 This is the Phantom X-19, G.I. Joe's stealth fighter and the pilot ghost rider. This vehicle and figure set were first available in 1988 and were also available in 1989. They were discontinued for 1990. They were only available together. They were never sold separately. There were no other versions of the Phantom and Ghost Rider in the vintage era. There was a modern version of Ghost Rider that was part of the G.I. Joe Collectors Club figure subscription service in 2018. It didn't use the Ghost Rider code name. It used the character's file name. Stealth doesn't mean the jet is literally invisible. It has a very small radar profile, so it is nearly indetectable to electronic surveillance. The Phantom was in a series of large G.I. Joe aircraft that started in 1983 with the Sky Striker. The Phantom is significantly longer than the Sky Striker. Cobra got its own large jet in 1986 with the Night Raven. The Night Raven is very slightly longer than the Phantom. There were a few smaller jets in between, like the Conquest in 1986 and the Cobra Rattler in 1984, but the Phantom is in a larger class with a higher price point. A lot of G.I. Joe jets borrowed from real experimental jets and used the experimental X designation, the Sky Striker XP-14F, the Conquest X-30, and the Phantom X-19. Unlike the other experimental G.I. Joe jets, the Phantom was very different from the real Stealth Fighter. The designers at Hasbro wouldn't have known that, though, because the real Stealth Fighter wasn't made public until November 1988, shortly after the toy was released. We will look at the pilot Ghost Rider, but I'm going to set him aside for now, so we can take a closer look at the Phantom. The Phantom was sort of based on a sort of fictional aircraft, the F-19, which was a popular speculation about what the actual Stealth Fighter, the Lockheed F-117, would look like. The real Stealth Fighter design was secret, so there were a lot of guesses about it in aviation circles. Testor released a model kit called F-19 Stealth Fighter in 1986, which popularized this teardrop shape for the supposed Stealth Fighter. Other media picked up the design and modified it. In the Tom Clancy novel Red Storm Rising, there was a plane called the F-19A Ghost Rider. The G.I. Joe Phantom and the pilot Ghost Rider borrowed liberally from all of those sources. The Phantom was designed for Hasbro by Bill Young, and early concept drawings look even more like the images of the fictional F-19 in popular media. I have the box for the X-19, which is nice because I don't normally get boxes. We can see how this toy was marketed. The box is long, tall, but pretty narrow. It's not very deep. It has this huge G.I. Joe logo that streaks all the way across the top. It is the Phantom X-19 Stealth Fighter. It has some gorgeous artwork showing off the vehicle, and in this corner it has a photo of the Ghost Rider action figure included. Looks like this one was $12.97 at Hills, which is a great bargain. Inflation, man. Inflation. The box has full color printing on the front and the bottom, with some photos of the prototype vehicle showing off some of the features. The top, sides, and back of the box all have two color printing with black and red on a white background. On the back of the box there's a diagram of the toy describing some of the features, including super realistic detail. Wings slide out to reveal pop-up automatic laser machine guns and retractable landing gear. The Phantom was worth five flag points which were redeemable for special mail away offers. Let's take a look at the parts and the features of the Phantom starting in the front, and in the very front we have a rubber nose tip. We have a black plastic canopy frame with a translucent blue canopy. It has Ghost Rider on it. In two words, the action figure's code name is one word. This isn't the only place on the Phantom where it has Ghost Rider as two words, and it makes me think maybe they originally intended this to be the name of the vehicle. On the reverse side he has some Cobra kill marks. Looks like he's shot down seven Cobras. This canopy does open up to reveal a cockpit but not by flipping up, but by sliding forward, and this is a delicate operation. You have to very carefully slide this canopy forward. It pops off very easily, way too easily in my opinion. The canopy slides forward on these silver plastic rails, and these are a problem. The canopy frame clips onto knobs on the rails, and they do not clip on securely. You're much more likely to pop the thing off than to successfully slide it forward. Inside the cockpit there are some nice details which are difficult to show you. This is a two-seater cockpit. Each of the two seats has a black seat belt. These were common on vehicles of this era. They're really difficult to use though, so I don't use them. You can fit Ghost Rider in the pilot seat in a reclined position. He does not fit in very securely without that seat belt unfortunately. In the co-pilot seat you can fit any other figure, well I guess not any other figure. You can fit any other normal GI Joe figure in the co-pilot seat again in a reclined position. There is a space for this figure's legs so he fits in a little more securely than the pilot. You can close the canopy carefully and both figures will easily fit inside. The main body of the Phantom is in grey plastic. It has a huge crescent shaped intake vent amidst ships. There is some bright yellow green plastic on the inside. I have no idea if this would work on a real jet, but it looks cool. On each side we have the Phantom Library which is a skull wearing a top hat, a bow tie. He has lightning bolts behind him and a pair of dice. That looks really nice. On top of the jet on each side we have two bright yellow green missiles. They are both the same and unlike most GI Joe missiles they don't have a dumbbell shaped peg. You just wedge one of the back fins into one of these slots on the fuselage to hold the missiles on. Moving further back we have these black vents and airbrake. This piece is articulated and will tilt up and under that there is some engine detail. On each side there are curved black fins with the GI Joe logo. Then we have these black extending wing pieces. These wing pieces are in black plastic. They have vents. They have a sticker with X-19 Ghost Rider again in two words and they have that Phantom emblem this time in white. In front of the wings on each side it has this silver plastic laser gun. It looks really cool. These wing pieces are another weak point on this vehicle. They will slide out but you have to be very careful because they will very easily pop off. Slide the wing out and when you slide it out far enough it will pop up this hidden yellow green laser gun. It has the same on both sides and these pieces are really annoying. The wing will just keep sliding out until it comes completely off. This laser gun can also come off very easily. This is a nice little piece of engineering but the plastic needed to be much more sturdy in order for it to work well. At the very back it has three silver squared off angled jet exhaust. This looks really cool. I love this design. These jet exhaust pieces are linked to the landing gear mechanism which we will look at in a moment. If you move the landing gear mechanism forward these jets will slide in. This is not quite as cool as the Skystriker's sweep wing mechanism but it's still not bad. It is time to turn the Phantom X-19 over and look at the underside because there are more features here. The underside of the Phantom is in grey plastic like the top side. It has some molded in technical detail and panel lines. The most important part of the underside is the landing gear. You have one front and two back landing gear. On each they have four wheels and those are rubber wheels. That's very nice. I like that a lot. The front landing gear and the back landing gear have black doors to seal them up when the jet is in flight mode. At the very back of the jet there is a lever that activates the landing gear. This one is hinged at the back and pulls down. There is a variation of this lever that pulls straight back. I did have an example of that variant but in my move I seem to have misplaced it so this is the only one I have to show you right now. When the lever is down the landing gear are deployed and the jets that we saw on the top are extended. To pull them in just press this lever forward. Here is how it works. Lever forward and landing gear up. When the landing gear is down there is very little clearance for that lever. On the underside there are two missiles. These are very unique. They slide into these slots. The missile itself is in black plastic but it has a bright yellow green wing piece that swings to deploy the wings when the missile is launched. So now you have a winged missile. The blueprints call these bullseye to computer aided low altitude terrain hugging missiles. There are two of these missiles and they are the same. Now let's look at Ghost Rider the pilot of the Phantom X-19. I know there's a running gag that nobody can remember Ghost Rider's name but that was just created to avoid a little legal trouble with Marvel. I don't think I need to worry about that. I hope I don't need to worry about that. Marvel please don't sue me. Ghost Rider was designed by Mark Pennington for Hasbro. Ron Rudat is known for designing a lot of the early GI Joe figures but Mark Pennington designed a few memorable characters too. The face for Ghost Rider was modeled after Jeff Jones, a product manager for Hasbro. The alternative prototype names for Ghost Striker included Ghost Wing, Blipless, No Show, Silent Night with a K, Slink and Wraith Wing. The final Ghost Rider name was likely taken from the Tom Clancy book and Ghost Rider is just a better name than those alternatives. I'm glad they went with that one. Let's take a look at Ghost Rider's accessory. He included only one. I'm not going to take it off because it'll be too much of a pain to get back on. It is this red soft goods cloth cape that is tied around his neck. This is often missing. This is a throwback to the early days of combat aviators. It's a nice touch and it adds a bit of color and dimension to the figure. Let's take a look at Ghost Rider's articulation. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures by 1988. 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 that allowed him to bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep that allowed him to swivel his arm all the way around. This was an o-ring figure, meaning 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 move 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 sculpted design and color of Ghost Rider starting with his head and on his head he has a silver sculpted on helmet. It is not removable. It has really nice details though. He has green goggles on the helmet, not over his eyes. This one has a little scuff on it. He has a Caucasian face with brown eyebrows and eyes and again this face is modeled after Jeff Jones, a Hasbro employee. It was a common thing starting in the mid-1980s to use Hasbro employees as models for G.I. Joe figure faces. Early concept art and sculpting sheets suggest the helmet was supposed to be a removable accessory but on the production figure it is just molded on. On the chest he has a black jacket with an open front revealing a gray shirt with some extra detailing and this black microphone attached to his chest. That's a nice detail but for a fighter pilot I think an oxygen mask would have been more appropriate. His arms feature long black sleeves and black gloves. There are no paint applications on the arms. The waist piece is in a light gray that's a lighter shade of gray than the shirt on the top half of the figure so I guess this is not supposed to be a pilot's flight jumpsuit. He has a dark brown belt on a diagonal that connects to the pistol holster on his left leg. We'll look at that in a moment. He has a silver belt buckle with an eagle head sculpted on it. The legs are in light gray plastic. On the right leg there is a pocket and on the right leg there is a green map that has the shape of the state of Ohio on it and it is targeting the headquarters of rival toy company Kenner in Cincinnati Ohio. On the left leg he has a brown pistol and a brown holster. It looks like a cowboy's six shooter and the handle is facing forward to be drawn with the right hand. We finish with some tall black boots and each boot has a pocket on the outside leg. This figure has similar details to another 1988 pilot figure Windmill the pilot of the Skystorm but in drastically different colors. Let's take a look at Ghost Rider's file card. His file card was not printed on the vehicle box. It was an insert with the figure. It has his faction as GI Joe. It has a portrait of Ghost Rider. His codename is Ghost Rider all one word not two words like on the stickers on the jet. He is the GI Joe Phantom X-19 stealth fighter pilot. File name Jonas F. Jeffries primary military specialty stealth fighter pilot secondary military specialty aeronautical engineer birthplace is Chicago Illinois grade is 04 presumably Air Force he would be a major. This paragraph says stealth isn't simply a matter of technology. It's a state of mind. It isn't enough to wrap yourself in a blended wing polymer composite airframe with shielded air inlets and vectored nozzles all covered with black iron ball radar absorbent paint. True stealth means having the nerve to fly nap of the earth at high speeds without activating electronic sensors or guidance systems that might tip off enemy radar. It is ridiculous to fly such an aircraft at low altitude because it was designed by engineers whose priorities centered on radar invisibility rather than structural integrity and maneuverability. That doesn't seem to bother Ghost Rider. This paragraph has a quote. It says Ghost Rider was working on not getting noticed since the second grade. He may have been the only person to make it through the Chicago public school system without ever cleaning an eraser or washing a blackboard. Teachers never noticed him not because he was dull or lackluster but because he consciously worked on not being noticed. That's how he is in the cockpit of a stealth fighter. He is willing himself to be invisible. Seems like this guy has some psychological issues. How bad was his home life that he felt the need to go completely unnoticed at school? Looking at how the Phantom and Ghost Rider were used in GI Joe media, the Phantom was animated for commercials and a very brief appearance in the Deke animated series. Ghost Rider was not animated at all. In the GI Joe comic book published by Marvel Comics, both the Phantom and Ghost Rider first appeared in issue number 76 in the Cobra Civil War story arc. Ghost Rider took out the radar system on Cobra Island. This was the beginning of the gag that no one could remember Ghost Rider's name. GI Joe was published by Marvel Comics but Marvel Comics already had a character called Ghost Rider. To avoid confusion, the character's name was not used in the comic book. The Phantom and Ghost Rider were in issue number 80 and the Phantom was on the cover. They were also in issue number 115 in the Benzene War story arc. They also appeared in issues number 119 and 132 and they had a couple appearances in the GI Joe Special Missions series.