 Hello everybody, HoodedCoverCommander788 here, and this is a special video. I recently picked up this sealed-in-the-box GI Joe 1993 Mega Marine's Monster Blaster. And I don't normally get sealed items like this, but I got a really good deal on it. I was inspired by GI Joe Berg, who recently got one of these, they put that up in a video and I thought it looked pretty cool, so I had to get one for myself. So I got it in the box, and what I'm going to do with this is, I'm going to open this and assemble it. Now I understand, to some of you, that is sacrilege. Opening a sealed vintage item is unconscionable, and please believe me, I don't want to offend you, so trigger warning if that will be disturbing to you. But those considerations are outweighed by the fact that I just really want to. I haven't opened a sealed vintage GI Joe vehicle since 1988, and I've never opened a vehicle from this late in the line, 1993. So I'm going to do it. I'm really curious what's in here. I want to see what kind of paperwork came with it, what the instruction sheet looked like, how it was packaged, and so I'm really excited about digging in here and seeing what's in the box. So here we go. This is the unboxing and assembly of the 1993 Monster Blaster. So let's open this up, and I apologize if you get some background noise. I'm trying to keep the editing in this video to a minimum, so you may get some noises from inside my house. I can't help that, but I'll try to skip those if I can. So here I am. I am cutting the tape on this end, and I am opening this vehicle for the first time ever. Now this will not be a review. I'm not reviewing it. In fact, I will not review this vehicle until GI Joeberg has had a chance to review it. They got theirs first, and as far as I'm concerned, they have dibs on it. Here's what this looks like from the open end. Looks like we have a cardboard tray. Let's pull that out. Is it a tray, or is it just a flap? Yup, it's a tray. So cardboard tray pulls out. All right, that's so cool. Empty inside the box now, and there's the tray with the vehicle parts. Looks like that's the cannon there. Main body of the vehicle looks like it's already assembled, or partially assembled. It looks like it's not quite all the way. There's the shell. We have a sealed ziplock bag with the wheels, the sticker sheets, and the instruction sheets. So I'll open that in a moment. We have another sealed bag, not a ziplock bag this time, with a tree with some plastic parts, but it looks like some of those have broken off. I think the first thing we need to do is open this because it has the instruction sheets in it. Now I'm a big fan of G.I. Joburg, so if you don't listen to that podcast, you should, and they have a great YouTube channel as well. I think they're great. I try to never miss an episode. The instruction sheet and blueprints. sticker sheet, and there we have the instruction sheet and the blueprints. Pretty standard. One thing that I've noticed that isn't in here, there's no literature, there's no catalogue, nothing to advertise other items that are available, which is a little bit surprising. None of that in this box. That's a little disappointing. Let's start the assembly, and we'll start with step one, the body assembly, which looks like it's almost already assembled. I think we just have to snap it in place. So let's see. Let's do that carefully. There we go. That is snapped in place. Step two is I got to open this. These are all loose. These are loose, and I'm actually, I'm a little curious about something because something doesn't seem quite right. This, I don't recall Ziploc bags ever being used for vehicles, parts and instructions. And this bag appears to have been taped. This was allegedly meant sealed in the box, but now I'm wondering if this was repackaged at some point. Although if this wasn't really sealed, meant sealed in the box, I feel a little less bad about opening it and assembling it. It appears to all be present and accounted for, but if it had been opened before, then it was not as advertised when I purchased it. So interesting. I might learn a little less in there. Okay, step two. We're supposed to put this canopy on here, snap that on like so. Carefully. Looks like, almost got it. There we go. Okay, next step. We have a gun bracket and a gun. According to the instructions, this is a yellow gun bracket and a yellow gun. These are both green, so they must have changed the color at some point, but did not change the directions. Looks like it goes, yeah, looks like it goes that way, so like so, not quite. There we go. And gun assembly. Carefully snap that on. This looks fragile. This looks like it could break very easily. There we go. I managed to get it on without breaking it, so that swings at two points. That's kind of cool. Not bad. I did want to talk to you guys about just general stuff and I wanted you all to know. I really do enjoy doing this show. I love it. It's fantastic. You've all been so great to me and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Every once in a while, it's just the nature of doing a YouTube show. You get some negative feedback. If you are a content creator like me, it's hard to not let that get to you, but I'm not going to let it get to me, because by and large, I mean, nearly all of the feedback that I've gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. You've got to focus on the positive. One wise person once said that if you're going to do a show like this, you've got to do it for the people who enjoy it. Don't do it for the people who come along and troll and hate it. Don't do it for them. So if you are enjoying the show, I can promise you that I'm not going to change the show or quit doing the show just because somebody comes along and leaves a nasty comment. It's just not how we're going to do it. I will do it for you and I will always keep trying to improve the show, so hopefully you will enjoy it more. It took me just a minute to figure out how to assemble these rear guns, but I think we've got it. I think I understand now. The instructions are not clear, but just looking at it and how it's designed, I was kind of able to figure it out. So one thing that I guess I can complain about is I don't think the instructions are written all that well, and these guns are awfully difficult to get in. It was really not easy to get these rear guns on. I did it as instructed, but that didn't really work. So I had to kind of just figure it out based on the way it's designed. These rear turrets are also very tight. They just barely turn. So let's move on to step five, assembling the main gun, cannon assembly. Well the instructions say to assemble the trigger and trigger bolt, but that seems to already be done, which again suggests that this has been opened before. So yeah, the trigger and bolt is already assembled on this main cannon piece. That kind of takes care of steps five and six. All right, under here there is a slot, and I'm supposed to put this here on it, looks like that way, there we go, and that fits on here somehow. Let's see it like that. I see how it goes. All right, the support goes in here, and that clips on there. There we go, cool, not a bad little deal. All right, so you can prop the gun up like that, and then lift it and lower it. Very nice, I like that. That's cool. All right, so we've got that top canopy and cannon portion assembled. Now firing cannon, oh let's find out how we fire the cannon. Pull trigger bolt back, like so, looks like it's breech loaded, that's cool. Insert missile into cannon chamber, there, with Finn pointing up as shown. Finn is pointing up, push trigger bolt forward and over to lock and load missile. Okay, lock and loaded. Let's trigger to fire, ah yeah, works, cool. I like that, this is a really cool way of loading a spring loaded weapon. I like that a lot, I do. So we've got some missiles here, just put the missiles on, these tabs here, and then of course we've got to put the wheels on. The wheels, it looks like they just press on a mushroom clip, let's see, make sure I'm doing it right. Now four wheels, just snap them on, should be, there we go, there we go, one, two, right, that is fully assembled, it is now time to put on the stickers. This is the part I've been most looking forward to putting the stickers on, and so here are the instructions for that here, and so I'm just going to follow that. Looks like we have paper stickers, not our classic vinyl stickers, but I suppose that's okay. Now off the bat, something doesn't make sense, it looks like they want you to put this stay clear sticker right across this ribbed section on the cannon, and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, because it doesn't look like it would stay on there very well. And there's no blank space for it, you would have to put it right across that ribbing. Alright, this is what the instructions say to do, so that's what I'm going to do. Let's carefully peel this sticker off the sheet, try to get it as straight as possible, make so, there we go, there's one on the other side as well, I'll just do that one now. Sometimes people tell me they don't know how I can put a show out like this every week, and I do admit it can be difficult sometimes, it's tough to keep up that workload, but I love doing it, and what keeps me going is the people, there's the fantastic people that I've met through this project and have been so kind to me, and so sometimes I get burned out a little bit, sometimes I get tired, but it really is pretty easy to stay motivated. You have so much positivity, so much positive feedback, that really keeps you going, that will make up for a lot of long days and late nights. There are a couple things maybe I should make clear. When I refer to you dear viewers, I don't call you fans, I don't consider you to be my fans, I do call you viewers because you are viewing this, but I don't want to use any language that elevates me above you. I don't consider us to be unequal in any way, you who are watching this and me making it. I'm a collector like a lot of you, I'm a G.I. Joe fan like a lot of you. I just happen to have a camera and I point it at myself sometimes and talk about these things. I see all of you as almost like an extended family, my G.I. Joe family. I've met so many great people and it's been very rewarding and enjoyable, but not fans. I don't have fans, I just have people who view these videos and who go on this journey with me and hopefully enjoy talking about G.I. Joe. So let's put that one on. It's another one where there's not really a good clear space for it. We're going to put it on where it looks like it's supposed to go. I think there could have been better coordination between the vehicle design and the sticker design. I think that is a little bit lacking, but it's still going to look pretty good when it's done. This project has given me the opportunity to work with some very talented people, just amazing people. You talk about Timmer and FormBX257, Joe Berg and Joefan82, just to rattle off a few. Just incredible people who do great things and I'm privileged to participate in that. Thanks to all of them for letting me collaborate with them, letting me be on their projects and coming in on my projects. All those guys really are as cool as they seem to be. There we go, the all-important mega marine sticker. Got to make sure that goes on well. Looks like we have some headlights we got to put on here. I'm not doing these in any particular order, but they'll all get on and they'll all get on properly. Lined up as well as I can do it. Of course, when I was a kid doing this, I wasn't nearly this careful putting on the stickers. I wasn't completely half-hazard with it, but if the sticker was a little bit off, didn't care that much. To be totally truthful when I'm buying a loose vintage item, I still don't care that much about the stickers. I like to have them, I like to have them in nice shape. However, if I get something and the stickers are not perfect, it doesn't usually bother me very much. That's not high on my priority list. Got two GI Joe stickers that go on the side and the front of the vehicle. Like, let me make sure I do it right. This is another sticker that is going to go right over some of the sculpting. And I do not love that. That's not well designed there. I definitely would have done that differently. Let's do the other side. Another thing I try not to do on this channel is I don't want to make this channel about bragging about the things that I have. And I see some toy channels that kind of do this and it rubs me the wrong way. This channel is not about showing you how much more stuff I have than you have. You know, I'm still in a lot of ways a novice collector. There are a lot of people out there that have a whole lot more than I do. It's not about owning more stuff than the next guy. For collectors who actually enjoy basically lording their collection over other people. Well, I can't judge you. Everybody's got to collect for their own reasons. But that's certainly not my reason. So I try not to present my stuff, my toys, in a way that is going to make it look like I'm just trying to make people jealous of the stuff that I have. That is absolutely not my intention. It's not like I'm rich and have tons of disposable income and have been collecting for years and years so that I've accumulated just warehouses of GI Joe stuff, not at all. I have very specific collecting goals, most of which are related to producing this show. But other than that, I don't need more. I do not need to have a warehouse full of vintage toys. I just want to have the right toys to show you guys. And really, I don't entirely look at this as just my show. I look at this as our show. Now, of course, you know, I'm the one producing it and so I have to make all of the artistic decisions. But we have been on this journey together for a while now and I kind of view us as going on the journey together. We all, I hope, learn something through this process. And so, you know, I kind of feel like we're, in a way, partners. And some of you are supporting me on Patreon and in that sense, you're quite literally partners. And I've tried to show my appreciation there. I really, I can't say enough how much I appreciate all of the support that I've gotten from all of you. There was a time, not all that long ago, when I thought I was just going to have to stop doing the show. Because I had to leave the first job I had after law school and take a much less paying, much lower paying job. And I didn't really have very much money to spend on GI Joe toys at the time. And frankly, I was running out of things to review. And so it came to a point where I was going to have to make a decision about whether or not I was even going to continue to do the show. I would be left with nothing new to review. I guess I could just keep reviewing the same stuff I've already reviewed, but nobody wants to watch that. But yeah, it was pretty tight for a while. That is when I opened the Patreon account the first time. And that was like kind of a, you know, sort of a Hail Mary to see if I could get some kind of assistance in keeping the show going. And now I have a good number of supporters on Patreon. And that blows my mind. That is like some very tangible assistance that people are directly giving to the show. And it's made a difference. I have purchased equipment for the show that I have needed. And soon I need to purchase more equipment for the show because my camera and my laptop are getting a little bit long in the tooth. Their functionality is becoming questionable. And so I'm just going to have to replace them in the not too distant future. But the support of you guys makes that possible. So you have kept this show alive. And that has made a world of difference to me personally. That has just personally is very touching to me. And I want to make sure everyone knows how much I appreciate that. That's why, like when people send donations to the show, that is very deeply and personally meaningful to me. Because this show is meaningful to me. This show means something to me personally. I put a lot of myself into this show. And the fact that people respond and they like it and they show support is... Well, I don't really know. I can't really put the words to it. But thank you. And thank you for watching this. We have a fully assembled Monster Blaster. The more I've gotten into this assembly, the more I think this wasn't factory sealed. I think this was opened and then resealed. Because I do believe there should have been a catalog in here. And I think the plastic in which it was repackaged is not original. Or at least had been opened before. And I think all of the pieces were broken off of the accessories trees by a previous owner. That's what I think. But despite that, all the pieces were there. And intact. We had a good sticker sheet. We had a good instruction sheet. And we have a fully assembled vehicle. And I have to say this is really interesting. The colors are a bit different from what I would choose. But still, not bad. GI Joburg has dibs on this one for now. But at least you get to see it on this channel for a few moments. There is the Monster Blaster from 1993. Thank you everyone for watching. I will see you in the next review video.