 Commander 788 here, you're so great, top tier glove, G.I. Joe. Water rising! Guard, guard! Wait a minute. Ready. Ready. Ready. Silence killed. Hey Hoonicover Commander 788 here, it's time for another vintage G.I. Joe Toy Review and I am back from my break and what do we have now that I'm back, we have a Patrons Choice Review. The patrons voted on what to see this week and they chose the 1989 Cobra Fang 2. Thank you everyone for your support of this channel. I think together we are doing great things and we can keep that going. So let's set our sights even higher. The original Fang helicopter from 1983 was a vehicle that I really liked. So let's see how the Fang 2 stacks up to it. HCC 788 presents the 1989 Cobra Fang 2. This is the Cobra Fang 2 from 1989. It was introduced in 1989 and was also available in 1990. It was discontinued for the year 1991 and it did not come with an action figure. The box art for the Fang 2 showed it piloted by the Heat Viper, also from 1989. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, the Heat Viper is not a pilot, but none of the other Cobra figures released in 1989 worked any better as a pilot for the Fang 2. So why not the Heat Viper? That same year they introduced the HIST 2. So apparently that was the year for updates to classic Cobra vehicles. The original Fang was introduced in 1983 and Fang was an acronym for fully armed negator gyrocopter. The Fang 2 no longer uses that acronym. The Fang was Cobra's first real aircraft. I say first real aircraft because the Cobra Viper glider was released the same year and I don't think that should count. What is the difference between a helicopter and a gyrocopter? It's time for Professor Hoodie's Science and See Science. Let's get you all science stuck shall we? The difference between a helicopter and a gyrocopter lies in the motor control of the main rotor disc. On a helicopter the rotary airfoil powered by the main engine provides lift and tilting the main rotor disc provides directional flight. An anti-torque propeller works against the helicopter's natural tendency to spin. On a gyrocopter sometimes called an auto gyro there is no motor control of the rotor disc. An auto rotates in all phases of flight and a push motor in the rear of the fuselage moves the gyrocopter forward. Now you know and knowing is a YouTube show from Belgium. The Fang is configured more like a helicopter than a gyrocopter with its anti-torque rear propeller. The Fang 2 however is neither. It is a tilt rotor aircraft. The stickers even say tilt rotor. Tilt rotor craft do exist in the real world though I don't think the Fang 2 is based on a real world design. So would a craft designed like the Fang 2 really work? It seems to me like the blades would need to be longer but we do see the open cockpit design in some auto gyros so maybe it would work. The tilt rotor design does give the Fang 2 vertical takeoff and landing capability like a helicopter. As for a GI Joe vehicle matchup in 1989 GI Joe got the mud fighter which was a vehicle of a similar size to the Fang 2. But the mud fighter was an airplane so it lacked the vertical takeoff and landing feature. I prefer the matchup with the GI Joe Locust from 1990. The Locust has fewer missiles than the Cobra Fang 2 but it does have those two big guns on the side and it's a helicopter so the flight profile matches up well against the Fang 2. Let's look at the parts and features of the Fang 2 starting in the front with this chin gun which the blueprints call a 20mm secto barrel impulse long range cannon. It's not based on anything real as far as I know, it probably shoots blue lasers. This cannon has a very wide range of motion. It can swing 360 degrees and it can elevate and it can lower. So you have a very wide field of fire with this thing. Pretty much the only blind spots are directly above the aircraft and directly below it. The chin gun on the Fang 2 is probably meant to emulate the ball mounted cannon on the original Fang helicopter which I really liked. You could just move that thing in every direction mounted on that ball. I prefer the original Fang's gun but this gun on the Fang 2 really is pretty good. The nose of the Fang 2 comes to a dull point and it has a modified Cobra Aircore emblem. We first saw the original Cobra Aircore emblem on the 1984 Cobra Rattler. It was a traditional Cobra emblem with bat wings. I always liked this logo design, we saw it on a few other Cobra Air vehicles but not enough in my opinion. The update on the Fang 2 is okay but I think a missed opportunity to use that original Cobra Aircore emblem for another callback to a classic Cobra vehicle. We have a single cedar cockpit with a sticker control panel and that is really it, no additional detail in there at all. The original Fang cockpit had a joystick that was small enough to actually fit in an action figure's hand. I would have been happy to see that in the new incarnation. Let's demonstrate how to put the pilot in using the heat viper, why not? He can just go in straight legged and there is no backpack so he can fall out. We have the lower stabilizer wings which also double as landing skids and this is the only landing gear that the Fang 2 has. The underside of the vehicle is blank, there is nothing going on here which I think is unfortunate. On the original Fang they used the underside for a bomb which I think would have been nice to get on the new version. Next we have the missiles, there are six missiles and the blueprints call these Ames 23 air to air crusher missiles. They are not based on anything real as far as I know but they may take their name from the Ames series of missiles such as the Ame 9 Sidewinder. They peg in using traditional dumbbell shaped slots, there are six of them, two on the top, two on the fuselage and two on the lower stabilizer wings. The Fang 2 looks naked without the missiles, it is really missing something when they are taken off so the missiles are not just weapons, they are necessary for the aesthetic of the vehicle. Then we have the top wings with an air intake in the middle, these do look like they might provide some lift in forward flight so that's pretty cool. Then we have the tilt rotor engines and the blades on both of them do spin pretty well. The tilt feature is synchronized so they tilt together and you can move them using the fly wheel on the top center and they can tilt together. You can tilt them up for vertical takeoff and landing and then forward for flight and you can in fact move them all the way around 360 degrees and that's actually a problem for me at least on this example. On my Fang 2 these tilt rotors are so loose that instead of staying in the up position they want to roll backwards and face the rear and that's a problem with me. I want them to face either up or forward but they just don't want to do that. They seem to be weighted to roll backwards. It takes some balancing to keep them in the up position because even if I tilt them slightly forward they want to roll back and they're upside down again. This tilt rotor is the main play feature on this vehicle and it's not bad. The execution probably could have been better but I can see how kids would have fun with this. Moving backward we have a short tail and on one side we have kill marks and on the other side we have these strange cobra hieroglyphs that we see on other cobra vehicles. I wish these odd symbols were really a code or secret language that could be translated like alienese in Futurama. In the very back we have two angled fins and I actually like the number two with the Fangs. That's kind of clever. The Fang 2 is missing something important that the original Fang had and that is a way to carry more figures. One of the great things about the Fang was that you could fit two figures on the skids and you needed that extra capacity for when the Baroness, Destro and Cobra Commander were escaping after yet another failed attempt to take over the world. The Fang 2 does a couple things better than the original Fang. First it is more sturdy. The 1983 Fang was a little bit on the fragile side so the Fang 2 should be less prone to breakage. Second the missiles on the Fang 2 are much better than the missiles on the 1983 Fang. I'm going to go out on a limb and declare the red missiles on the Fang to be the most annoying missiles in the entire GI Joe toy line. They have tiny little slots that fit on tiny little tabs that are almost impossible to align and if you don't do it just right they fall off. In fact I only have two of the four missiles on this Fang because I just could not get the other two to stay on. The Fang 2 did bring more colors to the table with that purple but for my money you can't beat the original black, gray and red. Looking at how the Fang 2 was used in GI Joe media it was featured in the Deak Animated series in the Operation Dragonfire miniseries. It had the most screen time in day 3 of that miniseries and as far as I can determine it was not used after Operation Dragonfire. It was in the GI Joe Nintendo game in 1991. Oddly it appeared in the game the year the toy was discontinued, a little late to promote the toy. It was also in the GI Joe arcade game. In the GI Joe comic book series published by Marvel they appeared in issue number 92. That issue was focused more on bigger vehicles such as the Thunder Clap, the Warthog and the Cobra Condor. They appeared in issue number 97 where Cobra is demonstrating them along with other Cobra vehicles for various dictators and warlords. They also take part in Cobra Commander's occupation of the US town Millville in issue number 100. They actually got more extensive use in the comic books than in the cartoon. Looking at the Fang 2 overall I can sum up my assessment in 4 words. I prefer the original. It's not a bad vehicle, it has some good features for a vehicle of its size and it even improves on the original Fang in some respects. The missiles stay on better, it has fewer easily broken parts and it has more firepower. The colors are fine, I don't mind the purple but it doesn't quite match up to the classic black. There's no reason this needs to be an updated Fang, other than the name it doesn't really take much from the original Fang's design. It's a new vehicle with the Fang's name. It has a new vehicle, it's a good one, but they chose to associate it with the Fang so a comparison with the original is fair. Though the Fang has fewer missiles than the Fang 2, the Fang does have that negator bomb which looks big enough to take out an entire Joe base. The Fang 2 leaves the underside of the vehicle totally blank. There aren't even any technical details. And the way the tilt rotors on my example roll backwards is annoying. But the tilt rotor is a fun feature, I can see how kids would like it. I can see these going up in a lot of aerial battles against GI Joe's locust helicopter. That was my review of the 1989 Cobra Fang 2, I hope you enjoyed it and it's another Patrons Choice review, we will be doing more of those throughout the year. If you want to vote, then just support the channel on Patreon. I want you to help decide what we do here. You know, after Cobra Convergence and another Cobra review this week, I think it's time we got back to GI Joe, so that's what we're going to do next week. Until then, remember, only GI Joe is GI Joe.