 Ever since G.I. Joe's bazooka soldier, Zap, was introduced in 1982, fans have been puzzled by one thing. Why does he have a mustache in the picture, but not on the figure? In recent years, new information has come to light, and one person deserves a lot of credit for it. Dan Kleansmith has managed to find some unreleased items that have given us a behind-the-scenes look at the production of G.I. Joe toys. He's been publishing a book series called Three and Three Quarter Inch Joe, and these books are fantastic. The books are loaded with information and photos and concept drawings that were used to produce some of our favorite toys. I can't recommend these books enough. You should pick them up. Dan has a website where you can order these books, www.334inchjo.com. A link will be in the description of this video. He gave me permission to use his photos in this video. Thanks to Dan, we can finally see Zap with his mustache, as he was always meant to be. And this is a special episode and a special vintage G.I. Joe toy review. This is the last episode before Joe Khan. I will not have a new review next week. I will be at the convention, and I hope to see you there too. We're looking at Zap, G.I. Joe's bazooka soldier. This is the last 1982 figure to be reviewed. That's right. We've looked at all of them. There's a reason I hadn't reviewed Zap before now. It's an extremely difficult figure to complete. Four reasons we will discuss in this video. I have to thank Mike Lopez for helping me get the final piece to get this figure ready for review. Thank you, Mike. You are a superhero. As many of you know, Breaker from 1982 was my first G.I. Joe action figure. I'm pretty sure Zap was my brother's first action figure. I've asked my brother about that. He doesn't remember. My memory is far from perfect, but I'm pretty sure that Zap was one of our first figures. I don't remember playing with it very much. That usually means that it belonged to my brother or it broke. Both may be true. Completing this figure was a collecting milestone for me. It was a special thrill. I still get that thrill from completing certain items that are hard to find. I definitely got that thrill from this figure. It's my privilege to share it with you. HCC788 proudly presents Zap. This is Zap, G.I. Joe's Bazooka soldier from 1982. I have both the 1982 and 1983 releases here. The 1982 release, referred to as version one, was only available in 1982. The figure was updated in 1983 to add new articulation. The 1983 version, referred to as version 1.5, was available in 1983 and 1984. Version 1.5 was released as a mail away offer in 1986 and 1987 as part of the original adventure team set. We have both version 1 and version 1.5 here. The biggest difference between these figures is the articulation. The 1982 release is called straight arm because it did not have swivels on the arms, only hinges at the elbows. The 1983 release did have the swivels on the arms. This was marketed as swivel arm battle grip. The 1983 releases are often referred to as the swivel arm version. The 1983 updates were not significant enough to call them second versions, but they were too significant to just call them variants. So they're referred to as half versions. Collectors call them version 1.5. There was a second version of Zap released in 1991 as part of the supersonic fighters subset. Besides having a drastically different uniform and accessories, the version 2 is sporting a mustache. That requires some explanation. We will talk about that at length when we talk about the figures sculpt. He was one of the original G.I. Joe characters when the line was relaunched in 1982. As with most other figures released that year, he doesn't have any unique parts. They reused a lot of parts that year. We'll talk about that in detail. This figure is notorious among G.I. Joe collectors. It's probably the most fragile figure ever made. This light green plastic was very brittle, even when it was brand new. Few of these figures survived playtime intact. The thumbs in particular are almost always broken. Simply placing the figures accessories in his hand would be enough to break the thumb. A figure with both thumbs intact is exceptional. I was lucky to find this one. Guess what has two thumbs and has two thumbs? This guy. I can't overstate the fragility of this figure. I don't recommend putting the figure on a stand. The heels will crack off. I do not recommend placing the accessories on the figure, except for maybe the helmet. The hands will break. The bazooka and the backpack are made of the same fragile green plastic, so you risk breaking the accessories too. This problem is generally attributed to the light green plastic. The G.I. Joe figures released that year weren't quite as fragile. The medium and dark green figures were pretty sturdy. Other figures made of that light green plastic, like Stalker and Steeler, were also quite fragile. Zap has the worst reputation though. Because of the risk of breaking this figure, I will not be showing the figure holding the accessories. I will place as little pressure on this figure as possible. And when I'm done looking at it, it will go back in a case. The 1983 release doesn't seem to have as many problems with breakage, but I'll be careful with that one too. As a bazooka soldier, Zap was G.I. Joe's first anti-armor specialist. He was eventually replaced in 1985 with the missile specialist codenamed Bazooka. Also in 1985, Footloose came with a law rocket, but he wasn't an anti-armor specialist. Much later in 1990, G.I. Joe got a more beefed up anti-armor specialist, Salvo. Salvo is one of the better remembered figures from the 90s. Contrasting Salvo to Zap, the difference is dramatic. The detail on the figures and the quality and sheer size of the accessories made a lot of progress in eight years. His direct counterpart in Cobra was Scrap Iron from 1984. Scrap Iron wasn't a bazooka soldier, but he was an anti-armor specialist. He also worked primarily for Destro, according to his file card. Instead of a bazooka, he used a big missile launcher to take out tanks. In 1989, Cobra got a bazooka man, the Heat Viper. Unlike Scrap Iron, the Heat Viper was a trooper, and he worked directly for Cobra, not for Destro. The Heat Viper also had some pretty crazy accessories. In 1990, Metalhead was an anti-tank specialist who was a replacement really for Scrap Iron. Metalhead also worked for Destro, though in his media appearances, Metalhead was pretty much a Cobra. A bazooka is a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon. They first saw significant use in World War II. It takes its name from a musical instrument invented by the radio comedian Bob Burns. Early G.I. Joe had some specialties you'd probably recognize. They had a bazooka soldier, a mortar soldier, a machine gunner, an infantry rifleman, and in 1983 they had a minesweeper. Why these particular specialties? Well, if you ever had the small green plastic army men, you know they always included a bazooka soldier, a machine gunner, a mortar soldier, an infantry rifleman, and a minesweeper. You could look at these early Joe's as big versions of those little green army men. The success of the toy line after 1982 meant they could do more with it. They could give us figures with more diverse specialties and styles, and they really did branch out. Zap probably did not get his name from the 1982 movie Zap, starring Scott Beyo. There is an 80% chance he wasn't named after Zap Branigan from Futurama. She's built like a steakhouse, but she handles like a bistro. There is a 75% chance he was not named after Zap Rousedour from Final Sacrifice. Yeah, right. That is a classic Rousedourism. When I reviewed the 1982 mortar soldier Shortfuse, I said Shortfuse could potentially be more difficult to complete than Zap, because not only do you have the straight and swivel arm versions, not only do you have three accessories variants, you also have three file card variants. The difficulty in completing Zap, though, is not in the number of pieces, it's in the difficulty in finding intact pieces. Let's talk about Zap's accessories. There's a lot to talk about here. He came with what the card contents simply called a bazooka. It's made of light green plastic. There are three versions of it. The earliest bazookas had two handles. This one is the hardest to find, and thanks to Mike Lopez for helping me with this one. The bazooka consists of a tube that has some detail on it. It has a sight, and it has a shoulder brace that's represented by this loop here. There are some major problems with this two-handled bazooka. First of all, the straight arm figure couldn't hold both handles anyway, and of course the thumb would break off the first time you put it in his hand. So the weapon was quickly changed to a one-handle design. In addition to removing the second handle, they also reduced the size of the shoulder brace. But this handle was a little bit thick and would also break the thumbs on the figure. So they changed it to the final design, the thin handle bazooka. All of these efforts were made to prevent the figure from breaking, but I don't think any of them worked very well. The problem was not the size of the handle on the accessories. The problem was the fragility of the plastic on the figure. I've heard this bazooka referred to as a Karl Gustaf Recoilis rifle. It has some design elements from the Karl Gustaf. I think it looks more like an M1 bazooka from World War II. The M1 would have been terribly outdated by the early 1980s. Ironically, changes on the M1 reflected the design progression of the GI Joe accessory. The M1 had two grips like Zapp's two-handle bazooka. The later M1A1 had only one grip. These bazookas are often broken. The sight is often broken off. The grips can break. The main body of the bazooka breaks pretty easily too. I have a whole bag of broken bazookas. If you try to complete a Zapp figure, you'll probably end up with a bag like this too. Next we have what the card contents call an ammo pack. It is made of light green plastic just like the bazooka. It has molded in bazooka shells. And that's nice. It's nice to have some coordination between accessories. This is a reissue of the backpack that came with short fuse. Of course, short fuse's backpack being in medium green rather than light green. And since short fuse was a mortar soldier, these shells on his backpack are interpreted as mortar shells. There's a slight variation with this backpack. The peg on the 1982 backpacks were shorter and squared off. The peg on the 1983 release was longer and rounded. The screw holes where the backpack pegged onto the figure was slightly different from 1982 to 1983 as well. So if you swap these backpacks around between the 1982 and 1983 figures, they won't quite fit right. Finally, we have the helmet. This is a standard helmet in light green. It has holes in the side for attachments, but Zapp didn't come with any attachment. This is exactly the same helmet that came with other 1982 figures. In 1982, this helmet came in three colors. Light green, medium green, and dark green. It's considered the standard helmet. It didn't fit every GI Joe head, but it fit most of them. It was released in other colors later. In 1982, this light green helmet came with Zapp and Steeler. Steeler, of course, had an attachment for his. The medium green helmet was issued with breaker, grunt, short fuse, flash, clutch, and hawk. The dark green helmet was issued with rock and roll and grand slam. A word of warning, the color on these helmets seems to fade over time. The original color should pretty closely match the uniform on the figure, but you will run across some helmets that are the right helmet for your figure, but they just look a bit duller. Some of the medium green helmets tend to look more gray to me than green. Just to give you an idea how many times this helmet was reissued and how many different colors you could get it in, in addition to the three colors in 1982, it also came in brown, two different shades of tan, in yellow with wacky tiger stripes. The light green helmet came with and without holes on the sides. It came in kind of a burnt amber color, and we can't forget about Starduster's light blue. Identifying a zap helmet is made more difficult by the fact that other light green helmets were issued later. Duke and 1984 roadblock also came with light green helmets, but the male-awaited Duke and the roadblock figures had helmets that did not have the holes in the sides, so that helps identify them. However, the later carded Duke action figures did have the light green helmets with the holes in the side, so that can look very much like a zap helmet. The helmets you see here do have slightly different colors, but keep in mind these colors can fade over time, so your best bet is to try to find a zap helmet that has not faded and closely matches his uniform color. If you were to throw all these helmets in a box and then try to find the zap helmet, you'd have a pretty hard time identifying it. Let's look at the articulation on zap by demonstrating on short fuse. The standard articulation on these 1982 figures included a swivel at the head, you could swing the arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. It had a hinge at the elbow, so he could bend his arm at the elbow. No swivel at the bicep. The 1983 figures added the swivel at the bicep, so the arm could swivel all the way around. This was advertised as swivel arm battle grip and allowed the figures to hold their weapons with a two-handed grip. These are referred to as the swivel arm versions. These are o-ring figures. They had a rubber o-ring that looped around the inside. That allowed for movement at the torso a bit. They could move their legs apart about so far. They could bend their legs at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of zap. And I have to say right off the bat, zap reuses the entire body of short fuse, his 1982 teammate. Only the color and the head are different, but the head was reused from other figures. So I have to reiterate zap has no original parts. Let's talk about that head. Zap has black hair. This face sculpt has been likened to Sam Donaldson or Michael Ironside. I'll let you make up your own mind about that. The face looks a bit older than some of his other G.I. Joe teammates and he has a bit of a receding hairline. This head was reused for grunt and grand slam. So not even the head is unique. Grunt and grand slam, however, have brown hair instead of black. This reuse of heads is a problem. It makes the 1982 figure lineup look generic. It's hard for them to develop their own personalities when they all look alike. But the more generic heads were used as a cost-cutting measure. There's something that was always a mystery to G.I. Joe fans back in 1982. The figure looked different from the art on the card. On the card, zap had a mustache, but the figure did not. When zap appeared in the comic book series and the cartoon, he had a mustache, but no mustache on the figure. Where is zap's mustache? Thanks to Dan Klingensmith, we have some insider information on zap's missing mustache. Early concept drawings included a mustache. Later drawings removed it. Hasbro executives considered a running change for the 1983 series, which would have included updated heads for the 1982 characters. One update was a change to zap's head. A few rare carded samples of these figures have been found. The new head would have given zap a fuller head of hair, and most importantly, a mustache. Behold the mustache! I'm sorry Hasbro didn't release these figures. I know a lot of kids would have passed on them, but I would have picked them up. I had an affection for those 82 characters, and I always wanted them to look more like they appeared in the comic book. The generic heads always bothered me. Thank you Dan for your contribution to the history of GI Joe. The fan community benefits from it. I encourage everyone to check out his books. Zap's chest is light green with brown straps. Those straps go over his shoulders and under his arms, and then there's a brown strap that goes between them. These are the kind of straps you'd expect to see on a school backpack. He has a ridged collar, almost like a turtleneck collar, that was pretty standard for 1982. The collar on my version 1 zap is chipped. I'm not so much concerned about that because his thumbs are intact, and that's the important thing. His arms feature long, light green sleeves, and he has bright green pockets on his upper arms. Those 82 releases, of course, had the hinge at the elbow. The 83 releases, they added the swivel at the bicep, but that's not the only change. Those bright green pockets, they moved from the side of the arm around to the front, and they added more detail. You might notice the lower arms on the 1983 release is in a slightly different color. They may have changed the plastic to make it sturdier and avoid more breakage of the thumbs. The thumbs, though, on that 82 zap are extraordinary. To see unbroken and unrepaired thumbs on a 1982 zap is rare, so I'm giving you an extra close-up of them. The waist piece on the 82 zap is pretty plain. It has a wide belt, an H-shaped belt buckle, a little pocket there in the back. This was also changed for the 83 version. The 83 waist piece is a bit thinner. The belt is more detailed. Instead of having an H-shaped belt buckle, we have a belt buckle shaped like a house. Both of these waist pieces were pretty standard and used on a lot of other figures. I think these belt buckles are a Hasbro brand stamp. The early belt buckle looks like an H for Hasbro. The later belt buckle looks like a house, and that looks a lot like the old Hasbro logo. The legs are in light green plastic, exactly the same as the rest of the body. He has bright green pockets on each thigh, and he has standard brown boots. These legs were pretty standard. They were reused on breaker, grunt, rock and roll, short fuse, stalker, clutch, hawk, and stealer. It's fair to say this figure is generic. It has no unique parts. It only has one unique accessory. But the light green does help it. He stands out among his teammates, but he still feels like he belongs. Let's take a look at Zap's file card. This file card was printed on the back of the card on which the figure was packaged. We have his faction as G.I. Joe and a portrait of Zap here with the mustache. He's the bazooka soldier in big, bold letters. His code name is Zap. His file name is Rafael J. Melendez. This indicates that Zap is Hispanic. In that first year, the file card added some diversity to the team, though most of the figures were Caucasian. Later figures were more diverse in appearance. Primary military specialty is engineer. Secondary military specialty is infantry and artillery. Birthplace is New York City and as great as E4. This middle section has a quote. It says, Zap is the team specialist in armor piercing and anti-tank weapons, but also functions as demolition man. Specialized education, engineer school, ordinance school, advanced infantry training. The G.I. Joe team wasn't very big in the beginning. Some team members had to fill multiple roles. Like Stalker was the team medic at the time. Breaker was a computer expert and rock and roll was the PT instructor. Qualified expert M14, M16, M1911A1, M79 grenade launcher, M72 law rocket, XM71A tow missile, XM47 dragon missile. This bottom section has a quote. It says, Zap is the fun-loving type. He's cool under fire. The stuff he works on could blow up at any time. This file card gives you a little bit of information about Zap's personality, but not very much. These 1982 file cards tended to be pretty sparse. Looking at how Zap was used in G.I. Joe media, in the cartoon, he first appeared in the very first episode of the first animated miniseries in 1983. He was only a background character in that series. He didn't even get any lines until episode 4. Since Zap had a later version, he did appear a handful of times in the Deke animated series, but he had no lines and was just a background character. Looking at his appearances in the comic book series published by Marvel Comics, since Zap was in the first class of G.I. Joe characters in 1982, he appeared in the very first issue of the comic book. Some pages show him with a mustache and a beard. In the first year of the series, G.I. Joe had very few characters, so Zap was able to get a few good moments. In issue number 4, he and Grunt disarmed a nuclear bomb. In issue number 10, Zap, Scarlet, and Snake Eyes were imprisoned by Cobra in their secret base in the town of Springfield. That issue introduced several important elements to the comic book. Dr. Venom, the brainwave scanner, Springfield, and the character that would later be known as Billy, Cobra Commander's son. In issue number 33, Zap, along with most of the other original Joe's, was made a part of the administrative arm of the team. He was no longer an operational member. This was an attempt to make room for new characters. That plot point was conveniently forgotten, though. The non-operational characters still tended to pop up on occasion. There's one notable non-appearance of Zap. In issue number 50, his teammate, Flash, explores the tunnels under Springfield, but he's mistakenly identified as Zap. In issue number 82, Zap is an instructor, training prospective Joe's. That's not a bad issue because it gives you an idea of what it takes to become a Joe. Zap isn't a major character in that issue, though. Zap had another appearance in the Special Missions series, issue number 24. I've already talked about that issue in the review of Crystal Ball. It's the issue where the female members of the GI Joe team go undercover as dancers at a baseball game. It's a rare issue not written by Larry Hama. I don't think it's very good. Zap was never a major player in the comic book or the cartoon. Did he deserve better? Maybe so. He was never given a chance to develop. As more characters were added, only a handful of the original Joe's became major characters. Unfortunately for Zap, the newer GI Joe characters were just too interesting. The older, more generic characters were pushed out of the limelight. Looking at Zap overall, is this a top tier figure? No, of course not. This is a figure with no original parts. It was made as cheaply as possible. It looks fine for a 1982 release, but it doesn't have Stalker's camouflage or Snake Eyes' cool black uniform or Rock n' Rolls ammo belts. The only thing that distinguishes Zap is his light green color. And unfortunately, the light green is also the source of his biggest problem. I cannot sufficiently express to you the fragility of this figure. If you get this figure, you can't really do anything with it. You should not put the accessories in his hand. You should not put him on a figure stand. You should not move him around very much. You could snap the arm off just by moving it. As collectors, we should try to preserve the history of these toys. Not every toy is rare. Not every toy is fragile. Not every toy deserves to be treated like a historical artifact. This one deserves special care. The number of intact examples is small and shrinking. If we exercise a little care, future generations will have a few intact examples to admire. Because this is such a difficult figure to complete, I have to thank, again, Mike Lopez for helping me finish this guy, and thanks to Dan Klingensmith for your special insight. That was my review of Zap. I hope you enjoyed it. This is the last review before Jocon. I hope to see some of you there. I will be out of town at the convention, so I won't have a new review for you next week. But I may cook up a little something special for you. Thanks to Dan Klingensmith for allowing me to use those Zap images. We hit 5,000 subscribers recently. The channel is growing strong, and I have you to thank for it. You make this a joy. It is my privilege to meet you here every week and talk about these toys that we loved and grew up with. Thank you for being awesome. As always, find me on Facebook and Twitter. Support the channel on Patreon, and don't forget about my website, HCC788.com. I'll see you at Jocon, and until then, remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe. It's true. A equals A. It's only logical. But that's over. This guy is going right back in a case. Makes me nervous just touching this. There is where he will probably be entombed for all time.