 And it is time for another Vintage GI Joe Twer review and I'm proud to announce that the entire month of April 2017 will be Battleforce 2000 Months. This month we are going to look at a whole first wave of Battleforce 2000 from 1987. Now, I'm no math scientist, but according to my phone app called a calendar, there appear to be five Sundays in the month of April. That means this month, instead of doing five reviews, we're going to do six. That means for one of the weeks in April, instead of doing one full review, we are going to do two full reviews for a total of six for the month. My God. What have I done to myself? There are reasons we're doing it this way. For one thing, all of the vehicles in Battle Force 2000 had a gimmick. You could detach certain parts of them and put them together to form the future fortress. With each review, we will assemble part of the future fortress. At the end of the month, we will look at the entire future fortress and see what we think about it. Also, Battle Force 2000 will be part of the Jocon 2017 exclusive figure set. Some of you will be going to Jocon and picking up those exclusive figures, so I thought you might like to see the vintage versions of those figures before you go out and buy the new ones. Now, I don't know much about modern GI Joe action figures, so for each vintage figure that we review, Joe Fan 82 will give us a preview of what to expect from the modern version of that figure. Hey guys, Joe Fan 82 here. This year at Jocon, we'll be seeing the first modern versions of the Battle Force 2000 figures. So after HCC reviews the vintage figure, I'll be taking a look at what we can expect from the Collectors Club for Avalanche. Thank you, Joe Fan 82 for providing the previews. Now, Battle Force 2000 is a divisive subject among GI Joe fans. Few loved it, some thought it was okay. A lot of people didn't like it very much, but I'm going to try to be as fair as I can with these toys. One quirk about the Battle Force 2000 sub team within GI Joe is that none of the vehicle drivers were sold with the vehicles they were intended to drive. All of the figures and vehicles were sold separately, and that's not usually how GI Joe would do it. But despite that fact, for these reviews, both vehicle and driver will be reviewed together. Let's kick off Battle Force 2000 months by looking at the Dominator snow tank and the sold separately driver Avalanche. This is the 1987 Battle Force 2000 Dominator snow tank and Avalanche the Dominator driver. Thanks to Lenny Allen for helping me complete the Avalanche figure. You helped make this video possible. As you can see, we have two Avalanche figures here. That means we will be looking at a variant. Battle Force 2000 was a new concept in 1987. It was a small team that would field test experimental equipment for GI Joe. Even though GI Joe had expanded its science fiction elements by 1987, Battle Force 2000 took it even farther, with entirely futuristic looking figures and vehicles. The problem was, GI Joe already had a lot of futuristic experimental vehicles and figures. So Battle Force 2000 was kind of redundant. I would like to direct your attention to a GI Joe Berg podcast episode that had an excellent discussion of Battle Force 2000. The Battle Force 2000 vehicles in the 1987 series had an added gimmick. Parts of them would detach and you could put them together to form the future fortress. Hasbro set up Destro's private army, the Iron Grenadiers as enemies for Battle Force 2000. They even went so far as to put Battle Force 2000 logos on the Iron Grenadiers packaging. But as far as I know, the Iron Grenadiers were never used for that purpose in GI Joe media. Another problem with Battle Force 2000, all of the 1987 Battle Force 2000 figures were vehicle drivers, yet none were packaged with the vehicles. They were all sold as carded figures. There was no reason to do this other than to squeeze more nickels out of the kids. It emulated what Kenner did with Star Wars toys. Their pilots and drivers were also sold separately, much to the annoyance of many a Star Wars fan. A couple things for this video that I don't normally have. I have the box for the Dominator, it's a bit beat up, but we can take a look and see how the Dominator appeared on retail shelves. I also have the full card back for Avalanche. Let's set the action figures aside for now so we can take a close look at the Dominator. Let's start by looking at the box for the Dominator, why not? And we have some artwork for the Dominator, it shows Avalanche driving it, and these background colors of blue and purple that were standard for Battle Force 2000 are a little weak. They definitely did not pop as much as the explosion background for the standard GI Joe line. We have the GI Joe logo up here on top, we have the Battle Force 2000 logo under it. It says Dominator in parentheses, snow tank, two battle units in one. We have the future fortress ad right here in the corner. On the bottom we have the same artwork, and on the top we have basically just text and logos. On the back though we have a photograph of the vehicle, and this looks like it's a photo of a prototype because there are some differences between this photo and the toy that we actually got. For one thing, the antennae are two separate pieces and the hatch is flat rather than raised. So those are some changes they made to the vehicle before it went into production. As you can see the Dominator is colored white, it is a snow tank. This one is slightly yellowed, not too bad, these do tend to discolor over time. This isn't quite as white as it used to be, but it's pretty close. Dominator was also the name of a later vehicle, Destro's Dominator, and there's no relation between the two. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Dominator starting here in the front. In the front we have a grill, and we have the GI Joe logo and the Battle Force 2000 logo side by side. We have a latch here for the split open gimmick, and we will take a look at that later. We have two black guns, which pivot, and the blueprints call these Twin Terror dual pivoting 7.62mm machine guns. 7.62mm by 51mm was the standard NATO round. Both guns pivot, but do not elevate. We have foot pegs on the running boards on both sides, so extra figures can ride along. Also on both sides we have tool boxes, and these two open up, the covers pop off, but on my example the covers are on there pretty tightly and they're kind of difficult to get off. I used my trusty mini screwdriver to pop these covers off, and they are very tight. To me it seems like they're made wrong. They have a tab here on the top, so it seems like you should pull them off from the top, but it actually seems to work better to pull them up from the bottom, but it's not easy to do that because the tab is on the top. There is some detail on the cover itself, and then you can see the inside of the toolbox. It really just kind of looks like some extra gadgetry there. See some engine detail. To put them back on, it seems better to push them up from the top, and then push back in at the bottom. That just seems to work a lot better. Same thing on the other side, and that snaps back in pretty easily. We have the main turret, and this is the most tank-like feature on this vehicle. It can turn 360 degrees, the cannon, the black cannon does elevate and has a pretty good range of motion on this. The blueprints call this cannon the Battle Dog 152mm XM175 gun-slash-missile launcher. How does it launch missiles? I don't know. Attached to the main turret, we have the antennae. They are green, they are swept back, they are attached at the base, and like all G.I. Joe antennae, they tend to go missing. On the main turret, we have the hatch cover. It is also in green, and you can pop that up and open it to reveal the cockpit. The inside of the vehicle has no detail whatsoever, it's just a big cavity in there for the driver. There are a couple different ways you can put the figure in the vehicle. You can stand the figure up so he is partially exposed, and this is not a bad way to display the figure with the vehicle. The other way to put the figure in is to have him sitting inside the tank, and it's easier to do that without the accessories. Just bend his legs and sit him down in there. He can go all the way down in there, and you can close the hatch. So he is fully protected inside his tank. When the figure is sitting inside the tank, his head still pokes out a little bit above the top of the turret. So I think this is why they changed it from a flat hatch on the prototype to a raised hatch on the production vehicle, so you can fit the action figure in there and still close the hatch. On the other side, we have six wheels, and we will take a closer look at those wheels when we look at the mini vehicle inside the shell. But since it does have wheels, it's more like an armored car than a tank. Treads may have worked better for a snow tank than these tiny wheels. Outside of the wheelbase, we have blue skis, and these are for unpowered downhill sliding. Not only would skiing with a tank be fun, it would also allow the dominator to approach an enemy silently. These skis can swing up, but that's really for fortress mode. The back is pretty plain. It has this large hinge that is not very aesthetically pleasing, but this is for the split open gimmick. It also has this ZZ EHB3, and this kind of looks like backwards calculator typing. Was there somebody at Hasbro named Ed Hess? There is no tow hook here in the back and really nothing else at all. Finally, it's time to split open the outer shell. We have a latch here on the bottom and another one here on the top, and we're going to kind of squeeze it together and pop that open. It's not very easy, unfortunately, and it makes a horrible cracking sound. It's not breaking, but it feels like it's going to break, but we split that shell open to reveal the sub vehicle inside. Here is the mini tank, and this outer shell I guess you could use as its own sub vehicle. It does still have the skis, but we're going to show how this works for the future fortress later. We're going to set that aside for now. The body of the mini tank is smaller than the outer shell, of course, but the cannon is the same size. This gives it a comical look. It looks like a tank that has shrunk in the wash. Looking at the parts and the features of the mini tank, we have a brush bar here in the front that's green. We have a couple headlights, and we have two small pivoting guns. The blueprints don't say what these guns are, but the box says they are laser guns. It has a couple removable hatches for weapons lockers. It's best to move the turret to the side, and like the ones on the outer shell, these can be a little bit difficult to pop up. They can both come off like that. On this one, on this side, it has some molded-in grenades. That's a nice touch there. On this side, it has some kind of cylinder, which maybe are some extra energy rods for its laser gun or something like that, I don't know. But still, interesting details in those weapons lockers. You can just pop those right back on. They should snap in there without too much trouble for you. Now, they have these lock-unlock handles here, and these are all over the vehicle in several places there and there. They're also on the outer shell, so that's just kind of a little detail they added to lock and unlock it, I guess. This is the same main gun turret we looked at before. There's no reason to rehash that. On the other side, we have those six wheels, and we can see them better now. They have green hubcaps. They do roll pretty well. They roll better for the mini-tank than they do with the outer shell on. Moving to the back of the vehicle, just under the back port side corner of the gun turret, there is what looks like it should be a fuel port, but it has been filled in, and I think that's too bad. Having a fuel port back there would have been a nice touch that would have integrated it more with the main GI Joe line. Finally, in the back, we have a troop carrying platform with two foot pegs and a tow hook, which the outer shell lacks. Now let's take a look at that outer shell and see how it transforms to become part of the future fortress. You just split it open like a pistachio and swing it around to about a 90-degree angle, and then flip the skis up, and in this position it forms the outer wall of the fortress. It doesn't look too much like a fortress yet, but let's see if it looks like a fortress by the end of these Battle Force 2000 reviews. Now let's look at Avalanche, and the name Avalanche was reused for a vehicle in 1990, but there is no relation between this figure and that vehicle, they just shared the same name. In 1987, Avalanche was available as a single-carded figure. In 1988, they started selling Battle Force 2000 figures in two packs. Avalanche was sold with his Battle Force 2000 teammate, Blaster. This may have been done to make up for not packaging the drivers with the vehicles. Unfortunately, this doesn't help kids who didn't have both of the vehicles for the figures in the two packs, or if they had already bought one of them as a single figure. Let's take a look at Avalanche's card back, and one thing I don't like about Battle Force 2000 cards is the large area of negative space just above the blister. You can't really tell on this card because it's peeled off, but this entire area between the logo and the bubble is just plain black with no text and no art, and to me, this looks like poor composition. Another annoying thing is, since the figures were not packaged with the vehicles, we have card art that does not show the vehicle. In fact, the vehicle does not appear anywhere on this card. Here in the back we have a partition for Battle Force 2000 in the cross cell. They did the same thing for Tiger Force. We have our single flag point, and we have Avalanche's file card, we will look at that later. Let's take a look at Avalanche's accessories. He came with a large rifle, and the card contents call this a P480 Sub-Zero Stun Gun. It is in silver plastic. It looks like a futuristic laser rifle with a Buck Rogers aesthetic. Stun Gun implies that this is a non-lethal weapon. Wait a minute, hold on. Yep, yep, yep, there it is. There's his lethal weapon. Avalanche's other accessory is his microphone, and his microphone attaches to his helmet. And a couple holes that attach to pegs on the sides of the helmet. And this microphone is pretty large as far as microphones go, but because it is removable, it will frequently be lost. Thanks again to Lenny Allen for helping secure this accessory and making this review possible. The microphone just pegs in, you just line up the holes and push them into the pegs, and that's pretty much it. It does take up quite a bit of the side of his face. It is fairly large for a microphone. Let's look at the articulation for Avalanche. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures by 1987, meaning 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. He could move at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had 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 move his legs at the hip about 90 degrees, and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt to design and color of Avalanche, starting with the head. The head has a non-removable helmet. I would normally complain about this, but I will probably beat up Battleforce 2000 quite a bit during these reviews, so I'll give him a pass for the helmet. The helmet is white. It has a brown camouflage pattern and a texture pattern on it. It has a fin up here on top that may be a flashlight. The head sculpt or the face sculpt is kind of mediocre, I have to say. His chest is white with that same brown camouflage pattern, and there's a quilted pattern on here. Same on the back. This is probably for his winter gear. He has a silver shoulder pad on his right shoulder, and across his chest he has a silver bandolier that doesn't seem to serve any purpose. On his right arm he has a silver shoulder guard. He has white sleeves with that same white and brown camouflage pattern. He has some very nice sculpting on his gloves. On his left arm he has some silver padding, and then on his left wrist he has a white watch. On his waist he has more of that quilted pattern and the same white with brown camouflage. He has a belt with a lot of silver pouches, Rob Liefeld style. On his legs we have white with brown camouflage. His right thigh is pretty plain. He has some padding on his inner thighs. And on his left leg he has a device. On this figure it is gray. What exactly is this? Yojo.com calls it a knife, but it doesn't look like a knife to me. There is a variant on this left leg detail. Some avalanche figures have that painted in gray. Others have it with silver paint. These figures seem to be the same otherwise. We finish up with some tall silver Ziggy Stardust boots with some white padding in the back. The toes are slightly upturned on those boots. Let's take a look at Avalanche's file card. And there is a variant of this file card too. When he was packaged as a two pack, where it says Dominator Driver it said Dominator Snow Vehicle Driver, otherwise the text was the same. On this single carded file card it has GI Joe and the Battleforce 2000 logo and his faction there and a portrait here from the artwork on the front of the card. We have a codename of Avalanche and he is the Dominator Driver. File name is Ian M. Costello, primary military specialty armored vehicle driver, secondary military specialty cold weather survival driver, that's kind of awkwardly worded. Birthplace is Madawasque, Maine. This is actually misspelled it should be Madawasque, Maine. His grade is E5 Sergeant. This paragraph says when Avalanche came of age he declined joining the family business in parentheses poaching, smuggling and bootlegging and opted for the U.S. Army instead. Having spent most of his youth in the woods with a rifle he was quite well prepared for certain rigors of military life and totally unprepared for the discipline. He sounds kind of like a hillbilly. This paragraph says as part of a survival exercise Avalanche and 20 other trainees were left in the wilds with a knife and a compass apiece. Most of the others staggered in, haggard and worn after a week. They found Avalanche a month later and 200 miles away, lounging in a motel and spending the money he had made from the furs he brought in. So he used Captain Kirk's solution to the Kobayashi Maru test. He cheated. Is this guy GI Joe material? What makes them think this guy should handle high tech equipment? The dominator and Avalanche made no appearances in the GI Joe cartoon series. Battle Force 2000 came out too late to appear in the Sunbow series. In the GI Joe comic book they first appeared in issue number 68. Battle Force 2000 made a fair number of appearances in the comic book series. Avalanche was in Special Missions number 20, an issue that featured GI Joe's cold weather specialists. He was not driving the dominator in that issue. He was a passenger in the snow cat. Famously, Avalanche died in issue number 113, along with most of Battle Force 2000. Now I'll turn it over to Joefan82 for a preview of the upcoming Joe Khan exclusive Avalanche figure. Thanks HCC. Here is the mock up image for the new modern Avalanche figure. Right off the bat you can see they replicated and updated his white uniform with the brown camo pattern. He also has the silver accents across the uniform as well as the silver boots. As with the original figure he comes with a non-removable helmet. This is a bit of a disappointment for modern collectors as we're used to seeing removable helmets on the modern versions of vintage figures. One detail that is missing is the microphone attached to the helmet. I'm not sure why that wasn't added. Avalanche and the other Joe Khan exclusive figures come with retooled versions of their vintage counterparts weapons. In Avalanche's case it's his Sub-Zero stun gun made of white plastic instead of gray. The figure also comes with a removable bandolier, knife, assault rifle and green figure stand. That's a quick look at the new modern Avalanche back to you HCC. Thank you for that preview Joefan82 and don't forget to check out Joefan82's YouTube channel for modern GI Joe tour reviews. So what do we think of the dominator and Avalanche overall? Both figure and vehicle are difficult to judge. Clearly a lot of effort went into both. They have good details, good colors, some special features but they also both have some problems. If Battleforce 2000 didn't exactly fit within GI Joe, Avalanche and the dominator don't exactly fit in Battleforce 2000. This is a cold weather operation specialist with a snow tank and no other figure or vehicle in Battleforce 2000 had that specialty. Because of the specialty, the color scheme for the dominator is different from other Battleforce 2000 vehicles. The vector had a similar color scheme but the vector was a jet. Other Battleforce 2000 vehicles were in a metallic gray. So you will either have the entire Battleforce 2000 team operating in snowy conditions for which most of them are not equipped or you're going to have the dominator operating with the rest of the Battleforce 2000 team outside of its element. Either way, something is out of place. You could have the dominator operating solo in an arctic environment but without the rest of the team, you can't form the future fortress. Avalanche is not bad. His weapon is totally sci-fi but that fits with the Battleforce 2000 theme. His head sculpt is bland and some of the details sculpted on the figure don't make any sense. But the figure has some extra effort put into it and the brown and the white and the silver work well together. I'm going to say both figure and vehicle barely make it into the middle tier. I know I'm supposed to hate Battleforce 2000 but I don't hate the dominator or Avalanche. I just think they're out of place. Even in Battleforce 2000, they don't exactly fit. There are many aspects of Battleforce 2000 to talk about. For instance, how did my friends and I integrate Battleforce 2000 into our GI Joe playtime? And if the concept of Battleforce 2000 didn't exactly work, what could have been done to make it work better? We will talk about that in future reviews. We can't talk about it all in the first review otherwise we won't have enough to talk about for the rest of the month. That was my review of the dominator snow tank and the driver Avalanche and that kicks off the first and only ever Battleforce 2000 month. Six reviews in five weeks. Six reviews in five weeks. You're asking yourself, has he gone out of his mind? Is he crazy? Yes, he's crazy. Crazy hoody has six reviews for the price of five. Get them now while supplies last. Thank you for watching. If you liked this video, please do a few things for me. First of all, give it a thumbs up on YouTube and subscribe to the YouTube channel and share this video to spread the word. Like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and support the channel on Patreon for some special perks. Don't forget to visit the website, HCC788.com to see this review and all my other G.I. Joe toy reviews and we have t-shirts. Not this one but other t-shirts. Thank you everyone for watching. Battleforce 2000 month will roll on to next week. I'll see you then and until then remember only Battleforce 2000 is Battleforce 2000. The Protect America Battleforce 2000 creates the battle vehicles of the future. Nobody beats G.I. Joe's Battleforce 2000. Sky Sweeper Eliminator Vendicator. Nobody beats G.I. Joe's Battleforce 2000. Dominator Vector and Burrata, they split and recombine into the awesome Future Fortress. Go, go! Nobody beats G.I. Joe, the real American hero. Battleforce 2000 figures and vehicles sold separately collect all six vehicles to form the Future Fortress.