, the missiles actually interfere with the movement of the canopy. The canopy will not properly open or close. So what this amounts to is just poor engineering, poor design, this just was not thought out very well. On the back third of the vehicle, we have a flat bed. And the bed itself is very plain. We have more of that metal texture pattern. And on each side, we have two foot pegs. On the bed, we have what is probably the best feature on this vehicle. We have the main gun turret. The gun turret is blue. It has a large radar dish attached to it and it's attached in such a way that if you move the radar dish, the gun will elevate with it. And I like that, I like that a lot. It has excellent elevation, which it should. This is intended to shoot down aircraft. The turret can rotate 360 degrees. The blueprints call these rerun dual 20 millimeter repeating auto load cannons. And since the Sky Sweeper is an anti-aircraft tank, this appears to be the main weapon it uses to knock down airplanes. On the turret behind the gun, there is a foot peg. And so you can have a figure manning the gun like that. And I actually like this feature a lot. There was a similar feature on the Desert Fox. And I just think that looks really good to have a figure manning the gun. Here in the back, we have another quirky detail. We have what looks like a standard GI Joe fuel port, but it has been filled in. These fuel ports started to appear on GI Joe vehicles starting in 1985. Here's one on the Armadillo mini tank. And these fuel ports were compatible with fuel nozzles on GI Joe play sets, like the one on the USS flag aircraft carriers refueling trailer and the Cobra Terror Drone. We have seen these vestigial fuel ports on other Battleforce 2000 vehicles. Apparently the feature was originally going to be included on those vehicles, but the plan must have changed before production. Finally, in the back, we have a universal GI Joe tow hook, and that's nice. But we also have two additional foot pegs. And this may be crowding a few too many foot pegs on this vehicle. The Sky Sweeper is loaded with foot pegs, probably too many foot pegs. If you load up all the foot pegs with figures and include the driver, the Sky Sweeper can hold 10 action figures. And that really is too much for a vehicle of this size. It looks overcrowded. It looks a little bit like the Keystone cops. Let's look at how the Sky Sweeper contributes to the assemblage of the future fortress. So far we have already used the shell from the Dominator snow tank and the turret from the Vector Jet. Remember when we put together the standalone battle station, well first do that and then this will rest in this slot right here on the outer wall. This is not bad. It actually does sort of in a way slot onto the future fortress. It doesn't just rest near the fortress. And thus far it's the only part that we've seen that does that. Now let's look at knockdown. Before they settled on the name knockdown for this figure, they were kicking around some prototype names that included a Swatter and Flytrap. I'm glad they went with knockdown because this guy doesn't look anything like Venus Flytrap. For knockdown I have the full card back. I don't usually get full card backs but we can look at this one. We have the GI Joe logo, the prominent Battle Force 2000 logo, some artwork of knockdown here. Now the negative space on this card isn't quite as bad as with other Battle Force 2000 cards because there's a space right here for knockdown accessories. On other Battle Force 2000 cards this space was just left black with no text and no artwork. And to me those cards look inexpertly designed. On the artwork knockdown's gun looks superimposed and the perspective is slightly off. It almost looks like this was added after the image was completed. So maybe there was a last minute change to knockdown's accessory. Flipping the card around to the back we have the cross cell and we have a partition here for the Battle Force 2000 figures. And this started a trend for GI Joe after 1987, GI Joe added more sub teams almost every year. We have our one flag point and knockdowns file card. We will look at that in a minute. Let's look at knockdown's accessories starting with his weapon and the card contents call this an experimental ground to air pistol X128. What exactly is a ground to air pistol? Is it supposed to shoot down planes? I guess it would fit with the specialty of his vehicle but how is a pistol supposed to shoot down planes? There is a variant of this pistol. There's the thick handled pistol and the thin handled pistol. I'm pretty sure this is the thin handled pistol. I'm not 100% certain. Knockdown's other accessory is what the card contents creatively call a helmet. That is exactly what it is. And it's nice to have this helmet because most Battle Force 2000 helmets were non-removable and sculpted onto the head. With the accessories out of the way, let's look at the articulation on knockdown. He had the standard articulation for GI Joe figures of 1987. He could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder slightly hindered by his extended shoulder pad there. He could swivel his arm all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around. The figure is held together with a rubber O-ring that allowed him to move at the torso a little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of knockdown starting with his head. And on his head he has brown hair with a hint of red. I would call this Auburn. I think his face sculpt looks similar to his BattleForce 2000 teammate, Maverick. Not exactly the same, but these guys could be related. This head was reused for other action figures. It was reused for the mail away figure Super Trooper in 1988. And since the entire Super Trooper mold was reused to make rapid fire in 1990, therefore, knockdown's head was used for that figure too. According to yojo.com, this head was modified and used for the 1988 Charbroil figure. Well, if that's the case, then it was pretty heavily modified. It loses a lot of the detail in the hair and the shape of the head is slightly different, both from the front and from the profile. On Maverick's chest he has a tan vest over a blue shirt and extra broad shoulders. The shoulders are not upturned like Mavericks, but still extra wide. He has a strap over his right shoulder that doesn't seem to serve any purpose. There's some silver detailing in the center of his chest and for some reason, knockdown's chest is extra wide. It's like 20% wider than an average GI Joe chest front to back. Here's Maverick for comparison. I'm not sure exactly why that is. On his arms he has blue sleeves and he has two different color gloves. He has a black glove on his right hand. On his left hand he has a blue glove with silver wrist guards. He has a tan strap on his upper arm and he has some extra molded in detail on the back of his left hand. On his waist piece we have a belt with some silver details in front. The belt runs all the way around. We have a flap in the back and the front that is probably a continuation of the vest. His legs feature black trousers and extra thick thighs like Russian weightlifter sized thighs. For comparison, here's Sergeant Slaughter, an extra muscular GI Joe action figure and knockdown's leg muscles are twice as thick as Sergeant Slaughter's. Knockdown has tan boots with a green stripe pattern that appears to just be aesthetic. It doesn't look like it serves any practical purpose. Let's take a look at knockdown's file card and his file card has his faction as Battle Force 2000 and GI Joe. It has his codename as knockdown and he's the Sky Sweeper driver. It has Sky Sweeper hyphenated here but it is not hyphenated on the box. His file name is Blaine M. Gonzales. His primary military specialty is infantry. His secondary military specialty is microwave technician. I assume this means microwave transmitters, not microwave ovens. Birthplace is San Francisco, California and his grade is E-5. This top paragraph says knockdown was a member of the test crew on the canceled Sergeant York DVAD anti-aircraft system and on two other secret development projects at Aberdeen Proving Grounds before he was tapped for the Battle Force 2000 team. This Sergeant York DVAD anti-aircraft system is referring to a real experimental weapon. The M-247 Sergeant York DVAD or Divisional Air Defense was an anti-aircraft tank. Development was canceled in 1985 due to technical difficulties and cost overruns. Sergeant York takes his name from Sergeant Alvin York who is one of the most decorated US Army soldiers in World War I. The Aberdeen Proving Ground is located at Aberdeen, Maryland and it's used to test ordinance for the US Army. Reading on it says his ability to repair radar systems, infrared sensors and target tracking computers is invaluable under battle conditions where Murphy's law prevails. And if he has to, he can aim and fire manually with minimal loss of accuracy. Murphy's law is an old adage that means anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This bottom section has a quote. It says, knockdown likes to go skeet shooting with a bolt action rifle. He thinks it's more sporting. According to him, anybody can hit a clay pigeon with a shotgun. He collects butterflies and moths. He just plucks them out of the air with his fingers. Knockdown is also an authority on air disasters maybe to replace his morbid fear of flying. So he's afraid of flying and he's an authority on air disasters and he drives a vehicle that causes air disasters. This is an example of the best kind of GI Joe file card. It is filled with real world references. It is less colorful than Maverick's backstory but it provides plenty of connections to the real world. Now I turn it over to Joe Fan 82 for a preview of the upcoming Joe Con exclusive knockdown figure. Thanks HCC. Here is the 2017 version of knockdown. It looks like he retains most of the aesthetics of the original figure. He's got the green helmet, blue shirt, tan vest, black pants and tan boots. As with most modern figures, you'll see more sculpted on detail with this version. The helmet and vest are removable. He also comes with a tactical rifle and a retool of his ground to air pistol. Response for this figure has been somewhat negative with a lot of people commenting on how the figure appears overweight to them. However, I don't think this is the case. I think the way his vest is protruding at his midsection is giving the illusion that he is overweight. So that's it for this preview of the new modern knockdown back to you HCC. Thank you again Joe Fan 82. I really appreciate your help with those previews. Looking at the Sky Sweeper and knockdowns appearances in GI Joe media, they did not appear in the animated series. They were only animated for commercials. They did appear in the comic book series. They first appeared in issue number 68. Battle Force 2000 fought along the main GI Joe team in the Cobra Civil War, which ran from issues number 74 to 77. And I really loved that story arc. The Joes needed all hands on deck. It was not just a surgical strike, like what you saw with a lot of other GI Joe action scenes. This was all out war. And although I wasn't a Battle Force 2000 fan, their inclusion in the Civil War helped legitimize them for me. Knockdown along with most of his other Battle Force 2000 teammates was killed in issue number 113. During a battle in the fictional country of Benzine, Cobra commander ordered an artillery strike on an oil storage area where a Battle Force 2000 was en route to rendezvous with their GI Joe teammates. Only Dodger survived that attack. Looking at the Sky Sweeper and knockdown overall, this is another not great, but not terrible vehicle and figure for Battle Force 2000. The Sky Sweeper has some decent features. The main turret with the radar dish is good. The detachable battle station is okay, even standing on its own and not connected to the fortress. Knockdown is a bland figure. He's even planer than Maverick. There are large patches of the figure that are just blank. And the head sculpt is so-so. I like the accessories. The helmet is pretty rad. None of it fits the aesthetic of GI Joe, but it works as a science fiction toy. That's how we used to play with Battle Force 2000 as a separate toy line. My friends and I did not have all of Battle Force 2000. At most we had a couple figures and a couple vehicles, but we used to pair them with other science fiction figures and vehicles and have space battles. Even though we found uses for Battle Force 2000, I don't recall us ever integrating Battle Force 2000 into GI Joe. And that's unfortunate for Battle Force 2000 because GI Joe was still taking up the bulk of our play time, even in 1987. And as we were getting older, our play time was getting shorter. That was my review of the Sky Sweeper and Knockdown. Thank you for sticking with me for Battle Force 2000 months. We are halfway to the finish line. Again, thanks to Joefan82 for providing the previews of the modern figures. And thanks to David Jones for helping me complete knockdown. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up on YouTube and subscribe to the YouTube channel. I have a Facebook and a Twitter that you will want to check out and support the channel on Patreon for some special perks. There is a website where you can find all of my GI Joe toy reviews. It is at hcc788.com. Thank you for watching. I'll see you next week for another Battle Force 2000 toy review. And until then, remember Battle Force 2000, Battle Force 2000, woo! The Protect America, Battle Force 2000 creates the battle vehicles of the future. Nobody beats GI Joe's, Battle Force 2000. Sky Sweeper, Eliminator, Vindicator. Nobody beats GI Joe's, Battle Force 2000. Dominator, Vector, and Baroda. They split and recombined into the awesome future fortress. Go Joe! Nobody beats GI Joe, a real American hero. Battle Force 2000 figures and vehicles sold separately. Collect all six vehicles. Hello, everybody. Hooded Co-Commander 788 here. It's time for another vintage GI Joe toy review and Battle Force 2000 month pushes forward. We've already looked at a lot of Battle Force 2000, but this one is special because this weekend marks the third anniversary of the Hooded Co-Commander 788 channel. And I want to thank all of you for three great years. I've gotten to know some of you so well. I've gained some valuable friendships in the last three years. You all mean more to me than I can adequately express. For this special occasion, I wanted to introduce you to some special people. You've already met some members of my family. You've met Mrs. HCC and the HCC kids, but you haven't met two people who mean the world to me. So please welcome HCC mom and dad. Hi, I'm dad. Hi, I'm mom. Mom and dad, welcome to the show. Please say a few words to the nice people. Good job. He has a job. He's an attorney. That's not a real job. Real men operate dangerous para-tools. How many figures do you have? Thanks, mom and dad. Your unwavering support warms my heart. Let's get on with the review. This week, we are looking at the Marauder and the Driver Dodger. And in this video, as with all the other Battle Force 2000 reviews, Joefan82 is going to give us a preview of the upcoming JoeCon exclusive modern Battle Force 2000 figure. Hey guys, after HCC reviews the vintage Dodger, I'll be looking at the 2017 version we'll be seeing at JoeCon this year. Stay tuned. Thanks again, Joefan. Make sure you check out his YouTube channel for modern GI Joe toy reviews. Also, in this video, we will be adding another part to the future fortress. So we will look at the Marauder's contribution to that Battle Force 2000 gimmick. Enough talking, let's look at the toy. HCC788 presents the Marauder and Dodger. This is the 1987 GI Joe Battle Force 2000 Marauder motorcycle tank and the Driver sold separately, Dodger. The figure and the vehicle were available in 1987 and 1988 and were discontinued for the year 1989. Unlike most of his Battle Force 2000 teammates, there was a second version of Dodger, the 1990 Sonic Fighters version. That version has no mention of Battle Force 2000 on the file card. Version two of Dodger reused the mold for version one, but with different colors. Dodger was never packaged with the Marauder. He was sold as a single-carded figure in 1987 and he was sold in a two-pack in 1988 with his Battle Force 2000 teammate, Knockdown. Battle Force 2000 was set up to be an enemy of Destro's Iron Grenadiers. That is not a bad idea. Having one sub-faction fight an opposing sub-faction gives both a reason to exist, but it didn't work for Battle Force 2000. They never had that role in GI Joe Media. Also, Iron Grenadiers didn't come out until 1988, the year after Battle Force 2000 was introduced. They had already established Battle Force 2000 with a different purpose, field testing experimental equipment. I'm going to set Dodger aside for now so we can look at the Marauder. The Marauder is described on the box as a motorcycle tank, which is really funny to me. It's an incongruous combination of vehicle types, like a helicopter bicycle. The overall color scheme for the Marauder is the same as most Battle Force 2000 vehicles, metallic gray, dark blue, and olive green. I have to point out that this example is naked. It is missing the stickers. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Marauder starting in the front. And in the front we have what the blueprints call Bushmaster Autoload 25 millimeter coaxial cannons. Bushmaster is the name of a real firearms manufacturer. These guns are green and they pivot up and down, although the downward pivot doesn't seem to be very useful unless you're shooting at ants. We have a single front wheel, a plastic wheel, and over that we have what the blueprints call Blastproof Ballistics Armor. We have a long fork here that runs through the handlebars. Then here on top we have a gun. The blueprints call this the Big Boar fully integrated 25 millimeter anti-armor cannon. It is green and it can pivot left and right. It doesn't turn all the way around, but it has some range of motion there. This entire front fork pivots at a point just in front of the driver's seat. And this presents a problem. To show you what I mean, let's put the driver in the driver's seat. There are stirrups for his feet and there are handlebars and the figure's hands can actually fit on those handlebars. They are small enough that you can put them in the figure's hand without breaking the hands, which is nice. And so there's the figure in the vehicle. Now watch what happens if you turn the front fork. Dodger is now just swinging wildly in his seat. He's just gripping onto the front end. You can take the figure's hands off the handlebars and that does help a little bit, but his feet still go in these stirrups that are connected to the front fork. So moving that around can still move the figure around quite a bit. The Marauder has two seats, a front seat and a back seat. And the back seat may be a gunner's position. There's a little joystick right there in the center. And so your figure in the back seat can hold onto that joystick. It is just the right size to fit in the figure's hands without stressing the thumb, so that's nice. But both of these seats have the same problem. They are open and they leave the operators totally exposed and unprotected. According to the blueprints, the Marauder is an armored vehicle. Well, the vehicle is armored. We wouldn't want the delicate instruments inside the vehicle to be damaged, but the human beings who ride it into battle are totally open to enemy fire, so they must be expendable. This back section of the vehicle, the tank part of the motorcycle tank, is removable. There is a C-clip on the back section that slides onto a post on the motorcycle portion that can be removed, but it's difficult to remove and to get back on. It causes stress on the plastic and I'm always worried about breaking either the clip or the post. Both are kind of thin. In fact, you can see plastic stress marks on the C-clip already. With the back section removed, we can take a closer look at the rear end of the motorcycle portion and we have here that same lock-unlock detail that we have seen on all other Battle Force 2000 vehicles. Then we have two back wheels here. They do roll pretty well. These are unique wheels. However, they are designed with the same style as the wheels on the Dominator snow tank. As a standalone motorcycle, it is not terrible. The colors match up with the 1985 Silver Mirage and with the extended fork and the low-seated driver, it looks kind of like a chopper. I could see this being customized as a dreadnock motorcycle. Just put Zirana in the back seat and drive to Sturgis. Now let's look at the tank portion of the motorcycle tank. It is navy blue in color with black and green accessories. It has two large missiles that slot onto dumbbell-shaped pegs and the blueprints call these Tank Smasher OG-17 optical aimed infrared homing missiles. These missiles are exceptionally large. They are green and they can be oriented either forward-facing or rear-facing. There are foot pegs on the running boards and these foot pegs are peculiar. First of all, the foot pegs that flank the missile peg cannot be used with the missile slotted onto the peg. They're totally covered up and totally useless. But you can still have a figure riding along even with the missiles attached because here they have two foot pegs really close together side by side and these inward foot pegs, the ones on the inside, can be used with the missiles attached. So let's demonstrate that. Let's put the missile on and Dodger can peg into that one and there he can ride along kind of straddling the missiles. The Marauder has a radar dish. It is black and it can flip to face either front or back. We have a gun turret and the Blueprints call this a direct fire kinetic energy gun platform. I don't know what that means but I think it shoots potatoes. The gun is green and it can elevate a little bit, not a great range of motion on that and the turret can pivot but my example is really tight and really doesn't like to do it but you can pivot that thing not quite all the way around because it is obstructed by the radar dish post. The tank portion of the Marauder has fake treads. They are black, they are non-functional. The tank actually rolls around on these wheels on the underside and it does roll fairly well but it does have another problem. The wheels are set toward the back of the tank because this part is where the motorcycle section connects so you can't have wheels there. That means the tank section will tend to tip this way. There's something special on the Marauder. We have a fuel port. This is a standard fuel port that was on other GI Joe vehicles. We have seen these on other Battle Force 2000 vehicles but they have been filled in and non-functional but this one is not filled in and it works. Let's demonstrate how this works using the refueling tank from the USS flag aircraft carrier. It had this fuel pump and you could put this in the fuel port and pretend to refuel the vehicle. Now I know this is a small thing but this little thing makes the Marauder a little more GI Joe like. Finally in the back we have a universal GI Joe hitch which could be used to tow certain GI Joe towed weapons. I want you to notice something about this tank portion of our motorcycle tank. The tank has no seat. Once it is detached from the motorcycle, who drives it? The design leaves no space for an operator. You can have figures riding along but there's nobody driving. Let's see how the Marauder contributes to the future fortress. We have already assembled the pieces from the Dominator snow tank, the vector jet and the sky sweeper. It's the tank portion of the Marauder that fits with the future fortress. It works a little better if you flip the missiles around so they're facing toward the rear. You get a little more clearance that way and to put it with the future fortress you just drive it up and park it right there. There is no actual connection to the future fortress. It just parks there. The gun fires over the wall. That's all well and good but the missiles are useless because they are aimed at the inside of the wall. This really illustrates a major flaw with the whole concept of the future fortress. The Marauder's piece doesn't connect to anything. It just parks behind the wall. But believe it or not, other parts of the fortress that we haven't seen yet are worse. Now let's take a look at Dodger. Where did Dodger get his name? Perhaps from the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team? Maybe. Let's look at Dodger's accessories starting with his weapon. The card contents call this an ultrasonic photon rifle. And yes, photons are indeed ultrasonic. Based on the description, this is a flashlight. This weapon is molded in silver plastic and there is a variant. There are thin and thick handled versions. I'm pretty sure this is the thin handle version. It looks like an assault rifle with a rocket propelled grenade attached. It has a foregrip and a knuckle buster handguard. That looks really cool. It does have a problem though. The attached grenade partially covers the barrel. So if the rifle fires, it's going to hit its own grenade unless it really is a flashlight in which case that's no problem. I like the weapon. It looks pretty fierce, even if it is impractical. Dodger's other accessory is his helmet microphone. It is also in silver plastic. It is small. It is removable and easily lost. You can take it off the helmet. It just pegs in with a couple pegs on the side of the helmet, similar to avalanches. These microphones are tiny. They're often lost like a lot of GI Joe microphones. I really wish these had been glued in at the factory. With the accessories out of the way, let's take a look at the articulation on Dodger. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures by 1987, meaning he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow, so he could move at the elbow about 90 degrees. 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. That allowed him to move at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could move his legs at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculptor designing color of Dodger. And I'd say the overall look of the figure reminds me of the colonial Marines from the movie Aliens. In fact, I would say there is a lot of Aliens inspiration in Battle Force 2000. Aliens was released in 1986, about the time Hasbro would have been planning the 1987 GI Joe lineup. For Dodger in particular, it looks like someone at Hasbro went to the movie Aliens and saw the colonial Marines and said, let's make one of those. Looking at Dodger's head, he has a non-removable helmet, which was all too common for Battle Force 2000 figures. But it is a nicely designed helmet and it looks good. He has a blocky camouflage pattern in gray. He has a little red dot right there. And it's a pretty good looking face sculpt, probably better than the other Battle Force 2000 figures we've looked at so far. On his chest, he has a green vest. And the vest has tons of excellent details. Lots of pouches here in the front. He has gray straps with a lot of detail on the straps as well. Even a red paint application right there on the shoulder. The straps continue around to the back and really just looks very good. Under the vest, he has an orange shirt and that shirt has a texture pattern. And that is something that a lot of these Battle Force 2000 figures had is extra texture. And I think that is a good feature. His arms are bare. That's a sleeveless shirt, a muscular build. On his right wrist, he has three bands. It looks like he's wearing three watches. He has green fingerless gloves. And on the back of his right hand, there is a detail there. And based on the artwork on the card, that looks like that's a compass. On his waist, he has a continuation of that orange shirt. And normally I would want him to have a utility belt or something like that. But this is not bad. It does provide a nice continuity between the top and the bottom half of the figure. On his legs, we see his trousers are green and he has more of that gray blocky camouflage pattern. He has gray pads on the outside of his thighs. His boots are very interesting. They are mainly green, but they have these gray braces on them. And he has some gray knee pads. Let's take a look at Dodger's file card. And his file card had his faction both as Battle Force 2000 and GI Joe. We have a portrait of Dodger here. And it says his code name is Dodger. He's the Marauder driver. His file name is Richard Renwick. His primary military specialty is armored vehicle maintenance. Secondary military specialty is electronic maintenance. Appropriate specialties for a Battle Force 2000 team member. This hot section says, the modern armored fighting vehicle operator has access to a varied array of high tech driving aids and Dodger is well versed in the use of all of them, including holographic night vision goggles and parentheses, holographic lens system combined with phosphorus image intensifying tube, thermal imaging range finders, non-coherent pulse Doppler radars and computer driven multi-mold situational displays. That just rolls off the tongue. This bottom paragraph has a quote. It says, this guy was driving tracked vehicles before they had any of these fancy new gadgets. If he has to, he unbutton the hatch, sticks his face in the wind and sears by instinct and guts. Sure, he's an expert with all the new hardware, but who knows if it's all going to work when the chips are down. Dodger isn't dependent on them and that makes him somebody you can depend on. This card describes an armored fighting vehicle and sticking his head out of a hatch, but he drives them a water. Look at it, there is no hatch. The driver isn't behind any armor. It's too bad he didn't drive the kind of vehicle that's described on the file card. Now let's turn to Joe Fan 82 to see what we can expect from the upcoming Joe Con exclusive modern Dodger figure. Thanks, HCC. Here is the new modern Dodger in all his glory. He's got a very bright green uniform with a digital white camo pattern. He's got a green helmet, which is not removable. He also comes with a vest, gauntlet, tactical shotgun, and the original sonic photon rifle. He also appears to have a small microphone molded into the helmet. So I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of this mockup. It strays a bit too far from the original design and the green is too bright. I'd be okay with it for a completely new figure, but this is supposed to represent a modern update of the original figure, and I feel like this just comes up short. As with all the figures, though, we won't know how they really stand up until we see physical representations. That's it for this preview of the 2017 version of Dodger. Back to you, HCC. Thanks again, Joe Fan 82. You have really helped me out with those preview sections. I can't thank you enough. Taking a look at how the Marauder and Dodger were used in GI Joe Media. As we have stated in other reviews, Battle Force 2000 did not appear in the cartoon series. They were only animated for commercials. They did appear in the GI Joe comic book series, though. Dodger first appeared in issue number 68 with the rest of Battle Force 2000. He has his helmet off in that issue, and he is shown to have blonde hair. Dodger appears on the cover of issue number 81, where Battle Force 2000 fights the Dreadnocks. It is a weird juxtaposition to have the high tech Battle Force 2000 go up against the Dreadnocks improvised Mad Max vehicles. But it does kind of make sense for Dodger's motorcycle tank to go up against a motorcycle gang. Unlike the rest of his Battle Force 2000 teammates, Dodger did not die in issue number 113. The rest of the team was wiped out in an artillery bombardment. Only Dodger survived. This is ironic, since the Marauder is the least armored of all the Battle Force 2000 vehicles. Why did Dodger survive? Hasbro gave Larry Hama, the writer of the comic book, permission to kill off characters that no longer had toys on the shelves. Battle Force 2000 was thus slated for execution. Looking at the Marauder and Dodger overall, there is a mismatch between the figure and the vehicle. The vehicle has some serious problems. The whole concept of a motorcycle tank is one that may be impossible to implement. It just doesn't make sense. The motorcycle park isn't the worst, but it still suffers from some poor design and engineering choices. The steering causes the driver to shift in the seat, and both the driver and the passenger are totally unprotected. You have an armored motorcycle to protect the motorcycle, not the people riding on it. The connection between the motorcycle and the tank part is a weak point. That post and the C-clip that connects to it are both begging to be broken. The tank half of the vehicle has no driver. It has a nice gun turret and some big missiles, but that's about all it has going for it. There is no clear way to operate it apart from the main vehicle. The interaction with the future fortress is just sad. It isn't well thought out at all. Whoever designed this must have known that kids would be disappointed. This is the first Battle Force 2000 vehicle I am putting in the bottom tier. This thing really bugs me. Dodger though is not bad. I can tolerate the orange shirt. The green and the gray are nicely subdued, and the details look like they came straight out of the movie Aliens. I like the rifle accessory. It doesn't make any sense, but it looks cool. My biggest knock on the figure is the non-removable helmet. If that helmet had been removable, the microphone probably would have been a molded in part of the helmet, so there would be no tiny removable microphone to lose. I'm gonna do something I wasn't sure I would do with any Battle Force 2000. Despite the non-removable helmet, despite the orange shirt, I'm gonna put Dodger in the top tier. We've complained a lot about Battle Force 2000 not fitting well within the G.I. Joe universe. What could have been done to make it work better? My suggestion would be first, get rid of the future fortress gimmick. It doesn't work well. It requires removable pieces on the vehicles, and that presents some design challenges, so it doesn't work, just get rid of it. Second, I would have Battle Force 2000 serve exactly the purpose it's supposed to serve. They are field testing experimental vehicles for the main G.I. Joe team. So any of these vehicles that passed the test should become G.I. Joe vehicles and get a cool G.I. Joe paint job, maybe some green, some camouflage, and re-release for the main G.I. Joe line. Hasbro loved to re-release vehicles because it was cheap, and you could pick the top one or two most popular Battle Force 2000 vehicles to transition to the main G.I. Joe fleet. Then after that happens, Battle Force 2000 would get another set of vehicles to test out for G.I. Joe. So Battle Force 2000 would always be refreshed. If you did that and you didn't worry about the vehicles fitting together for the future fortress, you could have gotten some things that you didn't get with this iteration of Battle Force 2000. Things like boats, desert vehicles, helicopters, maybe some experimental vehicles that were released in the main G.I. Joe line, like the Phantom stealth fighter, would have first been released under the Battle Force 2000 banner. That was my review of the Marauder and Dodger. We still have a couple Battle Force 2000 reviews to go, now I need to let you know what's gonna be happening in the next few weeks. It's important. For the last week of Battle Force 2000 months, we will have two reviews. We'll have one in the middle of the week and one on the weekend. And they are both full reviews. After that, I will be taking the next week off. Believe me, after looking at this much Battle Force 2000, I'm gonna need a break. Then after that, the next review will be another patrons choice. And this time we will be doing a figure and the options will be some figures that have been often requested. So we will see what the patrons choose. If you would like a vote on that, just check me out on Patreon. This has been an endurance challenge, but it has been more rewarding than I expected. I mean, you guys know that I love you, right? And that's not an exaggeration. I love producing these videos and I love seeing your comments and I love hearing from you. And you guys keep me motivated to do more. So mom, dad, what did you think of the video? It's a doll. He spent half the day talking about a doll. At least he gave us grandchildren. Guys, please, you're gonna make me cry. Thank you all for being here. There is a website, hcc788.com, where you can see this review and all my other G.I. Joe toy reviews. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time for more Battle Force 2000. To protect America, a top secret team creates the battle vehicles of the future. We're in real trouble here, huh? I'm calling in Battle Force 2000. Battle Force 2000. Secret force of G.I. Joe. They're splitting in two and reforming. Battle Force 2000. That's what I'm trying to take on any hope of G.I. Joe. Hello, everybody. Hood and Cobra Commander 788 here. It's time for another Battle Force 2000 review and we are almost done with Battle Force 2000 month. Can you believe we've made it this far? We have two more to go, including this one. And for this review, we are looking at the Eliminator four wheel drive vehicle and the driver sold separately blocker. All of the Battle Force 2000 vehicle drivers were sold separately from the vehicles that were intended to drive, but we are reviewing them together and all of the first wave of Battle Force 2000 vehicles had a special gimmick. You could remove pieces from them and then reassemble them to form the future fortress. With each of these Battle Force 2000 reviews, we are adding a piece to the future fortress. So this time we will see how the Eliminator contributes to the fortress. Also with each of these Battle Force 2000 reviews, we have a special guest. Joe Fan 82 will provide a preview of the upcoming Joe Con exclusive Battle Force 2000 figures. Hey guys, stay tuned after HCC reviews the vintage blocker because I'll be looking at the modern version we'll be seeing at Joe Con this year. Thank you, Joe Fan 82. Don't forget to check out his YouTube channel if you haven't already. Joe Fan 82 has been so helpful with these previews. I wonder if he could educate us about other things. Joe Fan, what would you say are the geopolitical implications of Britain's interest in the rock of Gibraltar? Hey guys, stay tuned after HCC reviews the vintage blocker because I'll be looking at the modern version we'll be seeing at Joe Con this year. Fascinating. Another question for you. Do you really think the existence of the Higgs Boson was confirmed by the large Hadron Collider in 2013? Hey guys, stay tuned after HCC reviews the vintage blocker because I'll be looking at the modern version we'll be seeing at Joe Con this year. We'll wonders never cease. Let's go ahead and look at the toy. HCC 788 presents the Eliminator and Blocker. This is the 1987 Battle Force 2000 Eliminator four-wheel drive and the driver blocker. This vehicle and the driver were sold separately and they were available in 1987 and 1988 and were discontinued for the year 1989. Blocker was never sold with the Eliminator. All Battle Force 2000 figures were sold as carded figures not packaged with their vehicles. In 1987, Blocker was sold as a single carded figure. In 1988, he was available in a two pack with his Battle Force 2000 teammate, Maverick. As you can see, we have two figures here. That means we will be looking at a variant. Hasbro was clearly hoping Battle Force 2000 would have legs. They were expecting it to last beyond this first wave. There were a couple later Battle Force 2000 items released in 1989 after the first wave had been discontinued. In 1988, Destro's Iron Grenadiers were released with the Battle Force 2000 logo on the packaging. But Battle Force 2000 never faced off against the Iron Grenadiers in G.I. Joe Media. It's probably just as well. The Iron Grenadiers were elite troops. They were not Cobra cannon fodder. I don't think Battle Force 2000 would have fared well against them. We're going to look at the Eliminator now so we're gonna set Blocker aside and look at him later. The Eliminator is Battle Force 2000's general purpose vehicle. It is in the same category as the vamp, the awestriker and the desert fox. Although it is slightly larger than the vamp and the awestriker, it's closer in size to the desert fox. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Eliminator starting here in front. We have this push bar. It is in black plastic and it does extend out pretty far. Then we have these little green guns and the blueprints call these deflector, sound deflector pivoting laser guns. And I think the description is kind of funny because it uses the word deflector twice. They are green and they do pivot a little bit. On the starboard side of the vehicle we have what the blueprints call forward-looking infrared or FLIR, radar-detected laser cannon. And they got something right. Forward-looking infrared or FLIR is a real thing. It is a thermographic camera that sees infrared radiation. They're often used to help pilots navigate through night and fog. It is black. It does pivot a little bit more than 180 degrees but it's really only useful for targets straight ahead or on the starboard side of the vehicle. And it doesn't pivot around far enough to hit targets approaching from the port side. Next we have this roll cage in black plastic. It looks like it is hinged here in the front so you ought to be able to pop this up and swing it forward. But apparently not. Mine is firmly fixed in the body of the vehicle. Just bend the action figure's knees and wedge him through the bars and into the driver's seat. You can place his hands on the control sticks but they don't go all the way on. They just kind of rest on the sticks. But he is fully seated in the driver's seat and that gets to my problems with the roll cage. The driver has no protection at all. He's totally exposed to enemy fire. There's hardly any point in having an armored vehicle at all. And the driver's head sticks out above the roll cage. So if the vehicle rolls the cage would give him no protection at all. It misses the point of even having a roll cage. Now let's get to the wheels and the wheels are a major feature and a major problem with this vehicle. They are plastic wheels with a hubcap design that's similar to what we have seen on the Dominator and the Marauder. But these are in blue and both the front and the back wheels turn. They ratchet in a right, a center, and a left position. And that's not bad. But the problem is the connections where the axles connect to the body of the vehicle are extremely weak and prone to breakage. And that has happened on my back wheels. So the back wheels no longer ratchet. They just kind of swing freely. And that is a major problem because now the vehicle will not roll properly. The back wheels do not want to stay straight. This is an unfortunate case of inadequate engineering. When you turn the wheels it puts quite a bit of pressure on those posts and the posts are too weak and they break. And if you have a broken post the wheels don't align properly which reduces the functionality of the vehicle. This fire control station has a seat. It has a computer screen with a sticker. And it has a control stick here with some other instruments. The figure sits in straight legged and you can put the figure's hand on the control stick. The computer screen has a keyboard on it but it's impossible for the figure to use unless he can type with his feet. There is a stairway to the fire control station and I like that. There's a foot peg on the bottom step. Moving toward the rear of the vehicle we have the main armament. We have this big green gun which the blueprints call a remote operated dual 20 millimeter repeating auto load cannons. It is big and green. It can elevate and it can pivot all the way around on the turret. There are a couple of foot pegs on the turret so you can place an action figure on there and usually that's a pretty cool thing. However, the gun itself only comes up about to the action figure's thigh level so it doesn't look like the figure would be operating the gun from that position. Finally, in the back we have a universal GI Joe tow hook. This entire back section with the fire control center and the gun turret are removable but I wanted to take one last look at the vehicle with that piece on because I do think it works quite well. It follows the lines of the vehicle perfectly so I think the eliminator looks good with that piece on. To remove that piece just lift up to reveal another set of weapons underneath. The blueprints call this a removable tactical ground station and we will look more at this later but let's finish looking at the main vehicle. Removing the ground station reveals a lot. First of all we still have that stairway but we have another foot peg on the top step. Swinging the vehicle around to the other side we have two additional foot pegs and a removable engine cover with some engine detail. We also have the lock unlock detail that we have seen on all other Battleforce 2000 vehicles. Most importantly we have this hidden missile rack. It lies flat in this recessed trench that runs down the center of the vehicle and it swings up on a couple hinged supports. You can swing this missile rack up and it holds in this about a 45 degree angle and you can see there is some additional molded detail under the missile rack so that's nice. The missile rack has six removable missiles. They are all the same. They peg in on a very shallow peg which means it can be a little bit difficult to get on and off. Unless I am missing something the blueprints do not have a name for these missiles. They are just small generic green missiles. I like the idea of this missile rack more than I like the execution. I like the idea of this pop-up hidden weapon. I think an enemy would be surprised to find this vehicle has six hidden missiles on it. However, the way this is set up the blast from the front missiles will hit the ones in the back. Now let's look at the removable tactical ground station. We've already seen what's on it. It has a seat and a control panel and a pivoting turret but in order for it to work as a ground station you have to pop out these four little feet. There is one on each corner and once you have those popped out it will sit flat on the ground. That really is all there is to it. There is no other transformation. It just pops feet out so it will work as a unit separate from the main vehicle. This is also the eliminator's contribution to the future fortress. Now let's look at how the eliminator fits with the future fortress. We have already assembled the pieces from the dominator, the vector, the sky sweeper and the marauder. Now the blueprints suggest that you place the eliminator's piece in this position and it just rests right there. Once again, it does not connect to anything. It simply rests near the other parts of the fortress. It must have been at this point when kids really caught onto the fact that they were being conned with this future fortress gimmick. There's only one piece to go and only one position for it. If you're disappointed at this point, it's very unlikely the fortress will redeem itself. Now let's look at Blocker. Blocker may take his name from American football offensive linemen which are also sometimes called Blockers. I have the full card back for Blocker so let's take a brief look at that. We have the Battle Force 2000 logo and the GI Joe logo. We have a prize sticker for Murphy's. This figure was $3.99 and frankly I think that's a little steep. Unfortunately a lot of the paper is ripped off the front here but we have this artwork for Blocker and Blocker is firing his laser but oddly it seems he's not looking in this direction that he's firing. Flipping the card around to the other side we have the cross cell and a partition for Battle Force 2000 here. We have our flag point and Blocker's file card. We will look at that later. Let's look at Blocker's accessory. He came with what the card contents called an XL 13 light refraction submachine laser. It is in silver plastic and it has a big loop. Sub machine laser makes no sense but it's not a bad looking accessory. There are worse Battle Force 2000 weapons. Let's look at the articulation on Blocker. He had the articulation that was standard by 1987 so he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move 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 looked around the inside. That allowed him to move at the torso a bit. The figure could move his legs apart about so far he could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design in color of Blocker starting with his head and on his head he has this non-removable helmet or hat. It is in dark gray with an orange camouflage pattern and this looks like it's supposed to be a hat. It looks like the top of his head is covered in cloth and I gotta be honest, I thought originally this was a helmet but it seems a little less cool as a hat. The face sculpt is adequate, I don't mind that at all. Here's where we have the variant. Some Blocker figures have a clear visor attached to his hat. Other Blocker figures do not. That visor can be removed with some effort but I don't think it was intended to be removed. There's another odd variation that went along with this visor. The figures that had the visor also had a red paint application on the left wrist that was gray on the non-visor variant. I don't know which of these was released first but I suspect it was the version with the visor because the extra piece and the paint application would have increased the cost of the figure so I can see those features being cut for cost. On his chest he has nicely sculpted armor. He has what looks like canisters attached to silver shoulder straps and I do like this look for Blocker. This ridged armor pattern reminds me of the Baroness but I'm sure that's just a coincidence. On his arms he has gray sleeves and on his right arm he has an orange band. He has orange bracing over gray gloves. Now this orange color isn't too bad. It's kind of muted, it's not a bright orange. On his waist he has a belt that is unpainted. A spot of silver paint might have been nice there. He has more of that orange camouflage pattern. On his legs he has gray trousers in that same dark gray color and he has more of that orange camouflage pattern. He has large pockets on his thighs. You would expect these to obstruct the figure when he is in the vehicle but they don't really. He has gray boots with orange shin guards and on the right side he has a silver knife. Odd placement for that knife right in the middle of his shin. This gray and orange camouflage pattern may seem strange to you but that's because you may not know that in the future lots of things will be gray and orange. In the far distant future, all the way in the year 2000, plant life will change to this gray and orange color due to global warming so Blocker will blend right in. Right Joe Van? Hey guys, stay tuned after HCC reviews the vintage Blocker because I'll be looking at the modern version we'll be seeing a joke on this year. Truer words have never been spoken. Let's take a look at Blocker's file card. It has his faction as Battleforce 2000 and G.I. Joe and a portrait of Blocker here. It says his code name is Blocker and he is the eliminator driver. His file name is David B. McCarthy. His primary military specialty is mechanized recon and secondary military specialty is special services. Special services refers to the entertainment branch of the armed forces. His birthplace is Boston, Massachusetts. He is a New Englander. A lot of times this indicates that the file card was not written by Larry Hama, the writer of the G.I. Joe comic book because Hasbro employees liked to make all of their characters New Englanders because Hasbro headquarters is located in Rhode Island. However, this file card does seem to have Larry Hama's fingerprints on it. His grade is E5 Sergeant. This top paragraph says Blocker drove a taxi in Boston for three years. After seven armed robberies, three backseat births and one near fatal plunge through a collapsing roadway, he decided it was safer to drive something armor plated with the ability to shoot back. Not 100% certain what this collapsing roadway is a reference to, it may be a reference to an accident on the Tobin Bridge in Boston where a gravel truck crashed into a support collapsing the upper deck and killing the driver. But that was in 1973 and Blocker was unlikely to be a taxi driver at that time. There was a collapse on the so-called big dig but that was in 2009 long after this file card was written. It doesn't paint a very good picture of Boston but this card was written by a New Yorker so there may have been some rivalry there. He is qualified to drive every wheeled vehicle in the Army inventory and was the test driver for half a dozen prototype vehicles at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. As noted on Knockdown's file card, Aberdeen Proving Ground is a U.S. Army Ordinance testing facility in Aberdeen, Maryland. This bottom paragraph has a quote. It says, I have seen him go over into a complete role at high speed, recover and keep on going. He takes on the slalom minimally at 85 miles per hour and doesn't tip nary a cone. The skid pad, don't even ask. All that and he does it with vehicles built to military specs. Amazing. So he drives really fast. We get the same idea from a lot of other GI Joe vehicle driver file cards. He doesn't have any description of his special services specialty. I would have expected that. Now I'll turn it over to Joe Fan 82 for a preview of the modern Blocker figure. Thanks, HCC. Here is the new Blocker and he's ready to go hunting. He's got the dark brown uniform from the original figure with a red, orange camo pattern. And he's ready to go hunting with some rabbits with his hunting hat, which is not removable. In addition to the new head sculpt, he comes with a removable vest, tactical shotgun and his original XL-13 laser weapon. This looks like a pretty decent attempt at updating and modernizing the original design. Personally, I would have preferred to see the uniform and camo color more closely matched the rest of the team, but that's how the vintage figure looked, which is what they're going with here. That's it for this preview of modern Blocker. Back to you, HCC. Helpful as always, Joe Fan 82. If you've liked these previews, he does this kind of thing all the time on his own channel, so check out Joe Fan 82 on YouTube. Let's talk about Blocker and the Eliminator's appearances in G.I. Joe Media. Battle Force 2000 did not appear in the cartoon series. They were only animated for commercials. The Sunbow era of the animated series ended with the 1987 G.I. Joe animated movie. Battle Force 2000 came out late in 1987, so they missed out on that. I have looked through the Battle Force 2000 commercials and I do not see Blocker, so Blocker may not have been animated even for the commercials. Blocker did appear in the G.I. Joe comic book series whenever the rest of the Battle Force 2000 team appeared. He didn't have any noteworthy solo story arcs. Of course, the character died, along with most of the Battle Force 2000 team, in issue number 113. Looking at the Eliminator and Blocker overall, the figure and the vehicle are evenly matched in that they are both slightly above average, but not quite top tier. The Eliminator is a good general purpose vehicle and Battle Force 2000 needed one. I like the versatility. The hidden missile rack is not a bad idea, but it could have been executed better. You basically have a bunch of missiles that are all lined up on a flat surface. I just feel like something more could have been done there. The driver is exposed in a tiny roll cage and since his head pops up above the roll cage, it provides no protection at all. And that's really the case with a lot of these Battle Force 2000 vehicles. You have armored vehicles that do nothing to protect the driver. My biggest problem with the Eliminator is the front and rear axles. The connection points are way too weak. I have a couple Eliminators and they are both broken in the same place. A piece that was going to have that much pressure put on it should have been engineered better. I like Blocker, not as much as Dodger, but I would say Blocker is probably my second favorite Battle Force 2000 figure. I think in a previous video, I said he was my favorite, but after looking at Dodger more closely, I have reconsidered that. Blocker is still okay though. I like the colors on Blocker. I can even tolerate the orange. It's not a bright orange, so I can live with it. And I think I prefer the variant of Blocker with the visor because it makes his hat look a little more like a helmet. For all of Battle Force 2000's faults, I will give it one thing. It was one of the few GI Joe subteams that was all new. They didn't just repaint figures and vehicles to make these. For that reason, it's surprising Battle Force 2000 wasn't more popular. Tiger Force is remembered more fondly than Battle Force 2000, and all Tiger Force did was repaint and reissue old toys. But Tiger Force reissued toys that kids liked. I mean, we liked the original vehicles and figures, so I guess we didn't mind getting reissued, but the all new Battle Force 2000 did not succeed. But I think this goes to show that no matter how much marketing effort is put into something, if the kids don't like it, they're not gonna buy it. That was my review of the Eliminator and Blocker. One more review for Battle Force 2000 month that is coming up on Sunday. Thank you again, Joe Fan 82, for imparting to us your wisdom, only one more to go, my friend, one more to go. Just a reminder, after Battle Force 2000 month, I am taking a week off. There will not be a new review the following week, but the week after that, I am coming back with a new Patrons Choice Review, so watch for that. Please like this video on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, share this video, like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, support the channel on Patreon, and check out hcc788.com. Thank you for sticking with me for Battle Force 2000 month, one more to go. I will see you in just a few days. To protect America, a top secret team creates the battle vehicles of the future. We're in real trouble here, horse. I'm calling in Battle Force 2000. Battle Force 2000, Secret Force of Diageo. They're splitting in two and reforming. Battle Force 2000, That's one track. They can take on any force. For Diageo. Car crash. Well, Battle Force 2000 finally defeat.