 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, it's time for another vintage GI Joe toy review and this is the first review on my channel that was inspired by another reviewer. If you follow this channel chances are you probably also follow Retro Blasting which is an excellent toy review channel, better than this one let's be honest. A few weeks ago Retro Blasting did a repair video for the Cobra Night Raven jet and there was an accusation that when the tail fins were assembled in that video they were switched around so they were tilted inward rather than tilted outward. This is Fingate and I'm so excited that we have a controversy that is worthy of the gate suffix. I feel just like Nixon. Unfortunately I did not own a Cobra Night Raven so that video inspired me to get one so I can weigh in on Fingate and that's exactly what I'm gonna do later in this video but first we're gonna give the Cobra Night Raven a full hooded Cobra Commander 788 review so let's take a look at the toy. This is the 1986 Cobra Night Raven S3P. It was first available in 1986. It was also sold in 1987. It was discontinued for 1988 and in 1988 the closest vehicle that would have replaced this would probably have been the Cobra Stellar Stiletto but the Cobra Stellar Stiletto was more of a space rocket ship than a jet like this so I would not call that a direct replacement. The Night Raven was itself a replacement for the 1984 Cobra Rattler, Cobra's first real fighter jet. The Night Raven takes a lot of its design inspiration from the famous American spy plane the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird but the Night Raven design borrows from a lot of other places as well including other jets in the Blackbirds lineage such as the YF-12 Interceptor and the M-12 which was capable of carrying a drone piggyback much in the way the Night Raven carries this recon jet. Also some design elements were added to make it look a lot like the fictional MiG-31 from the movie Firefox. The Night Raven was worth five flag points and it came with a pilot the Stratoviper. We're gonna take a closer look at the Stratoviper in a little bit so we'll set him aside for now. It also came with a sub vehicle this recon jet and we're gonna take a closer look at that a little bit later too so we're gonna set that aside as well. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Night Raven starting here at the front and at the front it has this flattened nose rather than the pointed nose of the SR-71. The canopy has this red clear plastic and that looks very nice this sort of blood red against the black body of the jet looks very good. This canopy does not open up like most GI Joe jet canopies by flipping up at the top like that instead the pilot and the co-pilot enter through this very unique mechanism where in the cockpit drops down from below. I'll show you how this cockpit works. The cockpit is meant to be removable like this and it has two seats the forward facing pilot seat and the rear facing co-pilot seat. This cockpit is made of bright orange plastic and it has some nice detail in there some nice instrumentation and it even has a control stick and that is something that a lot of GI Joe jets lacked. It has a couple sticker instrument panels in the front and in the back and I'll show you how to fit the pilot and the co-pilot in here. The pilot fits comfortably in the front seat here and his feet kind of dangle out the bottom but you can't leave his feet dangling because this cockpit has to fit in this tray here so you kind of have to push his feet up so they're not sticking out the bottom. The night rave only came with one figure but it has a second seat here in the cockpit so if you choose to you can go out and find another strato viper and use him as the co-pilot. This back seat is a really tight fit for the co-pilot and I haven't really found a good easy way of fitting him in other than just kind of putting him in the fetal position and scrunching him in until he stays. With the pilot and the co-pilot squeezed into the cockpit you can now reinsert the cockpit into this tray lining up this knob with this slot here on the bottom. You have to kind of angle it in like this and then line it up and then very gently squeeze it into place. It does not click in it only frictions in and you must not put very much pressure on this at all because this entire mechanism is hinged on a very thin piece of plastic that does have a tendency to break. With the cockpit in place you just slide the entire tray up and push it in until it clicks into place. Now you have a pilot and co-pilot in the night rave and ready for takeoff. Moving on from the cockpit we have these side stabilizer fins and this is a departure from the Blackbird design. This is where it really does look a lot more like the fictional jet from the movie Firefox. Behind the cockpit area we have the first weapon we see on this aircraft. It is also the front air brake and it pops up like that and we have these rear facing silver guns which the blueprints call twin 20 millimeter cannons. The guns just kind of slide down and hide in this recess here on the fuselage. They are rear facing which i think is interesting and these are frequently missing parts. This air brake piece here that fits over the guns that's often missing and it's not obvious that there's anything that's supposed to go there. So you might not even know that you're missing that part if you don't know that there's supposed to be something there and the guns themselves also are often missing. I do find it rather odd that the only guns on this aircraft are rear facing. It has no forward facing guns at all and if the recon jet is still attached they're gonna have to angle these guns upward to avoid hitting their own sub vehicle. The recon jet does have its own fixed forward facing guns so with the recon jet attached I guess the night raven could use the recon jets guns as its forward facing guns. We have these orange jet intakes and these are rectangular unlike the round intakes of the sr 71 blackbird. These are squared off and I think that gives it more of a futuristic look. You guys know how I feel about these orange highlights like on the g.i joe havoc. This is not my favorite thing. I mean you have this nice sleek black jet perfect for night missions and then you put safety orange highlights on it. That doesn't make a lot of sense. On the night raven though I don't mind quite as much because the orange is kept to a minimum. It's really only used for a couple extra spots of color interest and I can tolerate that. Over each jet intake we have hinged engine covers that open up like that and these engine covers were always a nice bonus feature on these g.i joe vehicles. I just love them. With the engine covers open we can see some excellent engine detail. It's the same detail on both sides. This is why g.i joe was so great. This is going above and beyond what most toy companies would have done for their toys. We have these rear fins and the starboard fin has this little knobby thing on it. The port fin did not have that. It has this really nice night raven logo on it. That looks really good and then here on the starboard wing we have these symbols here and I don't know exactly why cobra did this. This showed up on a number of cobra vehicles. This symbolic writing here. That's just a kind of unique thing that cobra did. On the port fin we have that classic red cobra symbol and black is my favorite color for a cobra vehicle and seeing that red on top of the black is just a thrilling thing to see. In the back between the fins we have these rear air brakes and these air brakes flip up when the landing gear is down and they lower when the landing gear is up. They are connected to the same mechanism. We also have this tab where the recon jet slots in. I'll demonstrate that a little bit later when we look at the recon jet and then we have this rubbery cone here on the back this radar cone and that is a frequently missing part and finally in the back we have more orange plastic these dual nozzle jet exhausts. I have no idea if an exhaust would work like this on a real jet but it looks pretty cool on a toy. Now we need to flip the night raven over because there are more features on the underside. The underside of the night raven is this gray color and this gray plastic can tend to discolor with exposure to sunlight and it can turn kind of a greenish color and I have noticed that when GI Joe plastic discolors it can have a tendency to be very brittle so if you have a discolored night raven if it's not this nice gray color if it's more of a greenish color be very careful with it it could break more easily. Behind the tab that you pull down to lower the cockpit you have the front landing gear and the landing gear well. Now this landing gear is mechanized and then I will show you how to operate the landing gear mechanism a little bit later. The front landing gear features two wheels and rubber tires and GI Joe jets often gave us rubber tires like that. That is such a nice bonus and an improvement over plastic wheels uh they get much better traction and they just look better. Behind the front landing gear we have this pull down missile rack of course I'm pulling it up because the jet's upside down and the missile rack features two silver missiles. There is one missile on each side and they tab into the missile rack uh with this slot here on the missile and uh they have some pretty nice detail. They have a cobra symbol sticker on them. On my night raven it's easier to get the missile rack down than to get it back up. Before we look at the landing gear let's look at the remaining armaments on the night raven. The night raven has two very unique missile pods and each missile pod uh tabs into this uh tab here on the wing on the lower wing uh and each missile pod has two missiles. The blueprints call these double toxin heat seeking twin missile pods and these missiles are smaller and have less detail than the missiles on the missile rack. Now let's look at the rear landing gear and landing gear mechanism. The rear landing gear features three rubber tires very nice and this landing gear mechanism causes all three landing gears to raise and lower and causes the rear air brakes to flip up and down. There's a variation with this landing gear mechanism. Some versions of the night raven presumably earlier versions had a straight slot where this landing gear tab would slide forward and backward to operate the landing gear forward to move the landing gear down and back to move the landing gear up. This version of the night raven presumably the later version has this extra angle in the slot. I have to assume they were concerned about the landing gear slipping with that straight slot so this extra angle kind of locks the landing gear in the down position. Unfortunately this design makes it much more difficult to raise the landing gear. Uh you have to push this tab to the side with the considerable amount of force in order to slide it back and raise the landing gear and there's a concern about breaking this tab. Let's demonstrate raising the landing gear. I'm going to pull this tab to the side and slide it back and all of the landing gear should raise simultaneously. Landing gear up and landing gear back down. Let's look at how the air brakes work when the landing gear is lowered. Landing gear down. Now let's take a look at the sub vehicle this recon jet and the idea for this piggyback recon jet was obviously taken from the M12's piggyback drone the Lockheed D21. The D21 was an unmanned drone but this is a manned aircraft. There is room for a pilot. This recon jet is sleek and black like its mother ship and like the nightraven. It has this clear red plastic canopy and that blood red really looks great against the black. On the underside it has an orange jet intake just like the nightraven and it has this slot where it tabs into the back of the nightraven. The recon jet has no landing gear so the only way for it to land is to attach itself to the mother ship. On the sides it has these silver guns which the blueprints call MK12 hogs or high observation gunship system 20 millimeter cannons. The recon jet has a hinged door for access to the cockpit. Just pull on the back fin and it opens up. Inside the cockpit we have some very nice very impressive detail there. We even have a sticker control panel there and again we have this orange plastic but one of the reasons I don't mind this orange plastic so much on the nightraven is most of it is internal so when you close the thing up it hides most of the orange. In the back here we have this wide jet exhaust and this does make the recon jet look really fast. Again the nightraven only came with one action figure but it had the capacity to hold three action figures with two of the main jet and one in the recon jet. Of course you could fit any cobra action figure in there that you wanted to but I would really prefer a stratoviper to pilot the recon jet. Now I only have two stratovipers so I'm going to borrow my co-pilot to demonstrate how to put the figure in. The pilot is supposed to go in in the prone position face down and there are a couple of joystick controllers up here in the front that you're supposed to pretend that he's using so you're going to have to raise his arms up and of course bend his knees. The stratoviper's shoulders are kind of wide so you kind of have to just wedge him in there get him in head first and then of course get his legs in get his feet in close it up and now he's ready to pilot the recon jet. You can see the pilot in there but he doesn't look very good you can really only see the back of his head and his hands. Let's demonstrate how to put the recon jet on the back of the nightraven. The nightraven has this tab right here along the spine of the fuselage and there's this slot on the recon jet and you just marry those two up line them up and wedge it on and it does hold on very well. I think the nightraven with the recon jet attached looks just fantastic. I mean if you like black sleek futuristic badass looking jets then the nightraven has a lot that should appeal to you. Let's look at the nightraven pilot the stratoviper and the stratoviper came with no accessories so let's take a look at his articulation. He had the typical articulation for 1986 GI Joe action figures that means he could turn his head from left to right like that he could also look up and down. His arm he could move up at the shoulder about so far and he could swivel it all the way around at the shoulder. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around. The figure was held together with a rubber o-ring that looped around the inside that allowed him to move at the torso a little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could move his legs at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpted design and color of the stratoviper starting with his head and his head he had this helmet a non-removable helmet and that's okay for a cobra pilot. If this were a GI Joe pilot I would want that helmet to be removable. He has a face mask a silver plate over his eyes looks like he has some goggles on the top here. This is an excellent looking helmet. Lots of paint applications there, lots of detail. This silver face plate is a look that became associated with cobra and it all started with cobra commander way back in 1982. But in 1986 that look started to be used more for cobra's rank and file such as the viper, the bats and the motor viper. His chest features a lot of detail just look at all that detail. He's got a high collar that comes up around his back. He's got this red chest covering with silver buttons and that's great detail there. A silver buckle on his gun holster strap, a black gun in the holster. He's got silver epaulettes and just a ton of detail on the seams of his flight suit and the folds of the cloth. His gray flight suit continues to his arms. He has black wristbands and gray sculpted gloves. On his left arm it's hard to make it out but he has a night raven patch and that design matches the design that is on the fin of the aircraft and that's a nice coordination between the figure and the vehicle. On his waist he has red in the front and we can still see his gray flight suit. He has a highly detailed black belt that goes all the way around with a silver belt buckle and then on the sides he has some straps that go down to the leggings on his flight suit. On his legs over his gray flight suit he has black leg coverings with silver buckles along the sides and what this probably is is a G suit. A G suit is worn by fighter pilots and it has inflatable bladders that prevent blood from pooling in the lower extremities during high G maneuvers. On his lower legs he has silver knee pads and knee pads are a great feature that's really cool. He has red boot covers over black boots. This is a nice fighter pilots flight suit for the stratoviper however the SR-71 the jet that the night raven is very loosely based on flew at very high altitudes and at very high speed so a more appropriate flight outfit for the stratoviper might have been a pressure suit like the GI Joe pilot from 1983 Ace. Let's take a look at stratoviper's file card. Now this file card does not have file name or place of birth information like most GI Joe file cards would but that's because this file card is not describing an individual. Cobra would have had a lot of stratoviper's so this file card is really describing the unit. It has his faction as Cobra. It has a portrait of stratoviper here and it says his codename is stratoviper and he is the Cobra night raven s3p pilot. I don't know what this s3p stands for and I don't think it's explained anywhere on the packaging. This top section says the best secret agents in the world work for private corporations as industrial spies simply because big business pays better than any government. Well okay what does that have to do with anything let's read on. Cobra can attract some of the best pilots from around the globe to join the air wing of the Cobra legions known as the air vipers by doubling and tripling their salaries. Air vipers are formidable opponents but the stratoviper's are the crème de la crème. So this preamble about industrial spies is just to set up the second sentence which explains that Cobra pays air vipers a lot of money and really this is not a very good segue. This is almost a non sequitur. You could completely remove that first sentence and you really wouldn't lose anything. This bottom section has a quote. It says to qualify as a stratoviper a candidate must first be an air viper with 1500 hours logged in flight time. He must have a fixed wing rating up to four engines, combat experience and impeccable security clearance and willing to undergo the surgical procedure necessary to make him resistant to hypoxia, hyperventilation and other decompression sicknesses that can affect the pilot above Armstrong's line in parentheses 63,000 feet. A couple things about this file card. First of all it sets up a hierarchy for the Cobra Air Force with the air viper being the entry level. The only problem is we never got an air viper action figure in the vintage line. There was an air viper introduced after the vintage line in 2003 but at the time this file card was released it was referencing a non-existing character. Armstrong's line also known as Armstrong's limit is an altitude between 62,000 feet and 63,500 feet which is the altitude at which water boils at the normal temperature of the human body and that sounds like a bad thing. Hypoxia and hyperventilation are hazards of high altitude and high speed flight. However I've not been able to find any reference to a surgical procedure that would make a pilot more resistant to them. Looking at the stratoviper overall this is an excellent action figure. This has all the bells and whistles. It has a ton of paint application and the silver paint really makes it look special and the color choices nicely complement the jet that he pilots. Taking a look at the night raven overall what a gorgeous jet this is. It's sleek, it's futuristic looking, it's black which is the perfect color for a Cobra vehicle. I wish all Cobra vehicles were black. It has a lot of play features, plenty of things for kids to do with it and I have to admire the color scheme. The orange is not overdone and the gray and the reds provide a nice contrast to the black. Comparing the night raven to the GI Joe equivalent the 1983 sky striker these vehicles stack up very nicely. The sky striker had mechanized landing gear with a sweep wing feature. The night raven had mechanized landing gear with the air brakes that pop up. Not quite as cool but still pretty good. The sky striker did have removable seats and parachutes which the night raven did not have but that really would not have worked on the night raven with the way they designed the cockpit but the night raven did have the recon jet which the sky striker did not have so they still kind of even out. I still prefer the sky striker but these two jets do match up very well together. Comparing the night raven to the jet that it replaced the 1984 Cobra rattler it's very clear that the night raven is intended to be a step up from the rattler and I love the Cobra rattler don't get me wrong but the night raven just dwarfs it. The night raven made some appearances in GI Joe media. In the comic book it was teased in issue number 46 when it was seen under a tarp with an outline that looked a lot like the Lockheed SR-71. The night raven and the stratoviper were showcased in GI Joe's special missions issue number five an issue that featured some great aerial dog fighting. The night raven made multiple appearances in the GI Joe animated series starting in an episode where it went up against Slipstream and the Conquest X-30 in Arise Serpentor Arise part one. Now let's get to the retroblasting controversy. There was this video in which the night raven fins were assembled tilted inward and some viewers considered that to be the wrong way to assemble the aircraft. The tail fins are distinguished by this knob on the starboard fin. The port side fin does not have that and when assembled in this way the fins tilt outward. However it is possible to switch the fins around and when assembled this way the fins tilt inward. There's an inconsistency in the assembly instructions where it shows the fins being assembled in the fins out configuration with the knob on the starboard side. However on the sticker application section it shows the knob on the port fin which would put it in the fins in position. And the blueprints also show the knob on the port fin which again would be the fins in configuration. So now the ultimate controversy that is consuming the nation is whether the night raven fins should be assembled tilted inward or out. There is some support for the fins in configuration. For instance the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird the jet that the night raven clearly borrows a lot of design elements from had the fins tilted inward. To add to the confusion in GI Joe order of battle issue number four on page eight it shows the night raven with the fins tilted inward but it still shows the knob on the starboard fin which is the impossible to do with the toy. If you put the fin with the knob on the starboard side those fins are tilted out. With the inconsistencies between the instruction sheet and the sticker application page and the blueprints isn't even possible to say that there is a right way to assemble the night raven fins. Yes fins out. For one thing the instruction sheet doesn't just show the fins assembled that way it describes the fins with the left fin having an X on it and if you assemble it that way it's in the fins out configuration. Regardless what the sticker application page shows and what the blueprints show that's the way it's supposed to be assembled. The SR-71 did have the fins inward but the night raven is not entirely based on the SR-71 it also looks a lot like the MiG-31 from the movie Firefox and that plane had the fins out. The order of battle entry cannot be trusted it often took liberties with the design of the vehicles and the artist was probably looking at a reference photo of the SR-71 when he drew this night raven but this is not toy accurate it even shows the recon jet with landing gear which the toy did not have and the animation also can't be trusted the cartoon also took liberties with the design of the vehicles and the characters. I think they often change the designs just to make them easier to draw. The concept art for the night raven shows the fins out yojo.com shows the fins out 3djoes.com shows the fins out the box art shows the fins out. The way the night raven is normally assembled by collectors is with the fins out. Now if you prefer to have the fins tilted inward you can assemble it that way it doesn't damage the toy to assemble the fins that way and you may prefer it to look more like the SR-71 blackbird with the fins tilted in and if that's the way you want it you can do it that way but you're wrong. Another issue that was raised by fin gate is why is the GI Joe community not talking about this after all it is an error on the blueprints and if you try to assemble the night raven and put the stickers on it's kind of a glaring error so why is the GI Joe collecting community not talking about it? Well maybe this was talked about at some point I haven't been in the GI Joe collecting community forever so maybe this did come up at some point in the past and I'm just not aware of it. One reason why I think that this wouldn't be quite as big a deal in the GI Joe community as the equivalent error might be say in the masters of the universe collecting community is I think we're kind of used to this kind of error from Hasbro. We were often shown things in the paperwork that did not reflect what was on the toy. For instance the sky striker was shown on the box art having black fins but the vintage toy never had black fins. On his card art Duke has shown carrying the wrong rifle not the one that came with the action figure. The contents for the carded action figures were sometimes wrong as pointed out this week by formbx257 another excellent toy reviewer and there were numerous typos on the file cards it's like nobody was proofreading this stuff so maybe that's why it hasn't been a topic in the Joe community maybe we're just used to these minor errors but maybe others disagree with me maybe you think it's more of a big deal but as far as fingate goes I think there is a definite correct answer. Fins out! That was my review of the 1986 Cobra and Night Raven S3P and its pilot the Stratoviper I hope you enjoyed it and if you're thinking of getting one of these things I hope you found it informative. If you liked it don't forget to give it a thumbs up on YouTube and don't forget to subscribe to my channel I've got a lot of great new GI Joe toy reviews coming up you don't want to miss them and I'm on Facebook and Twitter don't forget to track me down there thanks for watching I'll see you next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review see you then here are the figures so separately laces out