 Hello, everybody. Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. It's time for another vintage GI Joe toy review and this time we are looking at a small vehicle from 1984. I'm talking of course about the one-man VTOL, the Skyhawk. For some reason I only picked up the Skyhawk recently, despite the fact that I have most other 1984 vehicles. I'm not really sure why I waited quite so long to get the Skyhawk. It's not rare. It's not expensive on the aftermarket. I just sort of overlooked it. The Skyhawk is a very important and prominent vehicle in the GI Joe universe and I'm very happy to have one now. So let's give the Skyhawk a very good, thorough review. This is the Skyhawk. On the box that it came in it was referred to as the one-man VTOL. VTOL of course standing for vertical takeoff and landing. It was first introduced in 1984. It was also sold in 1985. It was discontinued in 1986 and in 1986 GI Joe got a jet that kind of replaced this. It was the X-30 Conquest. Also in that year this vehicle was recolored and packaged in the Sears Exclusive Dreadnock aerosol. The jet that GI Joe had before this one was the Sky Striker introduced the year before in 1983 and the Sky Striker is huge. It really dwarfs this Skyhawk and I think the Skyhawk was a nice lower-cost alternative to the Sky Striker. Maybe for some kids who couldn't afford the more expensive Sky Striker. There were a lot of other aircraft introduced in 1984. There was the Shark which was a jet submarine. It was a jet that could go underwater. I always consider that more of a naval vessel than a pure jet. We also got the Cobra Rattler which was a larger aircraft and really that was meant to be more of a rival to the Sky Striker. In 1984 there was a Cobra aircraft that was comparable in size to the Skyhawk and that was the Cobra Claw. It was more of a flying wing kind of jet pack. It was a little bit smaller than the Skyhawk but more in the Skyhawk's class than the much larger Cobra Rattler. 1984 was a great year for aircraft in GI Joe. The Skyhawk was worth the two flag points and it did not come with an action figure. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Skyhawk starting with the missiles. It had two missiles and they pegged in underneath here to the skids. Geez. These missiles had very small slots and they pegged into very small pegs on these skids so they didn't stay on very well. These are always popping off. You have to be really careful of that. The blueprints call these signal processing air-to- surface rockets or SPATs. As far as a real-world weapon these might be based on these look to me a little bit like the AGM-122 sidearm missiles but the sidearm missiles would have another set of fins up here on the front rather than just the ones on the back. The box for the Skyhawk calls these sidewinder missiles and there are other sidewinder missiles in GI Joe. There were the sidewinder missiles that came with the Skystriker. As you can see it's pretty comparable in size but the Skystriker sidewinders are pretty different. In the front and underneath it has what the blueprints call twin 20 millimeter thunderclap cannons and these swing they swing in unison and those look pretty good they have some some detailing on them and those look not bad at all. On the side sculpted on here we have what the blueprints call fuselage mounted Vulcan 20 millimeter cannons and those look pretty good too. This is a pretty well-armed aircraft for the size that it is. We have an opening canopy and this canopy it's just a frame there's no clear plastic glass pieces in there just a frame and it opens so that's how you get your action figure in and out. The cockpit has very little detail there's this joystick here which I guess the pilot is supposed to control the craft with but no instrument panel sculpted on the inside however inside the canopy there is an instrument panel sticker I'll show you how to place the driver in I'm using Duke because in the comic book Duke piloted the Skyhawk I'm using my busted crotch Duke and it's pretty simple there's a back peg that fits in the hole in the back of the action figure you just peg them in make sure his legs are bent well enough to so his feet fit inside and you can place his hand on the little joystick remote controller and then close the canopy and there you go there's a name on the side of the canopy on the sticker a Lieutenant Frederick Bama with some kill marks and this is a bit of a mystery as to who this Lieutenant Frederick Bama is that is not the name of any member of the GI Joe team so I put this question to the GI Joe discussion Facebook group and one answer that came up one possibility was that this might be referring to a Lieutenant Frederick Funderberg junior who was a pilot in World War two and that fits this is an aircraft and he was a Tuskegee airman meaning that he trained in Tuskegee Alabama so this Bama would be an Alabama reference and I really like that answer it sounds plausible plus it's got a nice story behind it however Ron Rudat who was a chief designer at Hasbro and designed a lot of GI Joe action figures says this Bama was probably referring to Hama or Larry Hama the writer of the GI Joe comic book and if that's how Mr. Rudat remembers it that's probably true but I like the other answer better it's got a nice story and why let the truth get in the way of a nice story now we get to the skids the infamous skids and these are terrible these are almost always broken and in fact on mine they are broken they're held together with just one little thin piece of plastic one single bar and it just slots in right here in the back and as you can see mine is broken it's split right there and that's a very frequent break really this is not a good design there really should have been at least two support bars on these skids and you know it just isn't sturdy enough for the way most kids play with their toys and so that is often broken in fact you're gonna probably pay a premium to get a skyhawk that doesn't have broken skids and if you get a skyhawk that doesn't have broken skids you have to be careful not to break them yourself because they are incredibly fragile each of the skids has a foot peg one on each side and those foot pegs can be used to carry other figures just put the peg in the hole in the bottom of the feet and now you can carry two more figures in addition to the one that rides on the inside I think it's funny that this is called a one-man VTOL but in fact it's a three-man VTOL back here we have the engines some jet engines and these do tilt they tilt upward for the VTOL the vertical takeoff and landing so it can take off and land straight up and down like that and then when it's in flight and it needs to go forward the engines tilt and are horizontal for horizontal flight these engines are another bit of a weakness they just clip on here to this one single clip and it doesn't look very good it doesn't have any kind of engine cover or anything like that to cover up the the plastic clip that holds them on and plus once they get worn down a little bit they just flop around they don't turn like they should they don't tilt like they're supposed to so I put a piece of clear tape on mine to help add some friction it doesn't look very good and I probably could fix that and make that look a little bit better but I don't want to because this clip is actually kind of thick and as I take the engines out it puts a lot of strain on this clip and it's got some white plastic stress in there I'm worried that I'm gonna break the clip there's some nice detail on the inside of the engine there and the intake that looks pretty nice now this looks pretty cool and it looks like it would function as a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft however I'm pretty sure this would not work in real life for one thing if the center of gravity is a little bit too far forward which it looks like it might be especially with a pilot in there instead of lifting straight up it's going to tilt over and eventually you know flip over on its top and that's not going to help you very much also dang it stay on stay on also as it tilts the jet blast is going to hit these support fins right here and I'm no jet scientist but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work now we get to the side stabilizer planes and the stabilizer fin up here on the top and these things are ridiculous they will fall out at the slightest breeze they they do not they have done nothing but fall out on me as I've been shooting this video and it's really infuriating they do not clip in you're just supposed to slide them in and they do not stay in worth anything just having these clip in instead of slot in like that would make this a much better vehicle because you can't really play with it and fly it around like that without without popping one of these things off same deal with this top fin it just frictions in there you can get it to wedge in pretty well but it's not going to help you you know if you play with this for a little while if this were in the hands of a kid this thing would be popping out 50 times a day it just doesn't want to stay in there very well here's the back end of the skyhawk you can see Tant here's the back end of the skyhawk you can see how how the engines tilt from the back isn't that lovely I have to take a break from the review I know the toy is just a piece of plastic it is not trying to piss me off it's not trying to do anything it's not alive it doesn't have a brain it's just a toy it's just a toy that falls apart very easily even though the skyhawk did not come with an action figure I like to display it with my broken crotch duke this is the one that got the bobbitt operation and I like to use this duke because my other duke that's not broken is complete has all of its accessories I don't have all the accessories for this one so he gets to pilot the skyhawk and maybe nobody will notice the fact that his crotch has been glued back on so I put duke in there and just I kind of like to leave the canopy open actually so let's look at the skyhawk overall in the gi Joe comic book the skyhawk was introduced in issue number 24 and the artist for that issue was Russ Heath and Russ Heath is a legendary comic artist and he drew a lot of the models that were used for the gi Joe animated series in that issue the skyhawk was piloted by duke and storm shadow helped cobra commander escape on the cobra claw the skyhawk featured very prominently in the gi Joe animated series and any member of the gi Joe team could fly one of these things it did only feature a single joystick controller so the controls of the skyhawk must be very simple it like video game controls so anyone could just jump in and take off the green color definitely suggests it's intended to be a low flying infantry support aircraft and the fact that it comes with air to surface missiles also kind of supports that I really like the green color it's very military looking definitely looks like something gi Joe would use and even though this is not a realistic aircraft I don't think this would work in real life for the reasons that I mentioned this is what I would call pseudo realistic it's definitely not a real-world vehicle but it's made to look like it could plausibly work in the real world there's nothing too fantasy or science fiction about it so you could imagine this as a real thing I really don't mind the pseudo realistic gi Joe vehicles although I prefer the more realistic ones these pseudo realistic vehicles gives us a little bit of fantasy without going overboard and too far into the science fiction the main knock I have against this vehicle is not with the aesthetics the aesthetics of the design are great the problem is with the engineering it is far too fragile it is very fragile oh so fragile these skids are definitely under engineered they always break and every bit of this thing just wants to fall off these side planes the top fin the missiles even those drop off if you're not too careful you just have to be careful about every part of this vehicle so if you have one you just don't want to mess around with it too much you put this on your shelf and you forget it because if you try to if you try to manipulate it in any way something's gonna fall apart the skyhawk is great to look at as long as you never ever touch it that was my review of the 1984 gi Joe skyhawk I hope you enjoyed this video and if you're thinking of getting a skyhawk I hope you found this video informative if you liked it make sure you give it a thumbs up on YouTube and don't forget to subscribe I've got a lot of great new gi Joe toy reviews coming up you don't want to miss them and don't forget to like the Facebook page you get a lot of updates there you don't get anywhere else thanks for watching I'll see you next week with another vintage gi Joe toy review introducing view roadblock and spirit over commander got away but we capture storm shadow gi Joe skyhawk Joe and cobra figures and cobra claws so separately from Hasbro stay on stay on Stay on, stay on, stay on.