 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another requested review video. This time we are looking at the legendary Sergeant Slaughter and we're not going to look at just one version of Sergeant Slaughter, we're going to look at version one and version two. Sergeant Slaughter is a fan favorite among G.I. Joe collectors, I'm excited to do this review so let's take a look at the Sarge. Starting in 1985 the first version of Sergeant Slaughter was available as a mail away offer. He was advertised on the packaging for carded action figures, you can see one of the advertisements here. Free Sergeant Slaughter action figure details inside. The mail away Sergeant Slaughter was available from 1985 and several years thereafter but in 1986 the following year we got the second version of Sergeant Slaughter with the Triple T tank. I'm going to take a look at the second version of Sergeant Slaughter and his tank a little bit later. So let's focus now on version one, the mail away Sergeant Slaughter. In 1988 we got a third version of Sergeant Slaughter who was also a vehicle driver like the second version of the Triple T tank. Unlike the first two versions, the third version had a removable hat. Sergeant Slaughter was the first character introduced to G.I. Joe based on a real person and he was integrated into G.I. Joe media. He was part of the cartoon series and the comic book series. The second real person to become a G.I. Joe was William refrigerator Perry the football player in 1986 but unlike Sergeant Slaughter the fridge did not get integrated into the various storylines of G.I. Joe media. The real Sergeant Slaughter was named Robert Remus and he was a US Marine Corps Sergeant turned pro wrestler and the Sergeant Slaughter character was created for his wrestling career. Here's why I have to confess something I have never been a wrestling fan. Even when I was a kid I just didn't care for pro wrestling. So you might think that since I'm not a wrestling fan I'm going to knock this character and this figure but I'm not. As a kid even though I didn't care for wrestling I really liked Sergeant Slaughter and I still do. I love this figure and so just don't hold it against me that I didn't care for wrestling. I still really like Sergeant Slaughter. No doubt Sergeant Slaughter was introduced because a lot of kids were wrestling fans and even if you weren't a fan of G.I. Joe if you saw that your favorite wrestler Sergeant Slaughter was getting an action figure in G.I. Joe well you'd run out to buy it. Let's take a look at Sergeant Slaughter's accessory and he came with only one. This baton. This baton is very easily lost. You can find Sergeant Slaughter male away figures pretty easily on eBay but finding one of these batons if they're missing can be a real pain. In fact they're so often lost that you run across some knock offs or reproductions out there so you really got to be careful and make sure that you have an original baton and not a reproduction. As you can see the baton has some kind of gold metallic paint up here on the top and it doesn't really serve any function as a weapon. This I think is supposed to signify his drill sergeant or drill instructor role. The closest real world approximation I could get to this baton was the paste stick that is used by British drill instructors but it doesn't really look exactly like this baton it serves kind of a different function. But I think the main purpose of it is to be a symbol of authority and power and I don't think that it's any coincidence that it is phallic shaped. Let's take a look at the articulation for Sergeant Slaughter version 1 and he had the typical articulation for GI Joe action figures in 1985 which meant that he had a ball joint at his neck so he could turn his head left and right but he could also look up and down like that. His arm he could swing up about so far and he could swing it all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move it at the elbow about 90 degrees and he had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around. The figure like all figures of that era was held together with a rubber o-ring that looped around the inside it held the whole figure together and it allowed him to move at the torso a little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far he could move his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Version 2 of Sergeant Slaughter that came with a triple T tank had the same articulation but this is not just a repaint of the original figure I'll get to the differences between the two when I look at version 2. Let's look at the sculpt and color overall of Sergeant Slaughter version 1 and this uniform is supposed to closely approximate his wrestling costume. We have the so-called Smoky the Bear Hat that definitely signifies his drill instructor role. On his hat he has what appear to be Sergeant's Chevrons, however that is different from the card art where we can see that his hat has a Marine Corps emblem on it but the figure here does have the Marine Corps emblem not on his hat but on his belt. He has some nice sunglasses painted in silver metallic paint. He's got his little mustache and he's got a heck of a chin kind of a Jay Leno chin here but this really is a pretty good likeness of the real Sergeant Slaughter. He has a black whistle around his neck and that goes all the way around to the back and that is again to signify his drill instructor role for GI Joe. He's wearing a green tank top with red white and blue USA on the front because this guy is all American. He has a very bulky chest back and arms with lots of sculpted on muscle there. The sculptor definitely is trying to portray a very big and very strong individual. Sergeant Slaughter is an exceptionally tall figure comparing him to an average height GI Joe figure, the 1983 Breaker, with both of them on figure stands and even without the hat, Sergeant Slaughter just towers over Breaker. His arms as you can see are sculpted with some huge muscles, big biceps. He has some black gloves and red wristbands on both hands. He has a white belt and a Marine Corps belt buckle as we mentioned before and that's in gold metallic paint. As you know with all this gold and silver paint on GI Joe action figures that did rub off fairly easily and is partially rubbed off on mine. The white belt goes all the way around and he's wearing black pants which I think are supposed to approximate wrestling tights and you can see that he has a very large GI Joe logo on both legs. He's wearing very tall green and black boots and you can see that on the green sides of these boots he has on both the inside and the outside some sergeant Chevrons. There is a variant of these Rankin Signia in which the middle part that's red on here is filled in in yellow but on mine I just have this version. Looking at this Rankin Signia on his boots I think it's the wrong rank. It looks like this is the Rankin Signia for an E6 Staff Sergeant in the US Marine Corps but Sergeant Slaughter's file card says he is an E7 Sergeant, a Gunnery Sergeant and that should have one more stripe below this bottom one here. Let's look at version 2 of Sergeant Slaughter and he also came with an accessory the same baton that came with version 1. I only have one of the batons but it was the same accessory for the second version of the action figure. The top half of version 2 is exactly the same sculpting wise as version 1 although of course you can see he has a black tank top instead of a green one. He looks more battle ready here rather than a drill instructor in version 1 although he does still have that drill instructor's whistle. This time it's green instead of black. Version 2 of Sergeant Slaughter has green camouflage pants and I'm a big fan of camouflage so I like that very much. He has a green belt that goes all the way around. He has shorter black boots. The boots are not nearly as tall as the green boots on the original one. These are more traditional combat boots than the first version. Unfortunately he does not have any sculpted on sidearm or weapon. This is a nice update from version 1. It keeps the basic spirit of version 1 Sergeant Slaughter but it gives him a nice update and makes it look like he's ready to go out in the field and do some combat. So now we have to talk about the Triple T tank and Triple T stands for Tag Team Terminator so it's a tank that has a wrestling themed name. I have to admit I have always been underwhelmed by the Triple T tank and honestly I think that Hasbro threw this tank in kind of as an afterthought because they wanted to release Sergeant Slaughter as a retail version not just a male away but they wanted to charge more than your average action figure so to charge more they included him as a vehicle driver so you're buying the vehicle and you're getting a Sergeant Slaughter action figure but really Sergeant Slaughter was the star. That's what kids were really buying so you were getting a Sergeant Slaughter action figure and you were getting a little tank thrown in with it. The Triple T tank came with two missiles one on each side here and these missiles the front end were based on the 1984 scrap irons missiles you can see they're not exactly alike but they are definitely based on the same mold. The blueprints called these MGM 79 heat or high explosive anti-tank missiles. The Triple T had two guns one amounted on each side and the blueprints called these power operated turret mounted 30 millimeter cannons and what's great about these guns is that they swivel up and down but they don't turn side-to-side so if you're needing to aim at a vehicle at ground level you have to turn the entire tank in order to aim that's not the most effective design for a weapon in my opinion. The gun swiveled all the way around on the back here we have an engine cover it has this knob on here that doesn't seem to serve any function but you take the engine cover off and you can see the engine detail and there's some detail down in there but really the engine cavity is kind of hollow there's not a lot down in there I guess there's enough room that you could potentially use this for weapon storage if you wanted to on either side we have fake treads the treads of course do not really roll the vehicle has wheels on the bottom and that's what it rolls on these treads have something of an action feature I guess in the back they kind of lift up like that so you can move the treads into two positions sort of and I honestly don't like either the lower or the upper position if you have the treads down to the lower position you can see straight through the tank and that looks pretty hokey but if you raise them up then you can see the wheels and you can see that the tank treads themselves are actually fake there's a tow hook in the back for towing trailers and towed weapons and it has two foot pegs one on each side and you can use those foot pegs to fit in the holes of the bottom of the feet of the action figures so somebody like breaker could ride along the cockpit is very simple it has a single joystick in the middle here and really no detail on the inside of any kind and you just put your figure in there and sergeant slaughter I guess controls the tank by this single joystick the triple T as a tank is a very impractical vehicle mainly because of the cockpit the driver is completely exposed and he would be very easily shot or blown up but I think the purpose of this is to show off the sergeant slaughter action figure not to approximate a real effective fighting vehicle everything about the triple T tank screams cheap to me honestly I think they just slapped this thing together so they'd have something to sell with sergeant slaughter even underneath it's completely hollow they didn't bother to even put a bottom on this and the driver's feet stick out the bottom through these holes kind of Flintstone style and maybe that's why it has a small engine the tank is actually powered by sergeant slaughter's feet sticking through the bottom the triple T does kind of remind me of a real-world vehicle it reminds me of a golf cart they sold you sergeant slaughter with a tracked golf cart and slapped a couple of missiles and guns on it to tell you the truth as a kid I pretty much never played with the triple T tank I just kind of set that aside and forgot about it and I just played with the sergeant slaughter action figure and that's really what you were buying anyway let's take a look at the first two versions of sergeant slaughter's file cards and starting with the mail away version as you can see this is a single card it's red on the back it's not the kind of card that you would clip out although it does have dotted lines for you to clip out it sergeant slaughter the first version was not a carded action figure so the card came at just as an insert with the figure when you got it in the mail the card has his faction is gi Joe and it has a nice portrait here some card art and he's pointing right at you sergeant slaughter wants you for the U.S. Army it has up here code name in great big letters sergeant slaughter drill instructor it says his file name is classified top secret and as far as I know none of his file card used his real name of Robert Remus his name is just classified his primary military specialty is infantry slash drill instructor his secondary military specialty is survival trainer and his place of birth is Paris Island South Carolina Paris Island South Carolina of course is not where the real sergeant slaughter was born but that is the location of the U.S. Marine Corps recruiting depot where a lot of U.S. Marines are trained so you could say that Paris Island is the place where he was born as a Marine his grade is e7 sergeant and e7 in the U.S. Marine Corps is a gunnery sergeant this section here does not have quotations around it but it's written like a quote it says just about every member of the gi Joe team is qualified to be a drill instructor so it takes a special brand of heavy-duty honcho to keep him squared away sergeant slaughters fits the bill the way his bullet head fits his smoky the bear hat let's face it the man be rough and he take no guff the man be rough and he take no guff it kind of rhymes so maybe they're quoting roadblock I hope not this bottom section we do have a quote we have some quotation marks although it doesn't say exactly who this is quoting and it says they say he cut his teeth on a bogey wheel from a patent tank in his first words were Semper fi Semper fi is short for Semper Fidelis which is Latin for always loyal or always faithful and that is the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps they say that when the sergeant dresses down a boot in Camp Lahoon the trainees cringe all the way to Pendleton Camp Lahoon is the Marine Corps home of expeditionary forces in readiness in Jacksonville North Carolina and Pendleton here refers to Camp Pendleton which is near San Diego in California most boots would rather die for apples in the grease trap than cross the Sarge they say he can blow a month's pay in one night in Thune Greenland Thune Greenland is referring to the Thune Air Base which is the U.S. Air Force's northernmost base of course jar heads are prone to exaggeration we all know it's impossible to blow a month's pay in Thune Greenland the file card paints the picture of somebody who's really tough and really mean essentially exactly what he should be as a drill instructor for the U.S. Marine Corps the second version of Sergeant Slaughter's file card was slightly different it had a different portrait here and this would have been from the box art from the Triple T tank this card would have been printed on the back of the box for the Triple T tank there's nothing on this other side it's just the back of a box everything up in this top section here is identical to the first version of the file card it doesn't even mention the Triple T tank but then again I guess you don't need any special training to drive a golf cart this section says all the Joes are super tough and they've been through the roughest most grueling training to become the most skillful specialists in the world it takes a master and drill training to weld stiff-necked tenderfoot Americans into the most stout and honorable positions in the mobile strike force that master and heavy-duty headman is none other than Sergeant Slaughter the extremist in rough and tumble fun I don't know what it means by rough and tumble fun but whatever the sergeant gets up to in the privacy of his own bedroom is none of my business in this bottom section we have another quote it says sergeant slaughter thinks it's his personal mission to kick the butt of every boot in Pendleton again referring to Camp Pendleton this guy can drill his trainees into the ground for 72 hours before he breaks a sweat his favorite pastime is marching over the boys backs while they do finger push-ups in the mud as pure spewing out brutal verbalities he's been known to ride his tank through enemy fortresses rather than blow them up because it's more fun they say he eats nails and spits out dumb dumb bullets dumb dumb bullets is slang for expanding bullets and they're named after the British dumb dumb arsenal in Calcutta India where they were first made they say he cleans his teeth with barbed wire brushes his hair with a rat tail file and shaves with a blowtorch everything and everywhere is a battlefield to sergeant slaughter in the civilian world sergeant slaughter would be a belligerent a-hole but he really found his niche as a drill instructor his personality fits that role perfectly overall sergeant slaughter is a great action figure he was a fan favorite and even though I never cared for wrestling he was always one of my favorites at least in these first two versions I could live without the triple T tank I thought that was kind of useless but I still very much love the sergeant slaughter action figures that was my review of the first two versions of sergeant slaughter and the triple T battle tank and the two file cards I hope you enjoyed it if you did don't forget to give this video a thumbs up on YouTube and don't forget to subscribe I've got a lot of great new GI Joe tour reviews coming up and you do not want to miss them also don't forget to like the hooded cobra commander 788 Facebook page you get a lot of updates there that you don't get anywhere else thank you all for watching and I'll catch you next time the adventure of GI Joe and look out cobra sergeant slaughter comes with triple T tank over figures and equipment sold separately