 Hello everybody, hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, and this week we are looking at Joe's in space! Now, now I don't like this gag. Shut it off, shut it off, turn the gravity back on. Oh, that was abrupt! So, Joe's in space. Not my favorite part of the toy line, but a common part of the toy line. There are a ton of space-themed GI Joe toys, enough that a lot of people consider them to be just a normal part of the toy line. For me, though, they're hard for me to wrap my head around. From my very earliest experiences with GI Joe, it was a military-themed toy line, so wherever else it goes, I feel like it should keep the military theme at its heart. They sure did not, though, especially in the 90s. We're going to look at a Star Brigade vehicle and figure. We've looked at Star Brigade one time previously, and that was a space alien. Yeah, there were space aliens in GI Joe. As always, though, I will give it a fair and honest review, so let's get it going. Good luck getting that song out of your head now. It's time for another vintage GI Joe toy review. Star Brigade was Hasbro's answer to the resurgence of Kenner's Star Wars. By the 90s, Hasbro had purchased Kenner, but was still running Kenner as a separate division, so Hasbro was still feeling competition from Kenner, and when the Hasbro GI Joe guys found out there would be new Star Wars toys, instead of coming up with their own space-themed toy line, they just shoehorned some space toys into GI Joe. Just slap the GI Joe logo on it, and it's in GI Joe now. The result was Star Brigade, not the first space toys in GI Joe by a long stretch. I never cared for the space toys in GI Joe, but on this show, they still have to be judged on their own merits. This week, we are going to look at the Starfighter and the third version of SyFy, and they are both reissued toys. Seems like we've already done a few of those this year, and it's only February. But hey, sometimes reissued toys turn out to be great. Maybe Starfighter and SyFy are excellent toys. Let's find out. HCC788 presents the Starfighter and SyFy. This is the GI Joe Starfighter and Pilot SyFy from 1993. This vehicle and figure set were first released in 1993 as part of the Star Brigade subset. It was only available in 1993. It was discontinued for 1994. The vintage GI Joe run at that time was nearing the end. Star Brigade was a series of space-themed figures and vehicles. In an attempt to appeal to fans of popular toys and TV shows in the early 90s, GI Joe went deeper into science fiction, abandoning its military roots. In 1994, they even gave Star Brigade aliens to fight. If you look through the 1993 lineup, you find very few military-themed action figures. There are some, but they are buried in a deluge of neon colors and goofy gimmicks. 1993 was as far from my GI Joe as it could be. Star Brigade is not helped by the fact that it recycled a lot of parts from earlier figures and vehicles. The Starfighter and SyFy are prime examples of that. They are both recycled from earlier toys. GI Joe has a long history in space, stretching back to 1987 with the release of the Defiant Shuttle Complex. They had a steady stream of space toys since then. Star Brigade didn't revolutionize the brand, but it did escalate GI Joe's space race. Of course, the classic 12-inch GI Joe line had the space capsule in 1966, so Joe's in space is not unheard of. GI Joe was exploring space as early as the 60s. The Starfighter came with the third version of SyFy, and we will look at that figure, but we're going to set them aside for now so we can take a closer look at the Starfighter. The Starfighter is a rocket plane. It is designed to launch from Earth and fly into space, then safely re-enter the atmosphere and land. It has seating for a single pilot. The Starfighter is mostly a reissue of the 1988 Cobra Stellar Stiletto. The Stiletto was in stunning red and silver. The Starfighter is mostly white and blue. I think the color choices for the Starfighter make it look more like a space shuttle. The Starfighter colors are similar to the 1987 Battle Force 2000 vector colors, but not close enough to say the vector influenced the Starfighter. The vector's blue is darker, and it has some orange and green thrown in. There are a few differences between the Stellar Stiletto and the Starfighter besides the color, and we will address those. The Starfighter was the only GI Joe spacecraft in Star Brigade. The other Joe Star Brigade vehicles were battle armor. GI Joe had a couple space shuttles, the Defiant and the Crusader, neither of which were on the shelves in 1993. Cobra had a Star Brigade vehicle, the Invader, which was modified from the 1987 Pogo Ballistic Battle Ball. I don't have the Invader to show you, but I can show you the Pogo. It wasn't a fair match up against the Starfighter. The Starfighter could take its name from two places. It could be from the 1984 movie The Last Starfighter. That would make sense, since the toy is a space fighter. Of course, the ship in the movie isn't called a Starfighter, it's called a Gun Star. It could also be named after the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. The GI Joe Starfighter does have a passing resemblance to that real-world jet. There was also the 1964 movie called Starfighters that is based on the Starfighter jets. That movie was rift in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Many graphic images of airplanes mating on this show. This is not National Geographic. Let's clean that up. Shame on you Mystery Science Theater 3000. Shame on you big brains productions. This is a rare occasion where I have the box for the vehicle, so let's take a look at the packaging so we can see how the Starfighter was marketed. And right off the bat, I notice the GI Joe logo is shrunken down very small, and the Star Brigade logo dominates. And I don't like that one bit. Are you ashamed to be in GI Joe? We have some artwork here, and this is mostly just a copy of the artwork for the Stellar Stiletto. They just kind of painted over it to make it look like the Starfighter. Then we have an advertisement for the sci-fi action figure. On all GI Joe vehicle boxes, this would be a clear window pane so you could see the figure inside. Laser rockets really shoot. We will test that. On the top of the box, we have the flag points. It was worth two flag points, and I think it really ought to be worth three flag points as it came with the figure. But it just worth two, and it's on the top of the box instead of the back. That was a change from 80s GI Joe packaging. So now let's look at the back of the box. We have a photo of the toy here, and I do notice some differences between the photo and the production toy. In fact, if I were to guess, I think this might just be a Stellar Stiletto that's been painted over. It looks like a Stellar Stiletto, but with different colors. But on the Starfighter, there are some noteworthy differences. We have a photo of the sci-fi action figure, and we have some illustrations of some of the features. Then we have sci-fi's file card, and we will look at that later as well. There is a price sticker on the bottom of the box. It looks like it was purchased at Toys R Us for $9.99. Let's take a look at the parts and the features of the Stellar Stiletto, starting as we usually do in the front. In the front, it has a gray, rubbery nose cone. It is soft because Hasbro knew you would chuck this at your brother, and they didn't want him to lose an eye. So that's good forward thinking there. Although the nose cone is mostly round, it actually has some flat surfaces on it, and that is different from the nose cone on the Stellar Stiletto, which was actually round. So these parts aren't really interchangeable. We have some engine detail and some pipes. Looks like a hot rod engine. Behind that, we have a ridged fuselage with flattened shoulders, and this takes the Starfighter from a round, rocket-like shape and flattens it out into more of an airplane-like shape in the middle. It has Starfighter stickers on both sides, and that sticker identifies it as a Star Brigade vehicle. We have a canopy. It can open just by swinging up, and it's in a dark, tinted plastic rather than the clear plastic on the Stellar Stiletto. That tinted screen looks a little cooler than the original. It might look good on the Stellar Stiletto if you wanted to swap them out. Of course, with the darker plastic, you can't see the pilot as well. Under that canopy, we have the cockpit with the pilot seat, a single pilot seat. We have a small control panel with molded-in instruments, and we have a little divider here between the pilot's legs. Not a lot going on in the cockpit, really, but that is a pretty good-looking pilot seat. You can easily place the figure in the cockpit. He does kind of recline a bit, but he fits in there pretty well, and the canopy closes with no trouble at all. But yeah, on the Stellar Stiletto, you can see the pilot in there. In the Starfighter, sci-fi is kind of hidden. On the underside of the vehicle, here in front, we have the spring-loaded rocket-firing chin gun. The blueprints call it a rocket-launching laser cannon, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but okay. It is in bright orange, and it can rotate 360 degrees. This is an upgrade from the Stellar Stiletto. It had this smaller laser gun. It was not a spring-loaded rocket launcher, and it could not turn all the way around, either. It has four orange rockets, each of which peg onto the vehicle, using the standard G.I. Joe Dumbbell-shaped peg and slot, and each of these rockets works with the spring-loaded rocket launcher, so you have four shots with this launcher. To operate the spring-loaded rocket launcher, you take one of the rockets and put it in the barrel of the launcher. Press until it clicks. The trigger is here, and let's use Dr. Meinbender for target practice. He seems to be a popular target. You just take aim and press the trigger to fire. There is a lot of power in that spring. It can really get this rocket moving pretty fast, and since I have four shots with this, I'm going to just keep shooting until I knock that guy over. Die, Dr. Meinbender. Uh-oh. One more shot. Can I do it? Can I do it? Can I take him out? Can I take him down? Dr. Meinbender is still standing. The Stellar Stiletto also had four missiles, but the missiles on the Starfighter can actually shoot. This is the most significant difference between the two vehicles. On the belly of the Starfighter, we have the fuel tanks and some additional technical detail. Like the Stellar Stiletto, the Starfighter has short wings. Instead of the Cobra emblem, we have a sticker with a number three, and it says Lunar Wing, so I guess this thing is supposed to fly to the moon. There is engine detail on each side of the cockpit, and it is not the same. It's different on each side. And we also have these gold hoses that connect the engine to the base of the Thruster nozzle. If you look at this diagram of a liquid propellant rocket, the Starfighter kind of matches it. The gold hose could connect an oxidizer tank to the combustion chamber. Of course, it wouldn't be a good idea to have an exposed hose on a vehicle that will re-enter the atmosphere and experience extremely high external temperatures. We have the rocket nozzles. They are blue, and on each one there are three pegs. The rocket stands on these. Like the Stellar Stiletto, the Starfighter launches and lands vertically. It has no other landing gear. There's a gold plastic cover right between the tail and the canopy, and that conceals the hinges for both. Then finally, we have the tail. It swings up for landing. Unlike the Stellar Stiletto, which has a sharp pointed tail, the tail on the Starfighter is blunted. The Starfighter loses its symmetry with the pointed front and back end. There is one difference between the Starfighter and the Stellar Stiletto that you can't see. The Stiletto is very light and feels hollow. The Starfighter is slightly heavier and feels more substantial. The plastic isn't necessarily thicker, but it feels more dense. Not by much, but to me it is noticeable. Now let's look at sci-fi. This is the third version of sci-fi. The first version of sci-fi was issued in 1986 as a laser trooper. Sci-fi replaced GI Joe's first laser rifle trooper, from 1982. Version 1 of sci-fi was in bright green, had a non-removable helmet, and came with a laser rifle that connected to his backpack. Version 2 of sci-fi was released in 1991. He was a directed energy expert. He came with an array of weapons, including a laser gun and a rocket launcher. Instead of being neon green, he was in a much more subdued gray and black uniform. His helmet was removable, so we could see what he looks like. Version 3 of sci-fi, the figure that came with the Starfighter, is entirely copied from the second version, but with different colors. Instead of the subdued gray uniform, he's wearing white. Let's take a look at sci-fi's accessories, starting with his laser gun. This is the same as the laser gun that came with version 2. The color is even the same. It's almost identical. If there's any difference between the two, the one that came with version 3 is maybe slightly brighter silver plastic, but not very much, almost identical. The version 2 gun connected to the backpack with a black hose. The version 3 gun still has the peg for the hose, but nothing to which it connects. In general, I'm not in favor of pilots and vehicle drivers having guns, unless there's a place on the vehicle to store it, or there's a strap so you can put it around the figure. There is not a place to store sci-fi's laser gun on the Starfighter. This is an extra accessory that won't be used often and can easily be misplaced. You could even get the laser gun stuck inside the body of the vehicle, and good luck getting it out. Next we have his helmet. It's a snug fit. It's made of white plastic and has blue painted goggles, and that's an excellent bonus. Most accessories didn't have paint. This helmet is again a copy of the version 2 accessory. It even still has the peg on the back, which on the version 2 helmet would have a black connector, but again on the version 3 accessory it doesn't have anything to connect to. This helmet is made of hard plastic. I was actually expecting it to be made of soft plastic, so it would fit on the head more easily, but that is not the case, and this hard plastic could scrape the paint off of his hair. It is maybe slightly softer than the standard G.I. Joe accessory plastic, but not very much. These accessories I feel were made with minimal effort, and only the helmet is directly related to his job as the pilot of the Starfighter. Let's take a look at the articulation on sci-fi. He had the articulation that was standard for G.I. Joe figures of 1991 when this body was first issued, 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. 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 swing 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 and color of sci-fi version 3 and just to reiterate, it is identical to version 2 except for the color. It even still has the 1991 copyright stamp on the inside leg. On his head he has black, beautiful feathered hair. He looks like he's in a shampoo commercial. This is an excellent head sculpt. Although the sculpt is the same and the hair color is the same, there is a minor difference between version 2 and version 3. On version 2, the whites of the eyes are painted in. That's very unusual for a G.I. Joe figure. And not so for version 3. On his chest, he's wearing a deep kind of aqua blue vest with some detail on the front. No detail on the back really. And this is over a white jumpsuit. You can see his white color around his neck and the white jumpsuit under the vest. It has a sculpted zipper that goes right down the front there and lots of sculpted folding in the cloth. The color change does make this look more like a space suit. On his arms he has white sleeves and he has some sculpted technical detail on his upper arms. On his forearms, he has gray forearm braces and gray gloves. On his waist piece, he has a gray belt with white belt loops. That doesn't quite look like a jumpsuit there, but I think it is still supposed to be a jumpsuit. He has a small pouch on the left side of his belt and my figure has a little extra splotch of paint there on his hip. On his legs, we have a continuation of that white jumpsuit and on each thigh, he has four narrow dark gray bands and they don't seem to serve any purpose, but it does add some color interest to the legs. And finally, he has some tall gray boots and he has a knife sculpted onto his left ankle. It's difficult for a reissued figure to impress. In this case, the only difference between this and the previous version is the color. But the color difference kind of makes sense. It's meant to look more like a space suit and the colors almost match the colors of the vehicle. If the blue on the figure matched the blue on the Starfighter, that might have been a little too on the nose. What I'm saying is, I don't think I mined these colors on this figure with this specialty. Let's take a look at Syfy's file card. The file card was printed on the back of the box for the Starfighter. This is a 1993 card, so it is rectangular with rounded edges, not our traditional file folder file card shape. This file card has descriptions of the features on the figure. I'm going to skip most of those, but I would like to point out the artwork for Syfy has him with a pistol. He does not come with the pistol nor is one sculpted on the figure itself. He has custom fit hot finger battle gloves and metal plated lead foot space boots. So he has a hot finger and a lead foot. We've got some artwork of Syfy here. His codename is Syfy. He's the Starfighter pilot. His final name is Seymour P. Fine. His primary military specialty is laser weapons system operator. His secondary military specialty is electronic instrument repair. His birthplace is Geraldine Montana, and his grade is E4. These specialties are copied from the version 2 file card, but they are different from the version 1 file card. That had his primary military specialty as infantry and secondary military specialty as electronics. He's still an E4 though. They might have given him a promotion when they made him a spaceship pilot. What is not listed as a specialty? Pilot. At what point did he become a pilot? We have a quote here, presumably from Syfy himself. It says, when you're pulling an inverted g-force dive during a stellar dogfight, there's no room for error. Inverted g-force dive? They're just using random words they heard on top gun. Don't think about it, just keep reading. This paragraph says, Syfy's fascination with electronics and high-tech laser optics forced him to take a leave of absence to complete his master's degree in electrical engineering. His studies led him to combine a laser weapons remote target designator and optical sensors to create an unparalleled security system that has since been adapted by NASA. Adapted by NASA or adopted by NASA. Could be a typo. An obvious genius with lasers and radically designed instrumentation, Syfy became the first recruit to pilot a starfighter. He handles the jet's controls with confidence, even at quasar velocities exceeding the speed of light. Quasar velocities exceeding the speeds of light? Does the starfighter have a warp drive? Don't think about it, just keep reading. In combat he fires laser rockets? Whatever. With incredible accuracy and has turned more than a dozen cobra invaders into burnt-out pieces of galactic garbage. Half the file card does describe Syfy as being brilliant with electronics and lasers, and I like that. The rest is just an advertisement for the toys and random, sciencey-sounding words. Looking at how Syfy was used in G.I. Joe Media, he made minimal appearances in the G.I. Joe animated series produced by Sunbow. I suppose Syfy was redundant in the animated series. He was a laser rifle trooper in a series where everyone used laser rifles. He had the most exposure in the episode, gray hairs and growing pains. His final appearance was in the Deke animated series in the episode, I Found Hugh Evie. He was in his version 2 uniform. He was a minor character in that episode. It focused more on ambush. In the comic book series published by Marvel Comics, he first appeared in issue number 64, just in the background. He was in issue number 65, operating the lasers on the defiant shuttle. Syfy was present at the introduction of Star Brigade in issue number 145. He was wearing a uniform that did not match his figure. He had a dark blue helmet and a uniform with yellow armor and a pistol strapped to his chest. That Star Brigade story arc is weird. It's basically the same plot as the movie Armageddon, but with robots. Of course, the G.I. Joe comic book issues came out before the movie Armageddon, so it didn't rip off the movie. Maybe the movie ripped off the comic book. G.I. Joe's Star Brigade teams up with the October Guard to stop a weaponized asteroid on a collision course with Earth, and they have to fight the robots that are protecting it. The Starfighter does appear in the comic, but it wasn't piloted by Syfy. It was piloted by Payload. Syfy had the role you would expect him to have, a laser rifle trooper. The Starfighter does not survive the battle. There are so many bizarro things in that story, I don't even want to get started pointing them all out. Syfy never had much to do in the comic book series before the Star Brigade story, and he wasn't a prominent player in that. He was an underutilized character in both the comic book and the cartoon. Taking a look at the Starfighter and Syfy overall, they are Joe's in space, they are Star Brigade, they are reissued toys, three strikes against it right off the bat. If I take these toys out of context and just look at them in a bubble, they're not so bad. It's a white and blue space shuttle looking toy with a pilot-y looking figure, and they're fine, they're not great. They would be okay as bargain toys at Walmart. G.I. Joe though has a higher standard and should have a higher standard. These toys barely changed anything from the original, mostly just the color. They were made with minimal effort. Sitting inside the fact that I don't care for the space toys, these feel like knockoffs to me. It looks like somebody got their hands on some G.I. Joe molds and made some knockoff space toys out of them. But they're not knockoffs, they were produced by Hasbro. What I greatly dislike is the fact that on the packaging Star Brigade gets top billing over G.I. Joe. Don't be ashamed to be in G.I. Joe, that doesn't fly around here. So, do I hate these toys? Not really. I mean, they're fine. The spring-loaded rocket is fine. The action figure is fine, but there is something else they could have done with the action figure. Syfy is not a pilot. He doesn't make sense as the pilot of the Starfighter. He's a laser rifle trooper. Keep him in that role. What they could have done is given this figure brown hair and just make him a new version of Ace. That would have made sense and it would have been just as cheap. And we know Hasbro loves to do it cheap. Is the Starfighter a bottom-tier vehicle? Yes. Is Syfy a bottom-tier figure? I'm going to say he's like one millimeter into the middle tier. Not great, but I actually think this figure does look pretty good as a pilot with these color changes. Not great, but it's all right. But as far as his accessories go, I don't need that laser gun at all. The helmet is sufficient. You might have expected me to hate these Star Brigade toys, but if you recall, our introduction to Star Brigade on this channel was Lobotomax. And most toys look not too bad in comparison to Lobotomax. But yeah, still, neither of them are that great. If you want them, don't pay very much for them. They're pretty common and there's not much demand for them. That was my review of the Starfighter and Syfy. I hope you enjoyed it and I have to tell you something. I had a skit that I had planned for this video, but after taking another look at it and I even shot it, I decided it's not very good. So I scrapped it. But since I scrapped the skit, that means I have to do something else. You see, the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl, and that means I lost a bet. So I've got to promote another YouTube channel. The winner of that bet, JoeMotionVideos82. There's his channel. You can check him out. And I believe that fulfills the bet. So the Patriots didn't do very well in that game. Congratulations, well-played Philadelphia Eagles. In all fairness, though, I feel there's one other thing I should do. Fly Eagles fly on the road to victory. Fight Eagles fight. Score a touchdown, one, two, three. Hit, oh, hit them high. And watch our Eagles fly. Fly Eagles fly on the road to victory. E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles. Right, so no more betting for me, then. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next weekend. Until then, remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe. Got a spell, how to spell Eagles.