 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe vehicle and action figure toy review and after doing two helicopters in a row I decided to come back to something completely different. I wanted to review one of my favorite small vehicles of 1982 and 1983 the HAL, the Heavy Artillery Laser with its driver Grand Slam. The HAL and Grand Slam were issued in 1982 with the first line of action figures and vehicles. It was also reissued in 1983. The main difference between the 1982 and 83 versions is the action figure. The action figures from 1982 were re-released with new articulation at the bicep, but I'll get to that later. This is a big laser gun as you can see and so essentially it is a science fiction weapon. It is not a copy of any real world military weapon, but as you can see it has a very military look to it. So even though it is a sci-fi weapon and in general I don't care for excessively science fiction based weapons in GI Joe. This I think strikes a nice balance between science fiction and a real military look. This is something that you would actually bring into battle with you. It's got military colors, a nice military design and so it doesn't look like something out of Tron or Star Wars and that's why I really like this vehicle and I wanted to make sure that I took a closer look at it. This is a towed vehicle. As you can see it's got wheels and it's got these tow arms here. Let's look at some of the parts. One part that is frequently missing is this computer control panel and I'm going to attempt to take it out without breaking it so that you can see. It's held in by this sort of notch here and it doesn't hold in all that firmly really and this arm that holds it in is very susceptible to breaking. The first how that I had actually this part broke off in shipping so if you are selling one of these and you're sending it to somebody make sure that you either pull this out and wrap it separately or if you're going to leave it in make sure that you package it in such a way that it will not break in transit. Of course we've got Grand Slam and we'll take a closer look at Grand Slam a little bit later. So let's set him aside for now. Another piece that is often missing is this back support leg. It does come out, it just kind of has a ball joint there and just slide it in like so. And while it's not necessarily essential to the stability of the vehicle as it, the cannon as it sits here, it is an important piece to look out for if you want a complete how. Of course it has the toe arms and these are kind of unique, they spread out like this to be support legs but when the vehicle is towed they come together like this in overlap to form a single tow hook or a tow loop like that. It's different, none of the other towed vehicles worked quite like that. And one consequence of having tow arms like this is this cannon can take up a lot of shell space if you're displaying it. They spread out to stand up like this and it kind of creates a wider profile for this cannon. That's something to think about if you're going to display the how is to make sure you leave enough shell space for these tow arms which spread out pretty far. Another piece that is frequently broken is the gun tips. The gun tips are very easily breakable and you often see either one or both of them completely broken off. So keep an eye out for that if you're going to buy a how and if you get one just be careful with those and don't put too much pressure on them because those will break. This is a towed vehicle so it has wheels, they're just ordinary plastic wheels. They're held together with this metal bar which I like a lot. I really like these wheeled vehicles that have the metal bar. The metal bar is probably not going to break. It's much more sturdy than a vehicle that's just held in with plastic. So that's a nice feature and you probably don't have to worry too much about the wheels being missing or broken off on this thing. Let's take a look at the features of the how. It's a cannon so of course it will swivel on its base. It will also elevate and this actually is one of my least favorite features of the how. When you pull it up to elevate it it makes a very loud clicking sound that both feels and sounds like I'm breaking the toy just to elevate it as it's supposed to go. This is the kind of ridged thing here that causes the ratcheting sound, the very loud ratcheting sound and there's a metal bar in there that runs along these that makes that horrific sound. As it goes back down though it clicks but not nearly as loudly and to be honest with you, even though there's not really much chance of breaking the toy by elevating it, the sound is so distressing to me that I don't like to do it. So to display the how I usually find a position that I like and I just leave it there. So about that level of elevation is not bad and I just won't mess with it after that point. This includes a seat for the action figure and inside there is a foot peg for some extra support because as you can see there's no back peg which would, on some of the vehicles the seats would have a back peg that would fit in the back of the action figure here to help hold it in. In this case it's got a foot peg meant to fit inside the hole on the bottom of the feet and you can put the figure in that way if you so choose but it's actually a little bit difficult to get them in I think I've just about got them and I don't really think it's all that necessary even though this is a very open cockpit. The figure I think sits in there without the foot peg rather well and doesn't come out too easily so really most of the time I don't bother with the foot peg. It's nice that it's there but I don't think very necessary. As mentioned before this is a towed vehicle to change it from the stationary cannon mode to the tow mode you swing this back support leg up and there is a notch here that fits in the slot of the support leg and it just sort of wedges in there so now the wheels will make contact with the ground and of course you swing the tow arms together and now it will fit on the tow hook the standard tow hook on most GI Joe vehicles like the vamp here now the vamp is not a bad vehicle to tow the the howl but it's not my favorite I just as a matter of aesthetics I don't care for the light green and dark green together it's not a great color scheme so there are some other options it can be towed behind the 1982 MOBAT which has a tow hook fits on there quite nicely and it's a little bit better there's still a color difference there but one nice thing about the howl being towed behind the MOBAT is that it has a seat for the figure and the MOBAT really only accommodates one action figure so the if you're towing a cannon that doesn't have a seat like this or for instance the MMS mobile missile system which doesn't have a seat for the for the action figure then you don't really have any place to put the action figure on the MOBAT tank so as the MOBAT tows the howl at least at least there is seating for Grand Slam there are other towing options and I suppose since it did come with a tow hook you could tow it behind the polar battle bear the 1983 snowmobile but I don't know why you'd want to do that it's the can is actually larger than the than the polar battle bear and it looks a little bit like the tail wagging the dog here my favorite towing configuration though is to tow it behind the 1983 Wolverine tank I think that looks really nice the colors go pretty well together the howl is slightly darker but again there's this vehicle accommodates really only one figure and so it's nice to have a seat for Grand Slam so he can ride along as his cannon is towed but another thing that I like about it is that I think the weapons themselves go together the missiles on the Wolverine tank these can be you can imagine these as either anti-aircraft or anti-tank missiles and the howl also is either an anti-aircraft or anti-armor weapon but the Wolverine it's a 12 shot it has 12 missiles and if you have more than 12 targets you have a problem if you were the Wolverine whereas the howl being a laser can keep firing until its power source is depleted so as a team you could have cover girl and the Wolverine taking out the larger armored vehicles and aircraft with the high explosive missiles and you can have the howl taking out smaller vehicles and aircraft with its extremely precise laser cannon so the two of these together could take out a whole squadron of fangs and rattlers and his tanks and maybe stinger jeeps they could really cause Cobra a lot of trouble just with these two vehicles and since they're towed they can be mobile at the same time they can run and shoot so I really like these two together let's take a closer look at the action figure Grand Slam and as you can see he also like the howl has some science-fiction influence mixed in with his overall military look he's got these red pads on his chest arm arms and knees or his thighs which I guess is supposed to be some kind of shielding to protect him from the adverse effects of his laser now another character that is often confused with Grand Slam is Flash who is the laser rifle trooper another laser operator who also had these same kind of the redish sort of slightly orange maybe pads in the same places as I said the 1982 characters were in re-released in 1983 with this new articulation at the bicep that was referred to as swivel arm battle grip the 1982 versions did not have that like Flash here could he could bend his arm at the elbow but did not have an ability to swing his arms in and out like this new version of Grand Slam here another difference between the 1982 and 1983 releases where the waist piece you can see here on the 1982 version it's got a thicker waist piece with kind of a wide belt here and the 1983 version has a slimmer waist piece a more detailed belt and just generally kind of looks better differences between Grand Slam and we should cover this because there seems to be a lot of confusion between these two let's take a look at take their helmets off both of them did come with helmets that had these clear plastic visors and these are were often lost and you can see why they're tiny they're clear you know a drop one of these on your carpet and it's likely to be vacuumed up I mean the thing that looks like a thumbnail honestly it's about that size so these can be a little bit hard to find if you're missing one but you can see that also the their color is different Grand Slam is slightly darker green and flashes has a slightly lighter green color in the plastic Grand Slam gloves of course are black and his boots are black whereas flashes are brown and the head sculpt is different now these both of these head sculpts were reused for other characters the 1982 first release of GI Joe action figures did reuse a lot of parts like this they did that quite a bit but their heads are really quite different they have the same hair color but flash has this kind of passive expression and Grand Slam has a slightly older looking face and a slightly more severe expression so don't get confused and order a flash instead of a Grand Slam they are they are similar but there are some significant differences oh I also wanted to point out one other difference between 1982 and 1983 the straight arm action figures had pads here on the arm that were had this sort of checker pattern sculpts but when they were reissued and swivel arm battle grip those were just painted on with no sculpting at all not sure really sure why that is just one odd thing about this particular Grand Slam figure is this little mark of silver paint on his chest and what I think looks like a fingerprint I think a previous owner may have tried to touch up the silver paint on here now this silver paint does tend to wear off more easily than the other paint on the figures so I can see why someone would want to touch that up but maybe a slightly botched job here it looks like somebody was not careful with the paint brush but even so it's a nice Grand Slam figure overall let's take a look at the other articulation of this figure he had the typical 1983 GI Joe action figure articulation his head could turn left and right his shoulders could turn all the way around and his elbows of course could move up and down he had the swivel arm battle grip as mentioned before so his arm could swivel at the bicep he was held together with a rubber o-ring that would loop around here and would allow his torso to move a bit his legs would could move up at the waist here about 90 degrees and his knees would bend and that's about it later later GI Joe action figures had a ball joint here in the neck so they could look up and down as well as turn left and right but on these older older ones they could just just turn their heads like that now I mentioned that there were two versions of Grand Slam the the original straight arm version like flash here and the swivel arm version like this but there was another version of Grand Slam issued with the 1983 version of the jump jet pack and that version of Grand Slam instead of having the red pads had all silver pads and that is the version of Grand Slam that I had as a kid and that version of Grand Slam is actually really rare and hard to find and pretty expensive if you're looking to buy one but I can kind of see why it's a highly desired figure the all-silver Grand Slam just looked really cool and I I do like the red pads but the silver pads really made this figure pop and putting it together with the jump jet pack which in itself is not a very spectacular vehicle really combining the two made both of them more awesome the howl here was worth three flag points and on the back of the box of course was Grand Slam's file card you were encouraged to cut out these file cards from the back of the packaging and keep them it had some information about the the character in this case it says laser artillery soldier codenamed Grand Slam his foul name is James J. Barney his primary military specialty is artillery secondary military specialty electronics engineer and basically the file card indicates that Grand Slam is really a very intelligent person but also a little bit of a geek as we might say I don't think they would have called him that in 1982 I'm not sure what the slang was but today we'd say he's a little bit geeky this section here says Grand Slam received initial training in conventional artillery and served with a 155 millimeter battery he graduated special weapons school top of class specialized education artillery school advanced tech school qualified expert in the m16 the m1911a1 and of course the howl artillery laser you better know how to operate the howl if he's going to be the operator of it he's soft spoken and calm just a bit shy intelligent loves to read escapist fantasy science fiction and comic books so Grand Slam is actually the kind of guy who would go to a GI Joe convention and maybe cosplay and why not cosplay his own character so just picture Grand Slam cosplaying Grand Slam he would have the best costume at the convention the most realistic of course because he would just come in uniform so there you have the 1982 and 1983 howl heavy artillery laser with its driver Grand Slam thank you for watching this video and stay tuned for more GI Joe tour reviews in the near future