 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and this time I'm bringing you something completely new. I'm introducing a new segment called Can It Fly? I am the only vintage GI Joe toy reviewer who dares to ask the question were GI Joe toy aircraft designed aerodynamically to stay aloft? And we'll start out by testing the 1984 Cobra Rattler. So let's give it a try shall we? Okay are you ready? Are you psyched? Here we go. Okay I'm not gonna throw it. How about I just review it instead? Welcome to my backyard I am enjoying a little bit of Yo-Yo Cola and I'm going to review the 1984 Cobra Rattler. I'll probably have to do a lot of this in voiceover because my neighborhood can tend to be a little bit noisy. This is the Cobra Rattler or as it might be called in the GI Joe comic book universe the Cobra Rattler. The Cobra Rattler was introduced in 1984 it was also sold in 1985 it was discontinued in 1986 when it was replaced by the Cobra Knight Raven. The Cobra Rattler was loosely based on the real world jet the A10 Thunderbolt 2 also known as the Warthog. The A10 did not have the vertical takeoff and landing capabilities but it's very obvious that the Cobra Rattler borrows a lot from the look of the A10. In fact the first comic book appearance of this jet when it was just called the tank smasher looked a whole lot more like the A10 than the actual toy did. The Rattler came with an action figure the pilot wild weasel and I'm gonna take a closer look at the action figure in a moment so I'm going to set him aside for now. Let's look at the parts of the Cobra Rattler and there were a lot of parts to this thing starting with the missiles there's a total of 14 missiles and bombs on this thing. Starting from the center and working outward this one the blueprints referred to as the Loradz Constant Scan Ion Seeking Missile. This one the blueprints call the E0118 electro optical renegade missile and this one actually was a two-stage missile. We can get a better look at the next missiles by tilting the wings up and these missiles the blueprints called the AEA 56 quick thrust short range missile. At the ends of the wings it had these bomb racks that had three bombs and they fit into the wings like the other missiles on this kind of dumbbell peg here and these bomb racks had what the blueprints are referred to as PLMK48 wave sensor cluster bombs. The jet had three engines two on the wings and one in the back these two on the wings were identical and they both featured engine covers which you could take off and you could see some pretty awesome engine detail and these engines themselves were three separate parts there's a part here for the main engine and the front turbine and the back exhaust those are each separate parts. At the top of the fuselage it had a gun turret which could rotate all the way around and the guns could elevate. The blueprints refer to these as twin 40 millimeter multi-fire cannons. Now this gun turret is kind of the type of turret that you would see on a World War II era bomber but these defensive turrets like this were actually phased out in World War II they were kind of impractical and I'm not sure if these would even really have a practical application on a modern military jet. The turret has a canopy that is made of clear plastic and unfortunately this clear plastic does tend to break and unfortunately mine has a broken off tab here so it doesn't lift the way that it should. Here in the front there is a pilot canopy and the pilot canopy is actually two parts this part swings up on this hinge here so you get the pilot in and out and but you could also squeeze this front part together and kind of pull that out and separate that. Unfortunately mine is slightly warped so it doesn't stay in perfectly. I actually have a little touch of sticky tack to help hold that in. The Rattler had a couple panels on the sides of the fuselage like this one here the square one and that covers up some detail there actually pre popped this out I didn't do that on camera because this fits in so solidly that actually have a hard time getting the thing out. The other panel was on the side at the back here that one comes out much more easily and you can see some detail there. In addition to the side panels the Rattler came with a couple of battle damage panels like this one and you just pop those in the same place as the side panels and it looks like the Rattler has taken some battle damage during a firefight. Here's where I have to confess I am missing one part on this Rattler. I do not have the battle damage panel for this side. I'm actually not a big fan of these battle damage panels. When I was a kid I really didn't have a problem imagining any kind of battle damage that my toy airplane would sustain and so these battle damage panels would never get used and it's just another thing to get lost. Let's take a look at the features of the Rattler and it had on the front here a very prominent chen gun that the blueprints referred to as a Keri CDV 98 jawbreaker nose cannon and I think this is heavily influenced by the real world M61 Vulcan cannon. If you ran your thumb along the ridge portion here you could spin the cannon and pretend that it was firing. These two parts on the insides of the wings here are supposed to be search lights. The Rattler is a V-tall jet that's VTOL vertical takeoff and landing and it is a tilt wing design. You tilt the wings up like that and the jets are facing downward so the aircraft can take off vertically. This tilt wing design was used in some real-world aircraft. It was used in the Hiller X-18 aircraft but usually the tilt wing design was used for propeller driven aircraft and not jet aircraft. I have noticed that this side of the tail fin tends to get white plastic stress marks and I think the reason for that is that for kids if you're right-handed the most natural way to hold this when you play with it is by the fuselage and if you're right-handed your arm is naturally going to put pressure on this right tail fin. So if you're looking to pick up a Cobra Rattler and you want to make sure that it's in great condition take a look at this side of the tail fin and see if it has some white plastic stress there. Now we come to the scariest part of the toy and that is of course the landing gear. This landing gear tends to be extremely fragile and you see a lot of Cobra Rattlers with the landing gear broken off. If you take a look at how the landing gear are designed you can see why they would break. I mean they're connected with one little piece of plastic and that's just not going to be sturdy enough. I'm going to demonstrate how to retract and lower the landing gear and this always makes me nervous. I'm worried that I'm going to break the toy so I'm going to do this only once and so you get one demonstration of the landing gear and that's it. So savor the moment it's not going to happen again. To retract them and the back ones you just push them in to close and likewise with the front one and unfortunately the front one requires a bit more force to get it up. To lower the landing gear you just reverse the process and again it takes some force to snap them down in the place and that's going to put even more stress on the very thin piece of plastic holding these landing gear together. So if you have a rattler and you're playing around with the landing gear be extremely cautious. Even when you get these back landing gear down they do kind of snap into place but they don't stay very well so they tend to sort of lean inward like this. Let's look at the cockpit detail and we can take both pieces out of the way here so we can look inside and you can see a little bit of sculpted in detail. Not a lot. No stickers for instrument panels just a little bit of sculpted detail. On the side here and on the wings it has this winged cobra symbol which the blueprints referred to as cobra airborne insignia and I really like this. For some reason when people see this they think it looks really strange. It's like a cobra symbol with bat wings. In fact when I first showed my kids this toy they ignored all the cool features and the wings and the bombs and everything and looked right at that and said hey why does the cobra symbol have wings. I actually think this is a pretty cool symbol for the Cobra Air Corps and I think that it would have been great if it were put on all cobra aircraft but as far as I know this symbol was only used for one other cobra aircraft and that was the 1985 Cobra Firebat. Let's take a look at the action figure and probably the first thing you notice is that he is very red much like the 1983 Cobra His Tank Driver. Like the Cobra His Tank Driver I think he was colored red to provide a contrast between the action figure and the darker colored vehicle. Wild Weasel came with no accessories which is fine with me. I don't think that the vehicle drivers and pilots necessarily need a lot of accessories. Let's look at the articulation on Wild Weasel and he had the typical articulation for 1984 GI Joe action figures which meant that he could move his head from side to side like that. His arm he could swing up about that far and he could rotate it all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move his arm about 90 degrees at the elbow and he had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around. The figure was held together with an O-ring that looped around the inside of it and allowed him to move at the torso a little bit. He could move his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. On the leg of his flight suit he has some maps and charts and that actually is a feature on some fighter pilot flight suits. On his head he has a very large helmet and mask and huge black goggles. He has a blue scarf and he has black straps which look like they should go to a parachute but he did not come with a parachute and the Cobra Rattler did not come with a parachute which I think is unfortunate because the G.I. Joe Jet, the sky striker, did come with parachutes. He has some very prominent pouches on his chest. On his arm he has a silver Cobra symbol and beware of this silver paint. Any silver or gold metallic paint that you see on G.I. Joe action figures rubs off very easily. On his right leg he has a black pistol and on his left leg he has a black knife and as you can see his flight suit comes down over his boots. Let's take a look at the file card. Now this file card was printed on the back of the box that the toy came in and you were intended to cut this out. On the other side there's nothing it was just the back of the box and one thing that you notice from this file card is that Wild Weasel is an individual. He is not an army builder like the Cobra his tank driver but Cobra would have a lot of Rattler jets because Cobra is an army so that raises the question what do other Cobra Rattler pilots wear? Do they wear the same uniform that Wild Weasel wears and if they do how do you differentiate Wild Weasel from the others? Here it says Cobra Rattler pilot codename Wild Weasel. File name classified military specialty ground support pilot and that indicates to me that the Cobra Rattler is intended to be an anti-tank or anti-personnel aircraft. Birthplace classified and this section says Wild Weasel cut his teeth in the bus wars. That is another typo that's supposed to say bush wars. There are actually a lot of typos in these GI Joe file cards. This is the third typo that I've run into just doing these video reviews. Ignoring the typo it says Wild Weasel cut his teeth in the bush wars of South America and Africa during the last decade. His knowledge of close support aircraft ranges from jury rigged civilian conversions to ultra state-of-the-art flying weapons platforms and this kind of makes Wild Weasel out to be a mercenary pilot. A mouth injury inflicted during a strafing run is rumored to be the cause of the characteristic sibilance in his speech pattern. Now I looked up the word sibilance and it basically just means making an S or an SH sound. So what this is trying to say is that when Wild Weasel speaks he hisses. This bottom section is a quote from Wild Bill. Wild Bill says of Wild Weasel he may be a back shooting lowdown snake in the grass but the boy can fly like nobody's business. You got to respect the skunk for that. Hey what did Voltaire say? To forgive our enemies their virtues that is the greater miracle. The comic book writer Larry Hama was writing these file cards at the time and I appreciate the fact that he put this Voltaire quote in there. Hopefully that prompted some kids to look up Voltaire and find out who he was. That was my review of the 1984 Cobra Rattler and its pilot Wild Weasel and his file card. Thanks for tolerating my noisy backyard. If you liked this video make sure you give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe because I've got a lot of great new GI Joe toy and comic book reviews coming up and you do not want to miss them. Thanks for watching and I'll catch you all later.