 This episode of HCC 788 brought to you in part by the Dicast Enterprise. Join us each week as we discuss the sexual proclivities of Commander William T. Riker. The bravado comedy of Lieutenant War. And the adorable monkey shines if one Wesley the sweater crusher. Or maybe we'll just talk about the golden girls. Or hairstyles. Or cartoons. That's equally likely. We also like G.I. Joe. There, we tied that in nicely. Well done everyone on that. By all our play sets and toys. The Super Bowl was two weeks ago. You can take that jersey off now. Okay. Ready. Ready. Ready. Silence. Kill. The Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here is time for another vintage G.I. Joe Toyer review. And this review is brought to you by Mike Stafford, who also goes by GX Bouncer. Mike sent this vehicle to me along with another one months ago and has been waiting very patiently for me to get to it. This one's also a little bit special because if memory serves me right, this is the first 90's vehicle that I've ever done a full review on. The normal rule on this channel is that I review one vehicle a month. But this is a small vehicle, so I thought, why not do this one in place of an action figure? It's also another helicopter, so we almost have a theme month going on here with the helicopters. The Locust is a small vehicle. It's not big and spectacular like the Terror Drone. It's not even one of the larger vehicles with tons of features like the Dragonfly. But I do not want to neglect these small vehicles. Not every kid could get the big vehicles. Some kids only got the small ones. So these small vehicles are still tied up with childhood memories. So I want to make sure they get the spotlight. HCC 788 with the contribution of GX Bouncer presents the 1990 Locust. This is the G.I. Joe Locust from 1990. This vehicle was only available in 1990 and was discontinued for the year 1991. The short shelf run is unfortunate because this would be a good army builder vehicle with a low price point. It did not include a pilot action figure. The description for this vehicle on the box was a bomb dropping assault copter. The same vehicle was released the same year with different colors. It was a sub vehicle included with the 1990 Mobile Strike Headquarters the General. I will review that variation of this vehicle when I review the General. I'm not quite ready to do that yet. The name Locust was given to another helicopter from the year 2000. But that helicopter was a re-release of the Dragonfly. Is the Locust based on a real helicopter? Not exactly. But small helicopters about the size of the Locust do exist. And some have even been used for military purposes. For example, the Hiller OK-23 Raven was a helicopter not much bigger than the Locust. It had a small bubble cockpit. A variant of that helicopter, the Hiller UH-12A had a sloping canopy similar to the Locust. The Locust is much smaller than the GI Joe helicopters that preceded it. The 1983 Dragonfly and the 1986 Tomahawk are both much larger. It is closer in size to the Cobra Fang from 1983. In fact, the Fang would be a better match against the Locust than the Dragonfly or the Tomahawk. GI Joe had a size advantage in the air in those early days. The Locust is much smaller than the Cobra helicopter from 1987, the Mamba. In fact, if you're going to go up against the Mamba, you're going to want either a fleet of Locusts or something larger like the Dragonfly or the Tomahawk. There was a comparable Cobra helicopter on the shelves at the same time as the Locust. The Cobra Fang 2 was introduced in 1989 and was also available in 1990, the year the Locust was introduced. For a comparable earlier GI Joe vehicle, it is very close in size to the 1984 Skyhawk. Even with its small size, the Locust is more substantial than the GI Joe and Cobra battle copters from 1991 and 1992. The Locust is small and shaped a little like an American football. It's wider in the center and narrower on the ends. For colors, it has a dull brown for the body, grayish silver attachments and a blue canopy. When it was packaged with the General, it was green and yellow. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Locust up here on top. We have some black rotor blades with some hazard stickers and these do spin freely. There's no action feature to spin them automatically. They do spin pretty well though. There is a canopy made of clear blue plastic with a prominent GI Joe logo across the front. It's hinged at the back, so it pops open from the front and then you can take a look at the interior detail. Inside the cockpit, we have a molded-in instrument panel with some nice details. On the one hand, it's nice to have an instrument panel that isn't just a sticker. On the other hand, since it doesn't have any stickers on it, it's just one solid color, the same color as the body. There is a seat clip attached to the pilot seat. This is used as a seat belt. These started popping up in 90s vehicles to secure figures in the seats. They were used instead of traditional back pegs. For instance, the Dragonfly has a backpack on its pilot seat. This has a seat clip. I would prefer a backpack. I don't like these clips. They can be tight, making it difficult to get the figure in and out. Other than the main instrument panel, on the inside of the cockpit, there are some additional molded-in instruments, and that looks really good. On the underside, there is a blue bubble window at the pilot's feet. This would be helpful in spotting targets on the ground. The main armament on this helicopter consists of two large guns attached to the sides. The blueprints call these dual side-mounted armor-shattering machine guns, and they can move up and down. In fact, they can move all the way around to the back. They can't quite move 360 degrees because they run into the landing skids, but still a good range of motion on those. One downside to these cannons is the connection to the body of the helicopter can wear down, and they can become floppy. We have the landing skids with a platform and a foot peg on each side, and those foot pegs look a little thick, but you can safely put a figure on them. So you can have a couple figures riding alongside. We have more weapons. We have a couple missiles, one on each side. They attach with a standard dumbbell-shaped peg and slot, and the blueprints call these heat-seeking, low-noise, air-to-air missiles. These are futuristic-looking missiles. The locust came with four of them, but only two of them are missiles. The other two served a different purpose. On the underside, we have a bomb bay door, and this will drop a couple bombs when it's opened. You open it by pulling back on the tab, and a couple bombs will fall out. The two bombs are, in fact, just two more of the missiles. Now, I do like this feature, but this is a little lazy. The bomb dropping feature is exceedingly simple. You just open up the bomb bay door, and there's a cavity in there, and you just slide these missiles or bombs, whatever you want to pretend that they are, into that cavity, and you just close it up, then whatever you want to, you just pull back on the tab and drop them. The bomb dropping feature could have been improved in a couple ways. First of all, give us a way to drop one bomb at a time, instead of both at the same time. And second, give us actual bombs, rather than just doubling up on the missiles. Moving back, we have engine detail. Excellent engine detail, I think. This is really well done. I'm no engineer, but this looks like it's probably about the right size engine for a helicopter of this size. Next, we have the rear rotor, which is in a housing that has a sports car spoiler-like stabilizer, and that will turn. This is another part that can kind of wear down and become very loose over time, so do watch out for that. The rear rotor looks a bit like a turbine. It is not the same on both sides. It's different on each side. But you can turn the knob on the starboard side to spin the rotor. I don't think this configuration would work in the real world. On real helicopters, you see the rear rotor on the end of a long tail that extends out beyond the reach of the top rotors. On this, I would think that the air vortex caused by the top rotors would interfere with the airflow around the rear rotor, and that would destabilize it. But again, I'm not an engineer, so maybe there is a way to make this work. It just doesn't look like it would work to me. The Locust made some appearances in GI Joe Media. In the cartoon, it appeared a few times in the Deke animated series. It came out too late to show up in the more popular Sunbow animated series. It was sometimes seen in the green and yellow colors, as it appeared when it was packaged with the General. In the GI Joe comic book, it was featured in issue number 105, and it was piloted by Wild Bill. The Locust was able to take out a couple of Destro's Razorbacks, commanded by Darklawn, before it was shot down. Looking at the Locust overall, it is a middle-tier vehicle in its size class. It is very small with limited features. The bomb dropping feature is not bad. It could have been improved, but I still like it. The colors are good. The brownish color is subdued, and the blue canopy gives it the pop of color that it needs without going overboard. Considering how crazy the 1990s got with colors, I feel like I need to praise a 90s vehicle just for being sane. This is an easy vehicle to army build, and it's a true GI Joe army builder vehicle. We normally think of Cobra vehicles as the ones we want an army of, but you could get a bunch of Locusts and any Joe could fly it. If you have a figure that's missing his accessories, you could just pop him in the pilot seat of the Locust. The biggest drawbacks on the Locusts, the seat clip, I don't like those, the guns tend to get loose and droop, same with the tail rotor. Even so, the vehicle is pretty sturdy. There aren't a lot of easily broken parts on it. The missiles or bombs can go missing, so you might have to track those down. But there aren't a lot of parts on this vehicle, so there's not much to lose or break. I would get you. Are you still mad that I didn't let you fly the dragonfly? You always get to fly the helicopter. It was my turn. Alright, you got to fly the helicopter this week, and if it really bothers you that much, I'll be Ernest Borknine. But if I'm gonna be Ernest Borknine, then I want to be... Mermaid Man! That means you get to be... No, Ergal Boy. I'm not gonna be Tim Conway again. Do I look like Tim Conway? Do I look bald? You always do this. I always have to be Tim Conway. I had to be Tim Conway in Rapid Eyes, and when we re-enacted the Carol Burnett show, you got to be Carol Burnett. I always have to be the sidekick. I had to be Robin, I had to be Tonto, I had to be Chewbacca, I had to be Bernie Fine. That was my review of the locust. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, do a few things for me. First, make sure you give this video a thumbs up on YouTube and subscribe to the YouTube channel, like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, and share this video. That's what helps this channel grow. If you support the channel on Patreon for some special perks, the support of Patrons helps improve the quality of these videos. Visit the website, HCC788.com, to see this review and all my other GI Joe reviews, and to order some cool stuff like an HCC788 t-shirt. Thanks for watching. I'll be back next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review, and until then, remember, only GI Joe is GI Joe. Here comes the deadly Cobra Piranha with Undertow. Cobra Piranha's got depth charges. GI Joe Locust. He'll fry those fish. The Locust has twin machine guns. Drop the bombs! Tough it up for ya, Cobra. The Joe Locust sold separately. Now collect Joe and Cobra Command Rings, free in special packages. I don't know. Hold on. It's rolling. Let me let the dog in. Okay. I had to be Tim Conn, my in private eyes. When we re-enacted the Carol Burnett show, you had... Continuous. You got to be Carol Burnett. You got to be Carol. And you're free.