 Hello everybody, Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, and this time I'm not doing a review of a GI Joe toy, instead I wanted to do something a little bit different. I wanted to do a video that might hopefully be useful to collectors of vintage GI Joe. Since there seems to be a lot of confusion about the 1982 re-release of GI Joe, since the figures did re-use a lot of parts between them, I wanted to do a parts and color guide for the 1982 GI Joe release, so that you can figure out which character you have and how he's different from the others, even though they all tend to look very much alike. Before we get started, let me single out a few that we are not going to take a look at today. First of all, I'm not going to look at the Cobra action figures, because they didn't really use many parts between them, and they're all blue, so they're pretty easy to identify. So I don't think that really needs a guide, essentially if it's blue, it's a Cobra. Also I'm not going to take a look at Snake Eyes, because again, even though he re-used the sculpt from a lot of other action figures, he was the only one that was all black, so if you need any help identifying a part of Snake Eyes, if it's black plastic, it's Snake Eyes. Also I'm not going to look at Scarlet, because she had entirely unique parts, so it is really not difficult to identify Scarlet. That leaves us with these 11 figures, and these figures do tend to look a lot like each other, because they re-used a whole bunch of parts, sometimes just re-colored, sometimes not re-colored at all. So we're going to look at each and every one of these. I'm going to show you how you can identify which figure you have. I'm going to show you all the parts that they share with each other, and the different colors and the different ways that they try to differentiate these different action figures. Let's take a look at each one, and as we go through, I will label the names so you can know which figure we're looking at throughout this video. Over here we have Breaker. This is Rock and Roll, Short Fuse, Stalker, Hawk, Zap, Grand Slam, Steeler, Flash, Clutch, and Grunt. GI Joe uniforms came in three basic colors of green. Light Green, Medium Green, and Dark Green. This light green is pretty notorious for being very fragile, and if you have a light green action figure, you probably have some broken parts, like Zap's broken thumbs here. The figures with the light green were Stalker, who was camouflaged, but his base color was the light green, Steeler, and of course Zap. The figures with the medium green were Short Fuse, Hawk, Clutch, Flash, Grunt, and Breaker. The figures with the dark green were Rock and Roll and Grand Slam. Of these 11 figures, only one had a unique head, and that was Stalker, who had a beret and a mustache. None of the other figures had that. The other figures reused three different heads, sometimes repainting the hair so they looked different, but sometimes they didn't even do that. So some of the figures had the same head, and exactly the same hair. The first head had kind of a passive expression, it was a slightly younger face, and that head was used for Short Fuse and Hawk, who both had blonde hair, and Flash and Steeler, who both had brown hair. The second head was the bearded head, and three figures share that head. There was Breaker with the brown hair and beard, Clutch with the black hair and beard, and Rock and Roll with the blonde hair and beard. The third head had a slightly older looking face with a more severe expression, and three figures shared that head. One was Zap, who had black hair, and Grunt and Grand Slam, who both had brown hair. To complicate matters even further, each of these 1982 GI Joe action figures was re-released in 1983, but with some differences. The main difference was a new point of articulation in 1983. In 1982, for example, Breaker here had a hinge at the elbow, so he could move his arm at the elbow like that, but in 1983 he was re-released with a new hinge at the bicep. He could still move his arm at the elbow, but he could also swivel his arm all the way around at the bicep. This was referred to as swivel arm battle grip, or just swivel arm, and the original articulation without that hinge at the elbow was referred to as straight arm articulation. There were some other subtle differences between 1982 and 1983, although most of the parts were the same, they actually changed the waist piece. In 1982 they had this thicker waist piece with the kind of H shaped belt buckle, and in 1983 they had a slimmer waist piece with a more detailed belt. In 1982 the GI Joe figures that had long sleeves had pockets on the sides of their arms. In 1983 when they were re-released with swivel arm battle grip, that pocket was moved from the side of the arm to the front. In 1982 GI Joe had two action figures with red pads like this, and on their arms they had a sculpted on checker pattern that was the same color as the pads on his chest. But in 1983 when they released the swivel arm battle grip, those pads on the arms were just painted on. There was no sculpting detail at all. One very subtle change between 1982 and 1983 was the hole in the back of the action figure. This was the hole that held the screw that held the entire action figure together, but it was also the hole in which the backpacks would fit with the peg. But those holes were subtly different between 1982 and 1983 to accommodate different size pegs in the backpacks. The 1982 backpacks had kind of a thicker and stubbier peg, and the 1983 backpacks had a longer and thinner peg with kind of a curved edge at the end. The figures had three standard chest pieces. The first was the piece with the two long straps like this, and they had a sculpted on grenade and a knife. In the back they kind of came to a V shape, or a Y shape, and the figures that shared that chest were stalker, hawk, breaker, and grunt. Another standard chest was the one with these short shoulder straps. You can see that they have a strap that goes between them across the chest, and in the back they come to this kind of X pattern. The figures that shared that chest were short fuse and zap. Of course short fuse had black straps, and zap had brown straps. The third standard chest for 1982 G.I. Joe action figures was the padded chest, and this causes a lot of confusion. The two that had the padded chest were flash and grand slam, and as you can see they have the same colored pads. And that causes a lot of people to mix up these two action figures. In addition to the standard chests, in 1982 G.I. Joe had three unique chest pieces. They belonged to Steeler, Clutch, and Rock and Roll. Steeler's unique chest piece has this weapon, this pistol, with a black strap. You can see how it comes together on the back, so his back piece was unique as well. He also had a pistol sculpted on to his chest, but with different straps he had shoulder pads and this kind of brown lining on his jacket. And you can see how that carried along to the back as well. And then most distinctive was Rock and Roll, who had a pair of gold bandoliers crisscrossed across his chest and his back. There were two standard sets of legs, and the main one was this one, which just had a pocket on either side and a pair of boots. But the other standard pair of legs was shared also again by Flash and Grand Slam. It had their pads on the thighs, and it had coverings on their boots. The figures had three standard sets of arms. They had the rolled up sleeves, which was shared by Clutch, Breaker, and Rock and Roll. They had the long sleeves, which was shared by Stalker, Short Fuse, Grunt, Hawk, and Zap. The third standard set of arms was another part shared between Grand Slam and Flash. They were the gloved arms, and as I said in 1982 they had these sculpted on pads on the shoulders, which were just painted on in 1983. And they had one unique set of arms, and that was owned by Steeler. His arms were not shared by any other action figure. Now I know this is a lot to take in, and I've thrown around a bunch of names, so you might still be a little bit confused. So I'm going to go through each of these figures and point out the one or two special differences that will allow you to instantly know which action figure you have. Let's start with a figure that's maybe the most difficult to identify, because he's the most generic. This is Grunt. He has standard long sleeve arms, standard legs, standard chest, and he has this head with the brown hair that he shares with Grand Slam. But you can pick out Grunt fairly easily, because he is the only figure that used these long straps with the head that had the older looking face. Stalker should not be that difficult to identify. Of course he is the black guy, but in case you're colorblind, you can look for his beret, and he of course is the only one that had camouflage. So if you see a camouflage pattern, that's got to be stalker. Another figure that should be pretty easy to identify is Rock and Roll. You're going to quickly identify Rock and Roll by his gold bandoliers, and his blonde hair and beard. He was the only one of the bearded action figures to have blonde hair. One that may be difficult to identify is Hawk, because he looks so much like short fuse. But Hawk is the only one that had this shiny metallic silver paint on his long straps. So look for the silver, and you will know that you have a Hawk action figure. In contrast, short fuse, even though he had the younger looking face and the blonde hair like Hawk, he had the short black straps with the black strap between them on his chest. And he was the only blonde action figure to have that type of strap. Clutch may sometimes be confused with breaker, but you're going to know clutch right away because he's the only one of the bearded action figures that had black hair. And he has a unique chest piece with the gun molded onto his chest. Breaker had brown hair and a beard, and he was the only one of the bearded action figures to have the standard long strap chest. We now come to Zap, who should be fairly easy to identify. He had a very light green color, brown straps, and he was the only one of the figures to have this older looking face with black hair. We now come to the two figures that are probably the most difficult to distinguish, because they shared essentially all parts between them, except for the head. And even though they had different heads, they had exactly the same hair color. So it's easy to mix these two up. To complicate matters even further, there was a second issue of Grand Slam in 1983 that had silver pads. Now, the 1983 issue of Grand Slam is going to be much easier to identify, because he has silver pads and flash was never issued with silver pads. But the 1982 version, you are going to distinguish between flash by looking for the black gloves and the black boots. Also, Grand Slam's green color was darker than flash's. Of course, you can look for the different head sculpt, but mainly look at the gloves and the boots. Grand Slam has black boots, flash has brown boots. Flash, I said, is only distinguishable from Grand Slam by his head sculpt. The base color of his plastic, which was the medium green, and brown gloves and brown boots. At last, that brings us to Steeler. And Steeler was the only one of the figures with the light green plastic to have the younger looking face with the more passive expression. He did share a head entirely with flash, including his hair color, but you're going to distinguish him from flash because he did not have the red pads like flash did. Steeler actually had more unique parts than most of the other action figures. He had unique arms and a unique chest and back piece. So look for the light green plastic with the gun on the chest and a gold undershirt under the green over shirt. There you have it. We have looked at all of the standard parts that were reused for these 11 action figures. Fortunately, in 1983, G.I. Joe released a bunch of new characters that looked entirely different from these guys and shared a lot fewer parts between them. But this 1982 reissue of G.I. Joe, Hasbro wasn't quite sure if this toy line was going to take off, so they went the cheap route. They reused the same mold for a lot of different figures. And it's understandable, especially for relatively new collectors, that you get confused between who is whom. So if you get confused and you want to know how to identify your 1983 variants of the 1982 figures, just refer to this video, play it back, and you'll never get confused. And with a little bit of time, a little bit of practice, you'll be able to identify these action figures at a glance. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, go ahead and give it a thumbs up. And don't forget to subscribe because I've got a lot of great new G.I. Joe toy and comic book reviews coming up and you do not want to miss them. I'll catch you all later.