 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review and this time we are doing the Thunder Machine. The Thunder Machine was introduced in 1986, it was also sold in 1987, it was discontinued in 1988 and there wasn't really a replacement dreadnought vehicle in 1988. 1986 was a big year for the dreadnoughts, we got the Thunder Machine of course, we also got the ground assault and aerosol sears exclusive set and the swamp fire so there were a lot of dreadnought vehicles released in that year. The Thunder Machine was worth three flag points and it came with an action figure thrasher and thrasher was a dreadnought. The dreadnoughts were a subgroup within the GI Joe universe, they were not exactly part of Cobra although they worked for Cobra, they were an independent motorcycle gang. The dreadnoughts were led by Zartan and they were heavily influenced by post-apocalyptic movies like Mad Max. The Mad Max influence is especially evident with the Thunder Machine. I'm going to take a closer look at thrasher in a little bit so I'm going to set him aside for now so we can take a closer look at the Thunder Machine. There are so many parts and features to the Thunder Machine this is going to take a while to get through all these. Let's start at the front with what the blueprints call dual synchronized penetrator Gatling cannons. These really fierce looking Gatling guns with rubbery ammo belts coming in on the sides. I have no idea if it's really practical to mount one of these on a car like this but it just looks really fierce. I mean these things are going to shred anything in the path of this vehicle. These Gatling guns sort of turn if you run your fingers along these ridges here but it doesn't work very well, at least not on mine. It also has this blue roll cage for ramming. This does tend to get lost fairly frequently and this is really thin plastic so that could break but this is just a nice touch. It just it looks really mean. This front section here the blueprints call a junked race car front grille and I think it's pretty much agreed that this is from a Firebird Trans-Am but what year? I think it's from a 1980 Trans-Am because of these grilles right here in the front but there could be some debate about that. It doesn't exactly fit a real world Trans-Am front end but it's very very close. Now let's talk about the wheels. These are rubber wheels, not plastic. Real rubber wheels are always kind of a bonus and this has some very nice all four wheels are rubber and that's great. The front wheels do turn so you have some steering. That's really nice. Moving toward the back of the vehicle we see there's no windshield but there is this slotted armor panel to protect the driver and that's pretty cool looking. It has a cobra sigil on it and that's a little bit interesting because the Dreadnocks as I said are not a part of cobra. They are an independent group. They do work for cobra sometimes but they're really more independent mercenaries but nonetheless they have the cobra sigil slapped on the Thunder Machine vehicle. This yellow dot here the blueprints call an infrared target acquisition scanner which sounds pretty cool but really what is it scanning for? Targeting for what? The only weapon this vehicle has on it is the twin gatling guns and those just point directly in front of the vehicle so it doesn't seem like you'd really need an infrared scanner for any weapons on this thing. Up at the top we have four flood lights and police emergency lights and you really get the impression that this vehicle is cobbled together from other vehicles. They've taken parts from lots of different places and they've put them on this thing and just to give it a nice armored look and you know just make it really fierce and menacing and a great fighting vehicle. On either side it has gull-wing doors and that's pretty sweet. They're more armored flaps than doors but both of them swing up like that and they attach to the roll cage around the cab of the vehicle. That roll cage plugs in right here and it can pop out so be cautious about that. On the interior we have a steering wheel and the steering wheel does turn a little bit though that's a nice touch. We have some nice sculpted detail in the center console and the dashboard. We have some nice seats, some sculpted seats and a texture pattern on the floorboard. That's a really nice and well detailed interior to this vehicle. On the driver's side it has a side mirror with a sticker on it and this is a frequently lost part. Sometimes you see this totally missing. It's a bit loose there you can see how it could pop out and get lost. The side mirror is a nice touch that's something that's not often thought of on other GI Joe vehicles. On either side we have these running boards and these running boards each have four foot pegs and even though these foot pegs are fairly close together they are far enough apart that you can fit two figures on them. One on each foot peg. They're kind of close together but they do both fit on there so you can fit an extra eight action figures on the outside of this vehicle. Around here we have this antenna and this antenna is another frequently lost part. In fact it's also very easily broken. It has this very thin peg that can easily break off and in fact you can see mine has a little bit of white plastic stress marks on them. It's a bent a little bit but that fits in this hole here and so that's something you really have to watch out for. A lot of Thunder Machines are missing the antenna. Covering the back wheels we have these armor plates and these they can pop out. In fact mine are kind of loose. I'm not sure if they're supposed to be that way but mine pop out fairly easily so do watch out for that. These armor plates make the Thunder Machine look a little bit like a tank and it's kind of built like a tank. It's a tank with wheels. This thing just looks like it's going to roll down the road and cause a great deal of damage. It seems like we've already covered a lot of features on this vehicle but we are not done by a long shot. Here in the back it has what the blueprints call knock dead 21k thrust pound turbo jet and this thing it just looks like it could make the car go 2000 miles an hour. It looks like a freaking jet from an aircraft has been put on a car. As you can see from the interior of the Thunder Machine the jet intake is right behind the driver. Now this absolutely would not work in real life. For one thing other than making the driver deaf it would also eliminate the need for the driver to ever get a haircut again for the rest of his life and in the very back we have a universal toe hook that's great so you can tow some of the towed weapons like the Cobra Asp. We have some stickers for taillights and last but not least on the bottom there isn't a lot of sculpted detail but there is a little bit. Just a little bit of sculpted detail on there that's just a little bit of an extra that Hasbro put in that most people probably wouldn't have even noticed. They really didn't have to put any detail on the bottom but there you have a little bit and there you go the parts and features of the Thunder Machine and this thing is fully loaded from stem to stern. Now let's look at the driver thrasher and let's start by looking at his accessory. He came with only one and he came with this lacrosse stick. Yojo.com calls it a lacrosse stick. I guess that's kind of what it is. It's not exactly like a lacrosse stick instead of having a net it has this spiked ball. This is definitely a melee weapon of some kind and this handle is kind of thick. I think too thick to fit in the action figure's hands. I've seen some photos where collectors have put this in thrashers hand. I've tried it and I feel like if I try to force it anymore I'm going to break the thumb off so I usually have him holding it by this thinner portion up here because I just feel more comfortable. I don't want to break the thumb off the action figure but really I don't think he needs this. I would have been fine if thrasher did not come with any accessories. After all he's got the thunder machine. Why does he need this thing? Let's look at the articulation of thrasher and thrasher had the typical articulation of 1986 GI Joe action figures. That means he could turn his head from left to right but he could also look up and down. His neck was on a ball joint. He could move his arm at the shoulder up about so far and he could swivel it all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow. He could move at the elbow about 90 degrees and 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 so he could move at the torso a little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could move his leg at the hip about 90 degrees. He could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of thrasher and the first thing you notice is he has these skunk stripes in his hair. It's supposed to look really punky and it definitely looks very 80s. He has kind of an unusual expression and an odd looking face. On his chest he has this armor with these v-shapes here and spikes on the shoulder and this chest armor along with the shoulder armor reminds me of football shoulder pads. He has a green shirt that's torn at the midriff. That's fairly typical for a dreadnought. His trousers are a little bit unusual. He has black legs but he has a gray waist piece but this waist piece apparently is supposed to represent some kind of padding. You can see that kind of sticks up above his belt like that. He has a black studded belt, a pouch on the side and you can see that sort of armored looking padding continues around to the back. There is a lot of sculpted detail in the hands. His right hand has a gray glove with a black studded wristband that looks like maybe a leather wristband with studs and on his left arm, his left hand, he has like some kind of armored glove that is over the gray glove. That's an extra paint app and that is really impressive. This armored glove looks a little bit like a Mutz glove but it is not the same. This is not just a reuse of the part. Very similar though. He has black trouser legs with some gray thigh pads and he has silver knee pads. I am a big fan of knee pads. I love knee pads on the action figures. Great feature. It looks really good on him. He's got some studs on his boot. It looks like he has some armored boots with some spikes on it. The rest of the boots are gray. Looks fantastic. So much detail on it. This is an amazing action figure and whatever you think of the look of Thrasher overall, a lot of work went into this. There are so many paint apps. This is like a deluxe action figure. Let's take a look at Thrasher's file card. This file card was printed on the back of the box that the Thunder Machine came in. There's nothing on the other side. It's just the back of a box. It has a portrait of Thrasher and this would have been from the artwork on the front of the box. It says his faction is the enemy. It doesn't say Cobra and that's accurate. He's not technically a Cobra agent but he is the enemy of G.I. Joe. Code name is Thrasher and he's the Thunder Machine Driver. There's a lot of text in this top section here so let's get through it. It says Thrasher was spoiled rotten as a child by his nice middle-class parents in their nice middle-class neighborhood. He was never disciplined since his parents believed it would stifle energies he might need later in life. Thrasher was never denied anything he asked for even though everything he asked for wound up causing some kind of unexplainable destruction or minor disaster. He got everything he wanted but it wasn't enough. At a tender young age this wild child wandered into the swamps where he could do what he pleased. It was in the swamps where he met up with Zartan and the Dreadnox and was welcomed into the fold. This bottom section has a quote. It says even by Dreadnock standards this guy is pretty low. He derives a slight sensation which almost registers as pleasure on his primitive central nervous system from inflicting misery onto others. So the theme of Thrasher's file card is he is a spoiled brat and he is a warning to parents of what happens when you don't discipline your children. I'm not sure how that message translates to kids though because if you think about it if you're a spoiled brat you become a Dreadnock that's pretty badass. So what do I think of Thrasher and the Thunder of Machine overall? Well they are both great. The action figure and the vehicle are spectacular. As you know I do prefer the authentic military toys in G.I. Joe but if you're going to introduce non-military elements this is how you do it. I mean you've got color here you've not got just like a generic green military vehicle. You've got you know some weird science fiction influences but it's not crazy science fiction. It's not like neon colors and a Play-Doh battle armor. It's still stuff that you could kind of pretend exists in the real world. It's undeniable that Thrasher looks pretty weird but he's a Dreadnock. He's supposed to look weird and with all of the detail and all of the different colors and the paint apps on here I mean he is like a deluxe version of an action figure. You didn't normally see this level of detail and different colors in one action figure. I even like the way his colors do not match the Thunder Machine so you get a little bit of contrast between the driver and the machine that he drives and that's great. I mean between the two of them there's like an explosion of color here and look at how the different colored plastic creates color interest on the vehicle without any paint apps. There's no paint on this vehicle just different colored plastic and it looks perfect. I mean it's just so well designed. To finish this video I couldn't help but to set up the Dreadnocks riding together riding into town prepared to dish out some death and destruction. If you see these guys rolling into your city it's a good time to take a vacation because you don't want to be around when the Dreadnocks are. That was my review of the Thunder Machine and its driver Thrasher and his file card. I hope you enjoyed it. If you're thinking of getting a Thunder Machine I hope you found it informative. If you liked the video make sure you give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe and make sure you like the Facebook page you get a lot of updates there you don't get anywhere else. Thanks for watching and I'll see you with the next GI Joe toy review.