 This episode of HCC 788 brought to you in part by the die-cast enterprise. Join us each week as we discuss the sexual proclivities of Commander William T. Riker. The bravado comedy of Lieutenant War. And the adorable monkey shines if one Wesley the sweater crusher. Or maybe we'll just talk about the golden girls. Or hairstyles. Or cartoons. That's equally likely. We also like G.I. Joe. There, we tied that in nicely. Well done everyone on that. By all our play sets and toys. Cobra Commander 788 here. Bacca! Ready. Ready. Ready. Ready. Silence. Kill. Hey hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. And this week I am reviewing the 1988 G.I. Joe Swat Specialist Shockwave. And this is a character that could never be caught off guard. He has guns and knives everywhere on him. And he is a fan favorite and one that has been requested many times. So I'm excited to review Shockwave now. Before we get started I wanted to thank Sean Hutchinson for this t-shirt design. You can get this t-shirt and others on the website HCC788.com. Be ready for an attack at any time. HCC788 presents Shockwave. It is Shockwave, G.I. Joe's Swat Specialist. Shockwave was first introduced in 1988 and was also available in 1989. He was discontinued for the year 1990. He did not have a direct replacement in 1990. The closest to a replacement that year would probably have been Bullhorn, the Intervention Specialist, or maybe Law Version 2. Swat SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. It's a branch of law enforcement that uses military equipment and is deployed in high risk situations for which normal law enforcement is not equipped or trained. G.I. Joe is usually depicted as an inter-service military team of anti-terrorism specialists. Law enforcement would normally be outside the scope of their mission. In the G.I. Joe universe though, their authority and jurisdiction is a little fuzzy. They frequently carry out missions that would normally be the purview of state, local, or federal law enforcement. In 1992, G.I. Joe expanded its law enforcement duties with the sub-team DEF, Drug Elimination Shockwave Version 3 was in that sub-team. For G.I. Joe, Shockwave could operate as an urban warfare specialist in addition to his law enforcement duty. Coincidentally, Shockwave shares his name with a transformer, a Decepticon, and there must be something in the name because the transformer Shockwave is about as cool as the G.I. Joe Shockwave. Let's take a look at Shockwave's accessories and oh my god, does he come with a few accessories? With his primary weapon, which the content of the card on which he was packaged just calls a machine gun. From the card art for Shockwave, it looks like this is intended to be an oozy pistol with suppressor and stock, but the weapon the figure comes with doesn't really look like that at all. It's the same basic shape but with different details, it's clearly supposed to be some kind of submachine gun or machine pistol. The stock is very thin and often broken, so be careful with that. Shockwave's second weapon is what the card contents call a pistol, not very descriptive. What type of pistol could this be? This could be a Desert Eagle. The reason I say that is because of the beveled slide and it's kind of squared off here at the end and this little hanging down thing may be intended to approximate the Desert Eagle's angular finger guard, but it is stylized so it's hard to know what real world influence this might have come from. Because Bromay have been worried about copyright infringement, so they didn't make exact copies of real weapons, but that didn't bother them when they made almost perfect replicas of other real weapons in the past. Shockwave's next accessory is his knife and the knife holsters in the backpack, which is an excellent feature, I like it. The knife itself is silver, it's kind of a big Rambo style knife. Shockwave is not the first GI Joe figure to have a knife with storage. The 1987 Falcon had a black knife that connected to his backpack similar to Shockwave's. In 1988, the same year Shockwave was released, Hidden Run had a knife that connected to his duffel bag. As if we haven't already looked at enough excellent accessories, Shockwave has one more, his backpack. The backpack is in a dark blue color, the same color as his chest and back. It has the teeth, the knife just slides right in there like that and fits in very securely. And it has what looks like a sculpted mag light and some pouches. Really nicely done here, an excellent backpack and I'm glad they didn't go too crazy with the color scheme and give him a different colored backpack. I think this works especially for his specialty, a nice dark color is perfect for Shockwave. One odd thing about this backpack is on the backside. It has these sculpted ridges and these sort of match the ridges on Shockwave's back. It looks like they did this with the intention of the backpack fitting more flush against the back of the figure. But it doesn't really matter on mine, this is about as close as it goes. Let's take a look at the articulation on Shockwave. He had the articulation that was standard on GI Joe figures by 1988. He could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move at the elbow about 90 degrees and a swivel at the bicep. 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 bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpted design and color of Shockwave and just taking a look at his color scheme. You have light blue with blocks of dark blue and then you have this dark blue and yellow camouflage pattern. They were probably trying to approximate a blue digital urban camouflage but the technology just wasn't advanced enough at the time to print a pattern on the figure with the fine details so instead it kind of looks like Tetris blocks. Still, it's not bad. The yellow seems a little out of place but they needed some color that would pop to break up all the blue. Taking a look at Shockwave's head, he has a light blue cap with dark blue camouflage pattern. He has a dark blue balaclava mask and the mask is done right. It looks like it's made of a heavy fabric. It does not show the outline of his nose or mouth. What I'm talking about here is, for instance, with beach head, you can see the outline of his lips and his nose right through the mask. It kind of looks like beach head is biting the inside of his mask so you can see the outline of his lips very clearly. It just kind of looks weird. I much prefer the way they did it with Shockwave. On his chest he has a solid dark blue vest. It is probably a bulletproof vest. He has a sculpted knife and straps for the backpack. There are no paint applications on the chest or the back at all. Many paint apps for the chest may have been cut due to the expense of the two-tone camouflage pattern on the rest of the figure. That must have been pretty expensive to produce. Nonetheless, this knife is an unpainted detail. Maybe a little bit of paint on there might have helped it pop out and enhance the detail a little bit. I do have to get a little bit of a knock for being totally unpainted on the chest and back. But the color, the dark blue does work really well with the overall color scheme. On his arms he has long sleeves with that blue and yellow camouflage pattern. He has dark blue gloves. His waist piece is light blue and he has a dark blue belt. It looks like he has magazine pouches on his left hip. Moving down his legs he has that light blue color with the dark blue and yellow camouflage pattern. Then he has a pistol holster on each thigh. This guy is really heavily armed. Looking at his lower legs, on his right leg he has a pocket and then on the inside of his left leg he has a knife, another knife. This is his third knife if you count his accessory. And unfortunately this is an unpainted knife and this definitely would have looked better if it had a paint application on there. That's an unfortunate unpainted detail. We finish it up with a pair of dark blue boots. It is impressive just how well armed this figure is. I mean two sculpted on knives, two sculpted on pistols and a pistol, a submachine gun and knife accessories. This guy is prepared for anything. I mean suppose you want to attack Shockwave and he's just standing there casually. You think you've got the drop on him but whoop, pistol, whoop, there's another one. Or he's going down to tie his shoelaces. You think you've got him but knife, stab, stab, stab. Shockwave is so well armed. He just might survive in my house. Let's take a look at Shockwave's file card and on his file card we have his portrait here looking excellent. His code name is Shockwave and he's the SWAT specialist. His file name is Jason A. Faria. His primary military specialty is special weapons and tactics or SWAT. His secondary military specialty is choir so he is literally a choir boy. This is something GI Joe file cards did sometimes, give them a contrasting secondary specialty. His birthplace is Dearborn, Michigan and Dearborn, Michigan is in the Detroit Metro area. His grade is E4. This paragraph says, Shockwave was the youngest member of the Detroit Police Department SWAT team and the holder of two citations for bravery when he signed up for and was accepted by the Joe team. This implies that Shockwave was accepted for the GI Joe team straight from the street with only civilian experience. I tend to think of GI Joe as a military unit that draws members from the elite units of all armed services. It seems odd to me that someone could be a Joe without military experience. His reputation as a SWAT specialist must have impressed the recruiters. When asked why he left a promising career to work longer hours for less money, kicking down doors on better armed adversaries, Shockwave replied, What? You think I do this for the money? The second paragraph says, Everyone on a SWAT team has a specific job. Like in a choir, choirs have tenors, baritones, altos, etc. SWAT teams have sharpshooters, climbers, and inside men. Shockwave is the door kicker. He's the first inside and the first to find out how bad it really is. He's also a half decent tenor when his voice is in shape. The SWAT team choir analogy is almost poetic. Shockwave is a renaissance man. He's a door kicker and a decent tenor. I think there's an unspoken subtext for this file card related to the war on drugs. SWAT teams played a major role in the ramp up of law enforcement efforts toward illegal drugs in the 70s and the 80s. It kind of makes sense that Shockwave would be in DEF. Without casting judgments on the politics of it, these figures and file cards are like time capsules for the attitudes of the time. And I can kind of appreciate them at that level. Unfortunately, Shockwave did not make many appearances in GI Joe media, at least not in his version 1 uniform. He did appear in the DEAK GI Joe animated series, but only in his version 3 uniform. His only animated appearance in his version 1 uniform was in a commercial. Very briefly, for maybe 1.5 seconds total, he mans the gun turret of the Desert Fox. In the GI Joe comic book, Shockwave first appeared in issue number 86, the 25th anniversary special. That issue that Joe's defend a secret installation in the Chrysler building from attack by Cobra forces disguised as iron grenadiers. It is an appropriate urban warfare setting for Shockwave. He made a few other appearances in the main comic book series, but not many in his version 1 uniform. It would have been nice to see more of him with his classic look. In the special missions series, he was able to shine a bit more, appearing on the cover of issue number 22. Special missions gave us a spotlight on those characters in mostly standalone stories. Without special missions, we would barely get to see some fan favorite characters in the comic book. Looking at Shockwave overall, this is a top tier figure. Of course, and he's a fan favorite, there's a reason he's a fan favorite. The figure is so well done, lots of great details. The yellow and the camouflage pattern is a bit random, but the color scheme is nearly perfect. The light and dark blue work very well together, and the colors are appropriate for his job. He would blend in pretty well in an urban environment at night, or in a darkened hallway fighting from room to room. The accessories are also great, and he came with a ton of accessories. And because the knife can holster on the backpack, he can carry all of his accessories at the same time. And that's kind of important to me. The holster for the knife on the backpack was a welcome feature from the late 80s. I just wish we had more of those. I guess the biggest problem for Shockwave would be the unpainted details. The knife on the chest and the ankle could have used a splash of paint, but because the overall color scheme is so well done, it's easy to overlook that. I like the character as he was portrayed on the file card, but it is criminal how underutilized he was in GI Joe Media. He was a potentially great character that only got a few brief moments to shine. Excuse me. The review of Shockwave, I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, you can help me make more videos like this. Just do a few things for me. Make sure you like this video on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, and share this video. That's what helps this channel grow. Support this channel on Patreon. You get some special perks there, and the support of Patrons is already helping to improve the quality of these videos. I'll see you next week for another vintage GI Joe toy review, and until then, remember, only GI Joe is GI Joe. All right, ready? Action! HCC788.com Website, HCC788.com I hit you, didn't I? I'm sorry. Well, how about I lift the dog in first?