 788 here and this is our first GI Joe toy review of 2016 and we are starting 2016 big and by big I mean the largest play set ever made. Of course I'm talking about GI Joe's aircraft carrier from 1985 the USS Flag. I would like to thank Carson at 3djoes.com for giving me permission to use the 3djoes.com USS Flag poster. You can pick up one of these bad boys at 3djoes.com. HCC 788 now presents to you the USS Flag. This is it the USS flag GI Joe's aircraft carrier from 1985 with Keelhaul GI Joe's Navy Admiral. The USS flag was available in 1985 and 1986 it was discontinued in 1987 and in 1987 GI Joe did have another big vehicle play set the defiant shuttle complex but as big as the defiant was it still wasn't as big as the USS flag in fact this was the largest toy play set ever made. USS flag is spelled with two G's and it's meant to be a person's name. It is named after General Flag a character from the GI Joe comic book who was killed by Major Blood in issue number 19. Admiral Keelhaul the action figure that came with the USS flag was also available in 1985 in 1986 of course with the USS flag but in 1989 he was available as a Malloway offer and then later in 1993 surplus Keelhaul action figures started to show up as prizes at Chuck E. Cheese the children's pizza restaurant. This figure must have been overproduced and Hasbro was just looking for any way to get rid of their overstock. There's been some speculation about what class of aircraft carrier the USS flag would be if it were a real aircraft carrier. I think it would probably be a Nimitz class named after the USS Nimitz CVN 68 which began service in 1975 and was still in service in 1985. The Nimitz class carrier is not a supercarrier it's not the largest class aircraft carrier but the GI Joe team would not need a large aircraft carrier as a special missions force it would really only need a small aircraft carrier from which to launch their missions. A Nimitz class carrier is 1092 feet long weighs 100,000 long tons and is nuclear powered. It has a carrier air wing of 90 aircraft. GI Joe action figures are at the 1 18th scale and this aircraft carrier despite being really big seven and a half feet long is still under scaled for a real aircraft carrier. If a real Nimitz class aircraft carrier were scaled down to 1 18th scale it would still be over 60 feet long. Since the USS flag is supposed to be an American aircraft carrier it has a CV number which is 99 and that would be CVN 99 since it would be nuclear powered. All US aircraft carriers are given CV numbers in the order in which they were commissioned. At this time the US Navy has planned up to CVN 80. There is no real CVN 99 at this point. However at some point there will be as the carrier numbers continue to go up. I think it will be interesting to see what the real CVN 99 is named. The 99 stickers on my USS flag deck are positioned so you can read the 99 facing toward the front from the back of the ship. Hasbro would have you put those stickers around the other way essentially mine are reversed. However for a real aircraft carrier this is the proper position for the deck numbers and so I really prefer it this way. We're going to take a closer look at the Admiral Keele Hall action figure in the second part of this review so I'm going to send them aside for now so we can take a close look at the USS flag. Let's take a look at the parts and the features of the USS flag starting with the bow with this very nicely shaped bow piece that has some detail on it. It has some sculpted what's supposed to be lights here nice details and it has two anchors. Now these anchors don't have chains on them you can't lower them to the bottom of the ocean they're more or less decorative but they do look very nice they're not just sculpted on there those are separate pieces a very nice looking bow on the starboard side of the ship near the front we have this missile control radar and it can rotate around it can't rotate all the way around there just isn't enough room and it can elevate it's a pretty simple design and there's another one like this at the rear of the ship and they have these antennae which can come off pretty easily they're very easily lost and can be hard to replace behind the radar dish there's this ladder that leads up to the flight deck on the port side of the ship directly across from the radar dish is what the blueprints call a 76 millimeter rapid-fire blaster anti- ship gun and it can rotate it can elevate got good elevation on that and this barrel kind of telescopes and it does sometimes tend to sort of collapse in like that but it should be fully extended for display there are two other identical guns elsewhere on the ship for a total of three anti-ship guns although this is billed as an anti-ship gun i tend to imagine it as an anti-missile gun specifically the phalanx ciws radar guided 20 millimeter gatling gun the phalanx anti-missile gun i think would be a much more effective defensive weapon for this ship to take down enemy aircraft and missiles that have been fired at it i think the carrier's best anti-ship weapon would be its aircraft not guns this is the forward most deck plate and it has stickers to reflect the uss flags cvn number which would be cvn 99 now most uss flags will have these stickers switched around so you can read the 99 facing this direction from this direction this looks like 66 when i got my uss flag thus these stickers were already oriented that in this position and i prefer it that way because on a real aircraft carrier this would be the correct orientation of the numbers to be read by aircraft landing on the deck of the carrier these deck plates are made of a sturdier type of plastic than the superstructure and the supports of this play set that's one of the first things you'll notice is there is definitely a quality difference in the plastic these deck plates are made out of the kind of plastic you would make playground equipment out of this next deck plate behind the 99 is a bit larger it stretches from here to about here and it's pretty plain it has this ladder you can go down to the radar station and it has a lot of these very long thin stickers and those can tend to just peel right up and they can be very difficult to replace reproduction stickers for the uss flag run about a hundred dollars and that's just for stickers so for that reason i have opted to not replace my missing stickers just really just not worry about stickers these stickers are fine on the starboard side of the ship we have this elevator and this elevator sort of works you're supposed to be able to just pull this out slightly and gently lower it down to the lower position but it has a lot of points where it fits into tracks and it gets off the tracks very easily then you're supposed to be able to lift it up it's supposed to go back up to the top and you push it in to lock it in place i prefer to leave it in the up position this elevator never really works very well for me here's another reason to leave the elevator in the up position this is what it looks like in the lower position it doesn't lead to anywhere it just has these support structures all around it if this were open then the elevator could lead to the under section of the ship but it doesn't so the elevator doesn't really go anywhere so there's really no point in using it i really just leave it in the up position the elevator is a bit too small for gijo helicopters so it's better used for smaller gijo aircraft like the skyhawk or since it is a flying submarine you could use it for the shark or since it does lower to what would be water level you could use it to launch boats this next deck plate the midship deck plate is huge it runs from here all the way down to here it measures more than two and a half feet wide more than three and a half feet long and this is why it costs so much to ship a uss flag the postage on this thing is a lot because that piece cannot be broken down and put in a smaller box it's one solid piece of plastic on that midship deck plate we have what the blueprints call a titanium-framed blast deflector and that can be lifted up and these hydraulic bars can be locked into place and you would put the sky striker in front of it in order to launch it off the deck of the aircraft carrier the blast deflector has some nice detail under it and these hydraulic bars have notches on them uh that hold them into place you can just put them in that position or you can just kind of slide them down and lower the blast deflector the uss flag does not have a simulated catapult system which a real aircraft carrier would have the uss flag should be a kato bar carrier kato bar standing for catapult assisted takeoff but arrested recovery the catapult system is a type of assisted takeoff and it essentially launches aircraft off the deck of the carrier back on the starboard side of the ship we have what the instruction sheet refers to as an admiral's launch this is often mistaken for a lifeboat this would be a pretty small lifeboat to evacuate everyone on the carrier the admiral's launch lowers on these boom arms it does not lower all the way to water level which i think is unfortunate it attaches to the boom arms by these pegs which peg into holes here and here on the middle section of the boat the admiral's launch has some detail and i think it's fine to describe this as an admiral's launch a launch is really just any type of open motorboat but i think this serves more as a captain's gig a captain's gig is a boat on most naval ships that serves as the captain's taxi so if admiral keelhaul wanted to travel from ship to ship he would just ride in the gig back over to the port side of the ship under the deck plates we have these support beams and we have this whole skirting which runs almost the full length of the ship and this is just a thin strip of plastic it's meant to give the illusion that the carrier has a hull when in fact there is no real hull there behind the skirting you would just see more support beams like this the whole deck is held up with support beams there's nothing really back there this is my least favorite part of the play set i think it looks kind of cheesy and i even think it looks kind of cheap despite the time and the effort that went into designing and making this play set this really i think indicates that they used the least amount of plastic possible to hold this thing up since there is no real hull the uss flag could not really float in water i don't know if anybody's tried that but that would be a bad idea the flight deck of the uss flag has this secondary strip which is angled on a real nimitz aircraft carrier there would be additional catapults so you could launch more jets from the deck of the carrier on the uss flag you can land jets on this strip using this arrester cable this is the flag's arrester cable and it consists of a long black string that's connected to a couple simulated gears and you can tighten the string by just pulling on one of the loops on one side or the other you can tighten that up and this works very similar to a real aircraft carrier's arrester cable uh aircraft that are landing are meant to snag the cable with the tail hook and that rapidly stops the landing aircraft the gi joe jet that came out in 1983 the sky striker did not have a tail hook however the uss flag came with a tail hook that could be retrofitted on the sky striker this tail hook is designed to fit in this gap here in the back of the sky striker it fits on there pretty firmly now the sky striker can land on the uss flag using its tail hook here on what is referred to as the fantail deck is the infamous fantail railing which is very easily lost broken and very difficult to replace you can fit an action figure in here but there's only barely enough room a shipwreck just barely has enough head clearance to fit in there the fantail also features another anti-ship gun and our second radar dish which looks the same as the one at the front of the ship i've removed the railing and the action figure so you can see some of the really excellent detail in there on the starboard side of the fantail we have our third and final anti-ship gun which is the same as the other two also back here there's an opening that leads to the lower part of the ship and that's a good place to store vehicles on the starboard side of the ship forward of the fantail we have this crane and this is a working crane it can rotate it can't quite rotate all the way around it is obstructed by the superstructure it has a black string and a yellow hook and you can use this wheel on this side of the crane to play the line out and extend the line and then you can reel that back in by just turning the wheel the other direction the crane has an engine cover with some nice engine detail in there and this engine cover is another frequently missing piece the flag came with two small vehicles this delivery trailer and this fuel tank and they can attach together you can separate them they attach with this little tow bar thing here this fuel tanker has two wheels and it has a couple fuel lines hoses with fuel pumps here in the back so you can pretend to fuel up your airplanes and they can connect on the back like that this yellow delivery trailer is a four-wheeled vehicle and it does have this tow bar on it which can be raised and lowered and it has a driver's seat that's right in the front so your driver can sit there and use these control joysticks to drive it around the delivery trailer also has an engine cover you can pop that off and see some engine detail there one bonus feature on this trailer is the knob on the tow bar can fit in the screw hole on the nose of the sky striker so you can connect those and once they are connected you can use the trailer to pull the sky striker into position the deck of the uss flag is so huge you can fit pretty much all of your gi joe airplanes and helicopters on it and a lot more you can fit a lot of other vehicles on it and you can fit dozens maybe even hundreds of action figures on the flag for that reason the uss flag works great as a display stand not just to display the glory of the carrier itself but also a lot of gi joe's other awesome vehicles that's all we can cover in part one of this review check out part two for the conclusion of the hcc 788 review of the uss flag