 Cobra Commander 788 here, and this is a review of a book. This is The Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe 1982-1994 by Mark Belomo, 3rd edition. This book is brand new. It just shipped in 2018. I've had my copy for a couple weeks now and I'm ready to talk about it since this is probably the most important book in G.I. Joe collecting. This book is called The Ultimate Guide because it includes information about every domestic U.S. released G.I. Joe toy from 1982-1994. That is considered the vintage era. That covers pretty much everything I'm trying to cover on this channel. So this is like my YouTube channel in book form, but better. The third edition updates the second edition and the second edition of The Ultimate Guide has been the Bible for collectors for several years. It was published in 2009 and it's been out of print for a few years, which means it can be hard to find and expensive. Mark Belomo has written other books about toy collecting, such as The Ultimate Guide to Vintage Star Wars action figures. He's a fairly prolific writer on the subject of toy collecting, so if you are interested in toy collecting, he probably has something for you. Since the third edition was published, the prices for the second edition seem to have come down a little bit, so if you want to pick up a copy of the second edition, it's not quite as hard to get as it used to be. We were given the expectation that there would be no new photography or text in the third edition, so you might wonder if you even need to pick up the third edition, especially if you already have an earlier edition. But after going through it, I did notice a few updates that I think are significant. While most of the third edition is exactly the same as the second edition, there are some spots where both photography and text have changed. This book includes a price guide. It is an updated price guide from the second edition. The second edition actually says it's an identification and price guide on the front cover. That is not on the front cover of the third edition. I think they were maybe trying to de-emphasize the price guide, and I can understand why. Prices are so volatile nowadays, so any printed price guide is going to be outdated almost as soon as it's printed. I've got some bookmarks here because I've got a few things I want to talk about. We'll go through each of those. Cracking the book open. We have a lot of G.I. Joe. We have a table of contents. We have a forward by Kirk Bezigian. I've talked about Kirk Bezigian before he was at Hasbro at the time the vintage G.I. Joe line was running, and this is a new forward. This is not a copy of the forward that was in the second edition. The forward in the second edition was by Larry Hama, the writer of the G.I. Joe comic book. As you can see, it's much more succinct. Another thing that's updated is the intro spread for each series year. This is for 1982, and this appears to be new photography with a fancy background, kind of an action scene. It looks really cool. In the second edition, this is the introduction to 1982 in the second edition, much more plain, just a plain white background. So I think this is a nice improvement over the second edition. The text appears to be the same, but that new photography just looks very nice. As we get into the meat of the book, we have page after page of excellent photography of all of the figures and accessories and the vehicles with information about each. It even covers the variants. It is nicely done, and it's easy to see why a lot of collectors consider this to be their Bible. It is very thorough. There are a couple oddities in this book, as pointed out in Form BX257's review of the second edition. For instance, Grand Slam has the wrong waste piece here for the 1982 edition of that figure. But it's hard for me to complain about things like that. There are really not very many mistakes considering how much information is in this book. Certainly, this book has far fewer mistakes than I make. That's a pretty nice spread for 1987 with Battle Force 2000. As I mentioned, this is mostly the same as the second edition. But there are some updates, and I'd like to point them out now. This is the page for Steel Brigade. I'm a big fan of Steel Brigade. I like the figure and the concept behind it. But this is different from the second edition, and it's different in a very important way. As you can see, there are four variations of Steel Brigade and the Goldhead Steel Brigade that a lot of us regard as version two. They are labeled version A, B, C, and D. This is different from the second edition, which had five variations of Steel Brigade plus the Goldhead version. In the second edition, we have five variations of Steel Brigade plus the Goldhead Steel Brigade. They are labeled version A, B, C, D, E, and Goldhead is labeled version F. Version E is missing in the third edition. That is not a mistake. There is a very good reason for that. Collectors have reached a consensus that version E was not actually released by Hasbro. It was a kit bash from earlier versions and should no longer be counted as a variant. This is an important update to me, and as a collector, it's something I like to see. And it's one reason I'm happy to have the third edition. The text was updated to remove the information about version E, and the Goldhead version is no longer called version F. In fact, it doesn't have a letter designation. It's just called the Goldhead version. And that is fine with me. I consider the Goldhead Steel Brigade to be version two. What is not on this page is a text update about why version E was removed. I know why it was removed, but a newer collector may not know why there is no longer a version E. This for me is the most important page in this book. This is an actual update to the hobby. And I think Mr. Belomo should be very proud of this update and should write something about it. Here's an update to the photography. In the second edition, in the entry for 1991 Desert Scorpion, a couple of the accessories, the black hose and the yellow missile, were not in the photograph. Well, that has been fixed in this edition. This book does not focus on the packaging or the file cards. It does not reprint any of the artwork or the file cards. And that's fine. I think most collectors focus on the toys, the figures, the accessories, the vehicles. But there's one thing that I think is very strange. In this entry for Red Star in 1991, it talks about file card variants. This is helpful to me because I do collect file cards. And I'd like to track down the variants. This is actually the first I found out about those variants. In the entry for buzzer, the Dreadnock in 1985, it also talks about file card variants. And I do think those variants are very interesting. But then over in the entry for Zartan, this talks about the text of his file card, makes a lot of comments about his background as stated on the file card. But there is no mention of the file card variant. And I think this is one of the most important file card variants. Another surprise, the entry for the fridge mail away figure is with the 1986 series. All the information I have in the case this figure was released in early 1987. Maybe this is categorized by when the mail offer was issued. But my understanding is the figure was released in 1987. If I'm wrong about that, I am open to correction. One thing this book does not have is an index. And this type of book really does need an index. It is a reference book. An index is expected. But Mark Belomo has made some comments that something along those lines is coming soon. So I will be on the lookout for that. Looking at the ultimate guide to GI Joe overall, I really like this book. Since it is hardbound, it has a feel of quality. I can see why some people who already own the second edition may skip the third edition since the updates are minimal. But I think the updates are significant enough to make this worth it to me. Since the second edition has been out of print and prices for copies has gone through the roof. This is an excellent resource for anyone who was not able to get their hands on the second edition. All those great photos are there. All that information, all that great research, it's all here and for an affordable price. Some of you may be thinking there's no reason to buy this book at all. You may think all this information is on the internet. So why buy a book when you can just use Google? But I would disagree. I've been researching GI Joe for a few years now for this show. And I can tell you that some of the information in this book is not readily available on the internet. This is not just a print out of Google. This is not just yojo.com in book form. This has a lot of information you just can get anywhere else. I have to admit though, the price guide probably isn't too helpful. It is updated from the second edition and painstakingly researched. But prices being what they are, any prices in this book is probably going to be outdated within a few months or even a few weeks. If you're a GI Joe collector, or if you just have fond memories of these toys, or if you have a family member who likes GI Joe, and you're wondering what to get them for Christmas, this is something to look at. That was my review of the ultimate guide to GI Joe 1982 to 1994 third edition by Mark Balomo. I hope you enjoyed it. I have full in depth vintage GI Joe toy reviews coming up on this channel. 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