 Hey Joe fans, this week we are doing something special. Not only are we going to look at a G.I. Joe action figure, we're going to learn about non-American G.I. Joe. Please welcome Rani Ghosh to the show. He's going to teach us about Fun School G.I. Joe, the toys released in India. Hey dear HCC, thanks for having me on the show. I am Rani Ghosh, a.k.a. Fun School Rani on YouTube and I will have a look at the figure that HCC reviews. Thanks for the help Rani, we'll talk more later in the video. We're not talking really. What? I don't even see you, I am talking to my camera right now. You're not supposed to say that. This is all pre-recorded, I'm just reading the lines you gave me and acting like I'm talking directly to you in the camera. You're ruining the illusion. Well don't seriously think that there is a secret communication network of G.I. Joe reviewers. I am just recording my part now and you'll edit it later. You're going off script, just read what I wrote for you. Oh, Hooded Cobra Commander, what a guy. That's really too kind, I'm blushing. Thanks for being here, we'll hear more from Rani later. For another vintage G.I. Joe Toy Review and I have invited Fun School Rani to teach us about G.I. Joe in India. International G.I. Joe fascinates me, in 1966, just two years after G.I. Joe was released in the United States, the United Kingdom got Action Man, their version of G.I. Joe. And after that G.I. Joe toys spread around the world. Lots of different countries had their own version of G.I. Joe. Sometimes called G.I. Joe, sometimes called something else. But at the same time, American kids were playing with these toys and building fond childhood memories of them. Kids around the world were doing the same thing. When G.I. Joe was relaunched in the 80s, it again spread around the globe. Kids from all over the world were having the same fun experiences with these toys that we in the U.S. were having. We're going to use this review of G.I. Joe's spearhead and max to look at how G.I. Joe was presented to the children of India. Ronnie's going to give us a brief history of Fun School, the company that released G.I. Joe toys in India. And Ronnie's going to give us a review of the Fun School release of Spearhead. Let's jump right into it. HCC788 and Fun School Ronnie present, Spearhead and Max. This is the 1988 Spearhead and Max, G.I. Joe's point man and bobcat. This figure and animal companion were available from 1988 to 1989 and were discontinued for 1990. Spearhead is the point man, which means he's the guy who goes first. He's always the first to encounter the enemy. I wouldn't call that a specialty. I'd say it's a way to know he's the guy nobody likes. There was one other version of Spearhead in the vintage line, the night force version in 1989. That was a premium toys are us exclusive. It's rare and expensive and I don't have it. The figure was advertised as Spearhead and Max. So the animal companion was named in the headline. This happened sometimes like with Mutt and Junkyard and Law and Order. But sometimes the animal companions weren't named with the figure, such as Spirit's Eagle, Freedom and Shipwreck's Parrot, Polly. Snake Eyes' Wolf wasn't named in the headline, but it was named in the file card. Spearhead have a predecessor on the GI Joe team. Not as a point man, but he is sort of camouflaged for the desert. And GI Joe's first dedicated desert trooper was Dusty from 1985, though GI Joe did have a few earlier figures with color schemes that would work in the desert, such as version two of Grunt and version two of Clutch. Spearhead's successor on the GI Joe team is probably also Dusty, version three of Dusty from 1991. Depending on what you see as Spearhead's role. If he's a desert trooper, then he is in Dusty's lineage. If you see him as just the point man on any mission in any environment, then he's kind of out there on his own. He's unique. Coincidentally, version three of Dusty also came with an animal companion, a coyote named Sandstorm. Spearhead didn't have a contemporary Cobra counterpart, either as a point man or a desert trooper. Spearhead didn't have their own dedicated desert trooper until 1991, Desert Scorpion. That's a really cool figure that I don't have yet, I need to nail that one down. Spearhead includes an animal companion, as mentioned before, a bobcat named Max. A bobcat is a wild cat. It is not a domesticated animal. As far as I know, you can't train a bobcat. They do not make good pets. There aren't any good reasons given for Spearhead having a bobcat with him. If you're playing with Spearhead, you could imagine the bobcat as a dangerous predator that Spearhead must avoid while carrying out his mission. Let's take a look at Spearhead's accessories, starting with what the card contents simply call a rifle. The card contents don't identify what kind of rifle it is, but it is pretty crazy looking. It is huge, and it has some unusual features. It has a strap that often breaks off. You'll find a lot of these rifles missing the strap. With that strap, you can sling the rifle on his shoulder. Maybe this way is a little better. It's not the best use of a strap. With the backpack off, you can sling the rifle on his back, if I can do this without knocking the helmet off, actually, okay, there we go. Yeah, it can go on his back. That doesn't look great either. There are ways you can use this strap, but it actually doesn't give you a whole lot of room, even though it's large. It doesn't give you a lot of room to fit the rifle across his back because these magazines and the grip get in the way. I guess you can probably sling it over his backpack. So I do like straps on rifles. They are generally good because I like to have a way for the figure to carry the rifle when he's using a different accessory. This one, though, because of the size of the rifle and all this stuff in the way, not a lot of great ways to use it. The rifle isn't a light gray color, which is a little odd. You kind of expect maybe an arctic trooper to carry something this color. The rifle has two magazines, which looks very strange. There is precedent for dual magazine firearms, but the magazines are typically side-by-side, not one in front of the other. An example is the 1942 German MP40i. It also has a huge bayonet with a serrated blade. Everything on this rifle seems oversized. Next, let's look at what the cart contents call a knife. It is huge for a knife. It looks more like a sword. It has raised details on the blade and the hilt. It looks like a Roman Gladius, a standard sword carried by ancient Roman soldiers. I can think of no reason for spearhead to have this. If he's a desert trooper, then he wouldn't be using it as a machete to cut his way through jungle vegetation. As a combat blade, I would think a smaller knife would be more practical and easier to carry. There's no place to store the knife. There's no holster on the backpack. You can, I guess, kind of wedge it between the backpack and the figure and it kind of stays there. Next, let's look at his helmet. The helmet is well-detailed with a sculpted cloth covering and it has a camouflage pattern and unfortunately that camouflage pattern is the same color as the camouflage on the figure. The base plastic color is a light tan that works perfectly for a desert trooper, but the camouflage is orange. Next, let's look at his backpack and his backpack is bright orange, a brighter orange than the orange that's painted on the figure. It does have some nice details though. It has a sculpted on knife, some pouches on the sides, has a bed roll on the bottom and it has three canteens sculpted on it. Having plenty of water is a good idea for a desert trooper. Dusty's backpack had two large canteens. Although this backpack is designed to have the bed roll at the bottom, I think it looks better on the figure with the bed roll on the top. You can just see the backpack better on the figure from the front. Of course, if you put the backpack on that way, the canteens are upside down. That looks a little odd. Finally, we get to the Bobcat Max. This is a plastic animal sculpted out of a solid piece of brown plastic. It has no paint applications at all and that's too bad since Bobcats have a very distinctive spot pattern. I'm fine with GI Joe figures coming with animal companions as long as they make sense. Shipwreck was a sailor that came with a parrot. That's kind of stereotypical but I get it. Snake Eyes came with a wolf but the wolf was part of his history. Mud and Law came with dogs, they were dog trainers and trained military dogs do exist. The Bobcat though doesn't make sense to me. If you had this figure as a child, how did you use the Bobcat? I think, honestly, I just ignored it. Let's take a look at Spearhead's articulation. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures by 1988 so 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 move at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep that allowed him to swivel his arm all the way around. The figure was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside, not 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 sculpt design and color of Spearhead starting with his head. On his head he has brown hair and a pretty plain face, nothing terribly distinctive. His hairstyle does look very 80s though with the part way over here on the side. It looks like a TV news anchor. His chest is a light tan color with a texture pattern on the front and the back. He has a shoulder pad on the right shoulder. Looks like this is supposed to be a tactical vest. You can see some buckles right there on the shoulders. He has an ammunition belt with bronze painted bullets that run from his left shoulder down under his right arm. That detail is on the front and the back. Why does he have this detail? Does it go with his rifle? The rifle is so large I could believe it's a belt fed machine gun, but it has two magazines. The chest and the back are otherwise unpainted and I think maybe some paint application here and there might have brought out some of those details a bit. On his arms he has tan sleeves with an orange camouflage pattern. He has pockets on his upper arms, both upper arms. And he has tan forearm pads. And those forearm pads are painted a different tan color than the base plastic. Those pads more closely match the tan on the chest. That's a subtle difference between those two tans. They might have saved a paint application there. He also has bare hands. On his waist piece he has an unpainted belt with pouches on each side left and right. And here's where the paint gets a little sloppy. The camo pattern goes right over those pouches as if they are part of the trousers. That does not look right. Those pouches should have been masked and left the same color as the belt. Or better yet, the belt and the pouches could have been painted, preferably some color other than orange. His legs are tan with that splotchy orange camouflage pattern. The tan on the legs is slightly lighter than the tan on the chest. Very subtle difference. He has a pocket on each thigh, no sculpted weapons on the legs. Finally he has tall brown boots with an odd ridge pattern on them. This brown color on the boots is the brown color I want to see elsewhere on the figure. This should have been the color of the belt. And this brown color would have helped the details on the chest stand out more. Why orange? Like with Duke version 3, they gave us a decent looking desert figure, but they made the camouflage an odd color. Duke was red and we have orange with spearhead. Red and orange can work for a desert environment, but brown looks so much better. That's why Dusty is still my favorite desert figure. Why was it so hard to get this tan and brown desert camouflage combination on GI Joe figures? It just seems elementary for a desert trooper. Now that we've looked at the figure and accessories as they were presented in the US, let's have Ronny give us some background on Fun School. Okay guys, for those of you who do not know, Fun School is an Indian toy company which was partly owned by Milton Bradley International which is a subsidiary of Hasbro and MRF which stands for Metros Rubber Factory of India. Fun School released and licensed GI Joe's in India from 1988 up until 2010 and it also supplied two countries like Russia, Egypt under Niko branding and also to Iraq as promotional with Halibna dairy products. Thank you for that background information. Ronny will be back later to look at the Fun School release of spearhead. For now let's wrap up our look at the American version. I have the full card back for spearhead so let's take a look at it. It has some peculiarities. First, the artwork for spearhead is fine but the bobcat does not look great. The head is too big for the body and it seems like the bobcat was added to the image on top of a completed painting of spearhead. The lighting is different, spearhead is dark and shadowed but the bobcat is lighter. So take a look at his knife. That kind of looks like it was added after the fact too. On the flip side we have the cross cell with the other figures that were available at the time. This card is from 1989. We can tell that because it has some 1989 figures on the cross cell like Ali Viper and Scoop. It has our one flag point and it has the file card which we will look at now. It has his faction as GI Joe. It has a portrait of spearhead here. It says codename spearhead and max. Now is max the cat's codename or is it his real name? We may never know. Together they are point man and bobcat. That's their band name. Last week they were calling the band mouse rat. This week they are calling the band point man and bobcat. Spearhead's file name is Peter R. Milman and there is a real person named Peter Milman. He was a Canadian astronomer. I doubt spearhead was named after him. Secondary military specialty infantry, secondary military specialty finance. These file cards often gave characters mundane, non-combat secondary specialties. In spearhead's case, the card does describe a previous desk job before he joined the army, but not finance. His birthplace is St. Louis, Missouri and his grade is E4. This top paragraph says spearhead was the youngest and most successful insurance salesman in the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific Northwest, spearhead was born in St. Louis, which isn't anywhere near the Pacific Northwest. Not that everyone stays in the city where they were born. Spearhead may have moved to Washington State for his insurance job. It was said he could sell a term policy to a dead cow. Everyone liked him, trusted him and bought more insurance from him than they could afford. Spearhead denies that guilt was a factor in his decision to join the army. He simply felt that somebody had to do it. Somebody had to do what? Join the army? Other people will join the army, that's what makes it an army. This bottom paragraph has a quote. It says, some guys they're going to lead a combat assault, right? They jump up and holler, follow me and charge full tilt at a bunker. Halfway there, they look back and no one's behind them. Of course not. That guy was a jerk. Spearhead could jump face first into a vat of rabbit hyenas and 15 guys would follow him. No hesitation. He would jump smiling. And of course Spearhead's mad cat Max is always a source of inspiration. So is the bobcat a mascot? It's like your mom always said. If your friends jump into a vat of rabbit hyenas, are you going to jump into? Well, I guess if your friend is Spearhead, then yes. Spearhead is the point man because he inspires people to follow him. But why exactly are people inspired to follow him? What makes people want to follow Spearhead no matter where he goes? Maybe he sold them all insurance. I don't know. Taking a look at how Spearhead and Max were used in G.I. Joe media, they made no appearances in the animated series. Most of these 1988 figures didn't. So that makes their media appearances easy to cover in these reviews and that's one reason I like them. He made only one notable appearance in the G.I. Joe comic book in special missions number 21. He's on the cover and he even has his bobcat. I'm kind of surprised Larry Hama included the bobcat in the comic. It would have been easy to leave it out. One thing that amuses me about Spearhead's appearance in that comic is, both on the cover and on the first page, he is not the point man. He's following Tunnel Rat. That issue doesn't even focus on Spearhead. The mission takes place in the sewers of New York. Tunnel Rat leads and Airtide has an important role. At no point in that issue does Spearhead take the point, even though there were several opportunities for him to do so. Alright, that's how Spearhead and Max was presented in the U.S. but how did fun school translate these toys for kids in India? This is the first school Spearhead and Max. Interestingly, it is the regular and only release of this figure in India and it matches the night force color of the premium has previous release. Wait, you got Spearhead in night force colors in your standard release? That's right. Night force in the U.S. is rare and expensive. Hang on a minute. What are you doing? I'm searching eBay for a fun school Spearhead. Let's have a look at the figure and accessories. The figure came with a large silver plastic bayonet rifle, a silver plastic machete, a light green backpack, a black grey helmet that matches his night force color and his bobcat in orange named Max. Weirdly, the card content describe the machete as a knife but as you can see this is too large to be a knife. The accessory color had some variations like this one is in silver plastic but as you can see this one is in grey plastic. The fun school spearhead figure were released in both India and Russia. They can be distinguished from the front by the shape of the hanger tabs. This one being the Russian version and this one is the Indian version. The Indian version has English at its back while the Russian version has Russian language at its back. This is Spearhead's file card. The only thing that doesn't match with his Hasbro bio is the serial number. The Indian release of Spearhead had three main variants. The first variant is the earliest release of the figure. This variant came with a recolored grotch of quick kick. The second variant which came in later release had the original spearhead grotch. Here is a carded example of the variant. The third and most bizarre release is the vehicle driver variant that came randomly free with fun school vehicles. I don't have this one yet as like most fun school vehicle driver variants this one is very rare. As you can see this one is missing several paint in different parts and have completely different paint scheme. The main difference between the fun school spearhead release and the US night force release is that fun school traded in the brown and teal paints for much reasonable lighter shades which in my opinion suits the figure's dark overall better. Since I am from India, fun school joes were the only joes I knew existed until much later in my adult life I discovered the internet. Fun school joes can seriously burn a hole in your wallet if you are trying to get the early releases in mint but since the product run stretched more than a decade after the ARH run stopped they are still the most affordable joes out there. So that's my review of the fun school spearhead guys, it's over to you HCC, yo joe. Thank you for sharing your personal experience Ronnie this is interesting to me. As a kid in the US growing up with these toys they just seem like American toys although I did have some awareness that there was a version of G.I. Joe released in Britain I didn't know about all the international releases. So I put this question to all of the viewers outside of the US. How did you find out that G.I. Joe had American origins and how did that knowledge change your perspective of the toys? Looking at the US version of spearhead and max it's a middle tier figure. It could easily have been a great figure but it has a few problems that drag it down. I have problems with all of the accessories including the bobcat. I know I'm a terrible person for not loving furry animals but I just don't think this figure needs an animal companion. I could picture it as an animal that spearhead encounters in the wild but I don't think you can train a bobcat to do any useful job unless you want a pet that will claw your own face off. The rifle. It's huge. It's strange. It's the wrong color. I can't make heads or tails of this thing. The best part about it is probably the strap. You can sling it some way on its body so he can have his hands free. But then that's a feature that's only useful when he's not using the rifle. The knife. The knife. Why? This accessory doesn't fit with spearhead. The aesthetic doesn't fit with anything on the figure or any of the other accessories. Why does he have it? The helmet would be fine if not for the camouflage color. The backpack would be fine if it weren't orange. Orange. Speaking of orange, the camouflage is the main problem with this figure. We have a pretty good desert themed figure. The tan is good, the brown is good, the orange. Why is it so hard for us to get a figure with good basic desert camouflage like Dusty? I mean, did we get it once and we just can't do it again? Everything in the future has to be orange or red or purple or whatever. Despite the drawbacks, I do like spearhead as a desert trooper. If I ignore the orange, and that's not easy to do, I can send him on desert missions. The details save the figure from the bottom tier. And the coloring on the US version make me appreciate the fun school version even more. That was my review and fun school Ronnie's review of spearhead and max. I hope you enjoyed it. Two reviews in one and we got some cool background information about international G.I. Joe. Thank you Ronnie Goche for your time and effort. I deeply appreciate it. I really enjoyed this. I hope you did too. Ronnie does have a YouTube channel. The link will be right here. Please check it out and watch his fun school G.I. Joe videos. Thank you Mesta Chieng for the title card art. I really appreciate your help. Your artwork looks so cool. And thank you for watching and thank you for your support. You can find me a few places. You can find me on Facebook and Twitter and Patreon if you want some special perks. And you can look at my website hcc788.com. Next week we're looking at a figure that might be a little controversial. Looking forward to the comments on that one. I'll see you next week and until then remember around the world only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe.