 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review and oh boy I am really excited about this one. I've been looking forward to doing this review for a month. This is my review of the 1982 and 1983 GI Joe VAMP with its driver clutch. Before we get started I want to remind everybody if you haven't subscribed yet go ahead and smash that subscribe button. If you like this video give it a thumbs up. If you don't like this video go ahead and give it a thumbs down either way is fine with me. If you're watching this video from any website other than YouTube I would greatly appreciate it if you would take a little trip over to YouTube to the hooded Cobra Commander 788 channel and go ahead and subscribe. I've got a lot of great vintage GI Joe toy and comic book reviews coming up and you don't want to miss it. This is the VAMP which the box called a multi-purpose attack vehicle also sometimes known as the GI Joe Jeep. It was sold in 1982 and 1983 and was discontinued in 1984 although in 1984 it was released as part of a box set that included the HAL laser cannon. This is the HAL laser cannon so the box set would have come with both of these. In 1984 the VAMP was replaced by the VAMP Mark II which was very similar to the VAMP in almost every respect except a few details were added and instead of a machine gun on the top it had a missile launch system and instead of being a green color it was colored kind of a desert camouflage beige. The VAMP was worth three flag points and the design was loosely based on a real world vehicle the Lamborghini Cheetah FMC XR311. I'll flash a picture of the Lamborghini Cheetah so you can compare the real world vehicle to this GI Joe reimagining of it. The VAMP came with an action figure the driver clutch and I'm going to take clutch out here and we will take a closer look at clutch a little bit later so I'm going to set him aside for now. Let's look at the parts of the VAMP. The most prominent feature of course is this machine gun that it has on the turret on the back here. This could be an anti-personnel or an anti-aircraft weapon. The blueprints for the VAMP refer to it as a 7.62 millimeter computer synchronized machine gun. The turret could elevate it could turn all the way around 360 degrees and it had this feature here on the side this handle which you moved it back and forth it would simulate the gun firing. The machine gun is mounted on a green turret that's the same color as the vehicle and the turret latches on there through a kind of key system. This notch here lines up with the hole there and secures the turret on and the turret in turn is connected to the machine gun by these pegs which slide in and latch in those holes. Now none of this snaps in permanently so you know these can all be taken apart which consequently means that these can be lost and you see a lot of VAMPs out there on eBay and what not that are missing the turret and the machine gun. Here at the back we also have two gas cans which the blueprints refer to as bulletproof gas cans and even though they're essentially the same they do have different stickers on them. There's gas can 1 and gas can 2. On the front of the VAMP we have what the blueprints refer to as a tow bar and inside we have one of the most frequently lost parts and that is the steering wheel. This steering wheel was actually the item that kept me from having this piece completed for a really long time. It took me a good long while to track down a steering wheel for this thing that wasn't ridiculously expensive. The steering wheel slides into this hole there that also has a key to it. This notch goes in the top and once it goes in it can come out pretty easily and the steering wheel does not really turn it's not a functioning steering wheel. Since the VAMP has a lot of parts that can be easily taken off these are frequently lost so if you're trying to complete a VAMP you would do yourself a favor to try to find one that still has the steering wheel because you will have trouble finding one if there's not one already in there. These gas cans they can be found sometimes without the stickers and you can find the gun and the turret reasonably easily but sometimes they can run you quite a bit to buy just the parts. Let's look at some of the features of the VAMP and if we turn it over and look at the bottom it has something that's not obvious but is yet one of my favorite features and that is the metal bar axles for the wheels. These allow the wheels to roll quite freely and it makes it a very sturdy vehicle it's a pretty durable toy. I have occasionally seen a few of these with the wheels broken off and on this one you can even see there's a little bit of stress on the plastic there but despite that really you'd have to abuse this thing pretty well to get the wheels to come off they're on there quite solidly these are plastic wheels it would have been nice to have rubber wheels but that's okay I think the metal bars for the axles make up for that making this a nice solid vehicle something that a kid could play with and not risk damaging too much. At the back here there is a standard GI Joe tow hook which could be used to tow vehicles like the HAL let's just hook it up here for a demonstration the HAL would just hook its tow arms to that and since the HAL had wheels the VAMP could pull it along even though these wheels are pretty tough and are not going to break too easily they do have a downside and that is after a while they tend to squeak they can develop the most ear piercing squeak that you've ever heard there's kind of squeal whenever you roll them around this one has a bit of a squeak. On the front here we have what the blueprints called a heavy duty winch and I've said it before and I'll say it again it would have been really nice if this had been a real winch. Some of the other GI Joe vehicles especially the helicopters had working winches and if they had made this a working winch that would have been a really neat very cool feature but it's just kind of molded on there just a piece of plastic and that's alright I guess. On the front here it has this small gun looking thing it almost looks like a small machine gun right in front of the steering wheel but the blueprints actually don't say what this is I'm not sure exactly what this is supposed to be. Looking at the interior of the vamp we have some detail in there we have a gear shift we have what looks like a radio in the center there and we have a little bit of detail on the dashboard and that's nice that's good detail but that's actually considerably less detail than the dashboard on the Stinger Cobra Jeep that was obviously model after the vamp. The Stinger by comparison has a lot of detail on the inside much more detail a lot more instruments a lot more gauges that really is going the extra mile by Hasbro giving us some detail that really you probably wouldn't have noticed had it not been there it would have been nice to see that kind of detail on the vamp but this vehicle was in the first line of GI Joe vehicles when GI Joe was relaunched in 1982 so for that early era this is acceptable I can accept this level of detail in the back we have a rack to hold the gas cans and honestly when I was a kid I never had much use for these gas cans you know what despite the fact that I could refill the vamp with these gas cans if I needed to somehow when I was playing with this it never ran out of gas apparently GI Joe vehicles get unimaginable gas mileage because the thing never ran out of gas and I never had to refuel it so this really is kind of useless to me the Cobra Stinger replaced that with a platform and a bar with foot pegs that could hold two action figures and that I think is much more useful than a gas can rack that turned the Stinger in from a two person vehicle to a four person vehicle and I think that adds a lot of play value to the toy the cab is kind of caged in here with a roll cage and this is a little bit of a weak point in the design of this vehicle these roll bars have a tendency to break here and here where they meet the body of the vehicle they can just kind of snap right there if too much pressure is put on them now if it does break you can re-glue it and it's pretty much invisible you can't really tell but if you are going to ship one of these to a buyer or if you are looking one for one to buy yourself just be cautious about that make sure that that's still solid on there make sure that it's not broken and don't put too much pressure on that to make sure that it doesn't break on you let's look at the action figure that came with the vamp this was clutch he had one accessory and that was his helmet looking at the sculpt of clutch he did reuse a lot of parts from other figures from the 1982 release but that was pretty much normal a lot of the 1982 figures did share a lot of parts between them in particular clutch has the same head as breaker obviously they've changed the paint on the beard and the hair and he also shared a head with rock and roll they also shared the same arms and the same legs but clutch did have a unique chest and back piece those pieces were only used for clutch and were not reused for any other action figures I mentioned that the vamp was sold in 1982 and 1983 the main difference between the 1982 version and the 1983 version was actually the action figure the 1982 release of the GI Joe action figures had what they referred to as straight arm articulation which was a hinge here at the elbow that would allow them to bend at the elbow but that's all they could do other than you know their articulation at the shoulder but starting in 1983 they re-released all of the 1982 action figures with what they referred to as swivel arm battle grip and that added a point of articulation at the bicep so not only did they have a hinge at the elbow they also had a swivel at the bicep allowing the arm to go all the way around this was a very nice new feature which allowed the figures to hold their weapons with a two-handed grip looking at the rest of the articulation for clutch he could move his head from side to side starting with the GI Joe figures in 1985 they had a ball joint here at the neck so that they could look up and down as well but in 1982 they could just turn their heads left and right the action figure was held together by an a rubber o-ring that looped around through the inside of the action figure which allowed him to move at the waist a little bit his arm could swing out it could rotate all the way around at the shoulder as noted before he had a hinge at the elbow and a swivel at the bicep his legs could spread out about that far and he could move his legs about 90 degrees at the hip and his knee could bend about 90 degrees let's take a look at the file card this file card was printed on the back of the box that the vamp came in there's nothing on the other side it was just the back of the box and you were encouraged to cut this out because it contained a short biography of the action figure that came with the vehicle and this file card makes clutch out to be kind of a an interesting character it says vamp driver codename clutch file name lance j steinberg primary military specialty transportation secondary military specialty infantry birthplace asbury park new jersey and it says here that clutch was a mechanic at many's mean machines and was heavily involved in racing street machines prior to enlistment graduated advanced infantry training covert ops school executive bodyguard school that's interesting ranger school qualified expert m14 m16 m1911a1 m3a1 m79 and m60 this quote down here says he greases his hair with motor oil rarely shaves choose on the same toothpick for months clutch still calls women chicks and if you remember clutch from the early gi joe comic books he was always trying to hit on scarlet which she regularly rebuffed essentially he sexually harassed scarlet throughout the entire his entire appearance in the comic book series nowadays he would probably be court marshal maybe brought up on charges but i guess in the 80s you could get away with that kind of thing i always imagine clutch is kind of like a greaser uh but with a thick new jersey accent maybe a cross between this and this that's my review of the 1982 and 1983 vamp with its driver clutch and his file card thank you for watching don't forget to hit that subscribe button and hit the thumbs up if you like this video and hit the thumbs down if you didn't like this video but stay tuned for more vintage gi joe tour reviews and comic book reviews coming up you won't want to miss it i'll catch you guys later