 commander 788 here and it's another midweek full review and this time I am looking at the GI Joe missile defense unit from 1984. This missile defense unit was available in 1984 and 1985 and was available again in 1988 for mail order. There were three of these battlefield accessory sets released in 1984. There was the machine gun defense unit, the missile defense unit and the mortar defense unit. You could consider these to be play sets but they are not integrated sets. They are really just a bunch of pieces that you can arrange and mix and match any way you want. Let's look at the parts of the missile defense unit. It came with two figure stands and gray plastic. The same color gray plastic as the rest of the set. This is all made of the same color plastic. It was nice to get these figure stands because GI Joe figures in the 1980s did not come with figure stands. The only way you could get them was in the battle gear accessory packs or in these battlefield accessory sets. You can use these figure stands to set your action figures up in the play set and make a nice diorama. It came with a crate with a lid that ominously says explosive devices and you could use this crate to store the missiles. The lid does fit on there very well. Then you had the missiles themselves and you had three of them and they were gray missiles but they had these stickers on them these red stripes and I really think that little touch of color adds a lot to these missiles and the missiles can fit one at a time in the missile launcher. The missiles fit very loosely in the launcher. They don't clip in or peg in or anything and they do just kind of rattle around in there. Then we have probably the most important part the missile launcher itself and this missile launcher is very simple. It doesn't pivot. It doesn't elevate. It is fixed in this position. It's made of two parts the launcher and the base and it's really pretty stationary, pretty static missile launcher. The missile launcher includes some detail and on both sides it has these odd sticker control panels and really they just kind of look out of place. In fact they are out of place. The control panel stickers that came with the missile defense unit were recycled from other GI Joe toys. The one on this side with the crosshairs and the airplane on it is reused from the 1982 GI Joe flak. Although they did change it just a little bit it is otherwise really very very similar. The control panel on this side was reused from the 1983 GI Joe Dragonfly helicopter. The next part is this sign which says ammunition depot and it has an arrow pointing that way. Now this is a very basic sign. There's not much to it just a single solid piece of plastic with a sticker on it. But these signs were some of the best parts of these battlefield accessory sets because you could put these signs anywhere you can move them you can set them up you don't have to keep it with the set. So these signs were very useful in setting up diorama displays or just setting up some kind of an action scene or a base for your GI Joe's. Finally we get to the largest part the brick wall and this brick wall was in two pieces the long piece and the short piece and they fit together at a right angle so they would stand up very well. You could pull them apart and on the flip side they're kind of hollow really minimal detail on the other side. There's a variant for this wall and this is it. This variant is essentially the same wall it's constructed the same way but the detail is different. In addition to having the brick pattern it has a bunch of like bullet holes in it and cracks in it. It has more detail a little bit more texture and I think it looks a bit more realistic. Here are the two walls together for comparison and as you can see this variant brick wall in addition to the other detail it also has grooves at the top here and the spaces between the bricks are sculpted a bit deeper. Neither the standard brick wall nor the variant are very difficult to find. I didn't have any trouble finding either of them but I do have a preference for the variant. I just think those extra little sculpted bits on it just make it look much nicer. Of course if you have multiple brick walls you can kind of arrange them together so you can have a larger diorama. You can have a GI Joe figure like grunt manning the missile defense unit and that looks perfectly fine. However, consider this. Cobra did not get very many of these battlefield accessories. In fact in 1984 a cobra didn't get any of these battlefield accessory sets. There's nothing about this set that says it has to be used by GI Joe. There are no GI Joe markings on it so this would make a great set for your cobra action figures. Cobra had its own missile specialist in 1984 scrap iron and I like scrap iron with this set. You could easily imagine scrap iron defending this position against multiple GI Joe armored assaults bringing to bear his own double missile launcher with the missile defense unit. But if there's anything that doesn't fit about this it's the colors. I don't think scrap irons colors go well with this set. However, fireflies colors go very well with this set so you can have firefly laying down some cover fire from behind that brick wall and I really think that looks awesome. In fact I really kind of imagine this as a cobra set instead of a GI Joe set. That was my full review of the 1984 GI Joe missile defense unit. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did make sure you subscribe and check back for more full GI Joe tour reviews. I've got another one coming up soon. You don't want to miss it. Thanks for watching and until next time remember only GI Joe is GI Joe.