 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review and this time we're going to do something a little bit different. Up till now I've been looking mostly at 1982 through 1984 GI Joe action figures and vehicles because that's mostly what I have. But this time we are going to leave 1982 and 1984 behind and we are going to look to the future all the way to the year 1985. Up until 1985 all of GI Joe's general purpose vehicles were based on the original 1982 VAMP. In 1984 they came out with the VAMP Mark II and it was still based on this 1982 design but in 1985 we got an all new general purpose vehicle that was not based on the old VAMP. I'm talking of course about the 1985 AWW Stryker. This is the AWW Stryker with driver crankcase. It was released in 1985, it was also sold in 1986, it was discontinued in 1987 when you might say it was replaced with the Crossfire which was a radio controlled vehicle. Or you could say it was replaced by the Battle Force 2000 Eliminator but I wouldn't. The AWW E and AWW Stryker stands for all weather and environment. It was worth three flag points because it came with an action figure and as I said it was the first GI Joe general purpose vehicle that was not based on the original 1982 VAMP. The AWW Stryker came with an action figure crankcase and I'm going to take a closer look at crankcase in a moment so I'm going to set him aside for now. The AWW Stryker is based on the real world F-A-V or fast attack vehicle used by the US military. The F-A-V was later named the DPV or Desert Patrol Vehicle and if you look at the real world vehicle that this is based on the similarity is striking. Let's look at the parts of the AWW Stryker and most prominent is this very large cannon up at the top. It is held on on a very small turret which you might notice is much smaller than the turret that was on the VAMP and this is it. The blueprints call this a 10 round 70mm automatic launcher. This turret is pretty small and it can get white plastic stress marks if you play around with it too much. This thinner side of the turret fits into this slot on the cannon and you just slide it in until it snaps in and the cannon can elevate and it can turn 360 degrees but the cannon is actually obstructed by the antenna. The AWW Stryker had two antennae and they were pretty tall. They extended the height of the vehicle quite a bit and these antennae are just very thin pieces of plastic and they tend to get white stress marks like this or they tend to permanently bend so you see a lot of AWW Strykers with the antenna permanently bent over. Now ironically when they are bent like that they no longer obstruct the cannon so that's one situation where when the toy is in less than perfect condition it actually aged the functionality a little bit. The antenna can come out, it does not snap in permanently although it does hold pretty well once you have it in there but since they can be taken out they are often lost. In the front here it has a fire control camera with a black rubbery tube that goes to the base of the cannon and this is so the cannon can be controlled by someone sitting in the passenger seat. This wire can come out and since it can be removed it is another frequently lost part. In the back the AWW Stryker has an engine cover and you just kind of push it up to pop it out. It has a couple of tabs right here that fit underneath to secure it in place and once you have the engine cover off it has a removable engine block. The engine block has a hole there that fits in this cross shaped peg. Without the engine in there the back looks pretty plain but it does look like it has a car battery in there so that's a nice touch. Inside it has this steering wheel and I don't know if this steering wheel is removable but I hope you'll forgive me but I'm not going to try. While we're at it let's look at the interior detail and it has some nice detail. It has a texture pattern on the floor, it has some nice cushion seats, a gear shifter and a dashboard and unfortunately the dashboard on mine is really dirty. Note to self, clean these things up before you do a video review. Let's look at the features of the AWW Stryker and one of the coolest features is that it has front and rear independent suspension so you can bounce it up and down like that. Turning it over we can kind of see how that worked. The back wheels were connected by this bar in this kind of leaf suspension system and both of those kind of could move and on the front likewise we had a suspension system that allowed the front wheels to move up and down a little bit. This front suspension can be a little bit of a weak point so sometimes you will see AWW Strykers that have one or both of the front wheels kind of tilted inward because the axle that holds the wheels together is broken. The AWW Stryker did not have a metal bar axle like the VAMP did so all four wheels each move independently. Another feature that was an improvement on the original VAMP was the turning front wheels. These wheels actually turned and that is pretty cool. In the front it had a grille and headlights and these headlight lenses are another frequently lost part. On the sides here and here it had foot pegs and those foot pegs could be used for other GI Joe action figures to ride along. You just put the pegs and the holes on the bottom of the action figures feet and this vehicle could carry two additional action figures in addition to the two that would ride inside and that is another improvement on the old 82 VAMP. Following the cab and going all the way over the engine cover is this roll cage. It's a pretty nice looking roll cage but it is pretty thin plastic and these connections here and here at the back do come out pretty easily so be careful about that if you have an AWW Stryker do not break the roll cage and just be cautious that it doesn't pop out on you. The 1983 GI Joe Headquarters Command Center had this motor pool that had four indents for wheels and those four indents perfectly fit the 1982 and 1983 VAMP and it almost fit the AWW Stryker. It did not fit exactly the same way that the VAMP did but it still holds in there fairly well. Let's take a look at the action figure. This is Crank Case and let's start by looking at his accessories. Crank Case came with a gray helmet and I think this was a unique helmet. I don't think any other action figures had this exact helmet. He also came with an assault rifle and the grip on this assault rifle is a little bit thick. I don't really like to put it in his hand, I feel like I might break the thumb. As far as a real world match for this toy assault rifle it kind of looks like the Belgian FNC. The Belgian FNC has a folding stock that looks a lot like this. It also looks a little bit like the Swedish AK-5 but the Swedish AK-5 did not enter service until 1986, which of course was a year after this toy was released. This is a really nicely designed assault rifle. This is a great accessory but I don't think it's the right accessory for Crank Case. Crank Case is a vehicle driver. He doesn't have a lot of opportunity to hold an assault rifle. He doesn't really display well with the assault rifle in his hand and when he's inside of the AWW Stryker. So really I just don't think that he needs this. I would much rather have given this gun to another action figure and just left Crank Case with the helmet. I think that would have been more appropriate. Since the assault rifle does not display very well in Crank Case's hand I always place it right here for storage. Let's look at the articulation of Crank Case. He had the typical articulation for 1985 G.I. Joe action figures which means that his neck was on a ball joint so he could turn his head from left to right and he could look up and down. That was a new point of articulation introduced in 1985. Before that G.I. Joe heads were on a swivel so they could only look left and right. His arm could swing up about so far and it could swivel all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could bend at the elbow about 90 degrees and 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 so he could move at the torso a little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend at the hip about 90 degrees and his leg would bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt and the color on Crank Case. He has orange hair and a mustache and he has kind of a round head and the round head kind of makes him look a little bit unusual. His chin sticks out pretty far. He has a light tan shirt with a very slight green tint to it under a darker green pullover shirt and he has the same color on his trousers that light tan with a very very slight green tint to it. He has brown straps that go all the way around to the back in this Y pattern. He has a brown belt and a belt buckle with some pretty impressive detail. He has a gray pouch and a brown strap that looks like it has a sculpted buckle and it looks like that strap is supposed to continue to his holster but it doesn't. It just stops right there and that looks very strange. On his trousers he has these very prominent pouches on the front of his legs. On his right leg he has a black holster and nothing really on his left leg. And he has some nice brown boots. He has black gloves and on his left wrist he has a gray watch. He has red marks on his epaulettes. His sleeves are rolled up and on his right sleeve there is a unit badge that to me looks like a pegasus and I've tried to narrow this down and I actually think that this emblem belongs to the World War II British Seventh Light Infantry Parachute Battalion. You might ask why would an American soldier be wearing a World War II British patch on his shirt but I think that the file card answers that question. Let's take a look at his file card and whoa that is a lot of text. They reduced the font size to squeeze a lot of text on this file card. Compare that to Short Fuse's file card and this one is about average and you can see that Crane Case's file card just is loaded with a lot more text than your average GI Joe file card. This file card was printed on the back of the box that the awestriker came in. There's nothing on the other side, it was just the back of a box. You are encouraged to cut this out and keep it because it had a short biography of the action figure. His portrait is from the art on the front of the box that the awestriker came in and that looks pretty good. It says up here awestriker driver codename Crane Case, file name Elwood G. Indiana, primary military specialty motor vehicle driver which means he has a driver's license so good for you, secondary military specialty armor, birthplace Lawrence Kansas and hey I've been to Lawrence Kansas, that's a pretty cool town. Great is E4. Okay, let's get to this mass of text. Chapter 1. There are several ways to get from one place to another in Kansas and driving fast is most of them. Crane Case was racing street machines when he was 16. You know what his background is actually not that dissimilar from Clutch who was the driver of the vamp. This is no great feat since he had been building them from the time he was 13. He worked the stock car circuit for years until the boredom hit him like a brick wall. A recruiting sergeant with a crooked smile signed him up for a burst of four with promises of speed and glory. Crane Case attended ranger school and desert warfare school and attended the special air service tactical driving school under the NATO exchange program. And that I think explains why he has a british patch on his shoulder. The special air service is the british SAS and he may have picked up this patch during his service in britain. I have no idea if the SAS actually has a tactical driving school but it sounds really cool and I hope that they do. I assume that James Bond trained there. Qualified Expert M16, M1911A1, M60 and TOE. Chapter 2. This quote down here says, ever get irritable when you're standing in a line that just doesn't seem to be moving at all. Well the whole seems to be m- the whole, the h- hold on, there's a word missing here. This is another typo. This doesn't make any sense the way that it's written. This is the fourth typo that I've found on GI Joe file cards doing these reviews. I think this is supposed to say, the whole world seems. It makes sense if you read it that way. Well the whole world seems to be moving in slow motion to Crane Case all the time. That's why he's constantly ticked off. He's just not happy unless he has a wheel in one hand, a shifter in the other, and the wind in his face. I really like the image of Crane Case that is painted by the file card. So let's put Crane Case in his natural environment. He's going to have one hand on the wheel, the other hand on the shifter, and the wind in his face. That was my review of the 1985 AWW Stryker. I hope you liked this video and if you're thinking of getting an AWW Stryker I hope you found this video informative. If you liked this video, go ahead and give it a thumbs up on YouTube. And don't forget to subscribe. I've got a lot of great new GI Joe toy and comic book reviews coming up. And don't forget, if there's a GI Joe toy that you would like for me to review, go ahead and leave a comment on this YouTube video and I will get to it as soon as I can. For my next review video we're going to look at a GI Joe item that's somewhat rare. I'm very excited about it, but it's a surprise. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I will give you a little hint.