 Hello everybody HoodedCobraCommander788 here and as I record this I am preparing to go to Jocon. Before I go though I wanted to take a minute and wrap with you guys about some important things about the channel. This channel has seen some amazing growth lately. That means there are a lot of new people and since a lot of you are new you haven't been around long enough to see some of the announcements and some of the things that I've said about the format of the show in the past. So I thought this might be a good opportunity to make a video to explain everything to new people so you don't have to go through every video I've made for the last four years just to completely understand what goes on on this channel. So first of all welcome I'm glad you're here I hope you enjoy it and this is for you if you're new so that you can understand what goes on here at the HoodedCobraCommander788 YouTube channel. First I want to make clear what this channel is even about. On this channel we review vintage GI Joe toys and by vintage I mean from 1982 through 1994 and I focus on American domestic releases only. Now sometimes I do look at other things I look at some modern toys I look at some foreign issues I've even looked at an old 1960s 12 inch GI Joe figures but that is all just bonus content it's not the core focus of this channel. These reviews are about my perspective my opinion and my journey as a collector they are not just straight toy reviews if you want a straight toy review with just a guy pointing a camera at a toy and talking about it there are plenty of other YouTube channels that do that. This is personal this means something to me and so I don't expect everyone to agree with me you don't have to agree with me I'm not out here seeking everyone's agreement I'm not out here to affirm my opinion but I am out here to express my opinion if you disagree in a way that is disrespectful or hateful you may not find yourself hanging around very often but disagreement is expected it's even welcome here but please understand that the reviews themselves are mine and my opinion and I feel it's my duty as a reviewer to be honest with you about what I really think about things and sometimes that's really good sometimes that's really bad sometimes it's in the middle but whatever that is I will be frank I will be honest and that's what you should expect here I would suggest that you not start fights in the comments I don't really have this problem very often it seems like I have a really smart group of regular viewers who come in here and you guys are really bright but if somebody is drifting by here and sees something that deeply offends them in the video or the comments and they want to start a fight about it please keep in mind that we're talking about toys there is no excuse for treating another person poorly and so I expect that the comments section will be used by people who know how to behave like adults and thankfully it almost always is I really don't have very much trouble in the comments section but yeah if you're some dude drifting by and you decide you want to be hateful to people just keep on drifting by but everyone else who wants to actually discuss these amazing toys that we love and remember and we're such an important part of our childhood please stick around please leave your comments I love reading them I reply to as many as I can I'm not able to reply to as many as I used to and I regret that but I love reading your comments I love hearing from you and I hope to hear more from you in the future sometimes on this channel we do skits we do stories we do jokes and the reason we do those things is because I enjoy them and I want to make videos that I enjoy this is a creative outlet for me because I need a creative outlet so if that's not your thing well sorry but that is something to expect on this channel from time to time we also do quite a few collaborations on this channel it's been my privilege to work with some of the other great GI Joe related YouTube content creators and it's fantastic I mean I've had the opportunity to work with form BX to 5 7 and half the Timmer from half the battle and GI Joe Berg and some other guys and they're all great you know this behind the scenes stuff that we do to bring these collaborations to you is a lot of fun and I can tell you that all of those guys are as awesome off camera as they are on camera I really enjoy doing that and I feel like whatever anyone thinks of my videos the one thing that I feel like I've been able to contribute to the community is that collaboration I've done my best to try to bring content creators together to work as more of a community and I hope that that's something that's appreciated by some GI Joe fans I know at the time I'm recording this there isn't any GI Joe on the toy shelves right now but it's a great time to be a GI Joe fan because the fan created content is fantastic it's wonderful so please check out everyone that we do a collaboration with because you might find other content creators that will just blow you away so so yeah I think it's a great time to be a GI Joe fan I'm very appreciative of everything that everyone's doing to keep the love and enjoyment of GI Joe alive even when Hasbro isn't really utilizing the brand that much you probably notice a lot of artwork on the title cards for these videos that's the the image that pops up when you first see the video on YouTube and a lot of that art is donated by the artists and I am extremely thankful for that I can't tell you how grateful I am for that I know that as an artist you often get people who want you to do the work for free or work for exposure I don't do that I don't ask for that but at the same time this channel is not big enough to pay for people to do the title card art that our work is done by people donating their time and effort just because they like the show and they want to participate so if you see me in a video thanking an artist please check out that artist they deserve your attention and they have my gratitude as if you are on this channel you are entitled to something you are entitled to my best effort in every video now my best effort may produce a better video one week than another week but it's still my best effort in each video I will make mistakes sometimes but I'll try not to actually do quite a bit of planning to try to minimize mistakes but sometimes mistakes creep in anyway and that will happen but I will do my best every week the videos might be better if they were made by someone who was smarter than me or better looking or had a better voice or had more time or more skills at making videos that may be true but what you got is me so you're entitled to my best effort every week and if there's somebody out there who can do it better tell me who that is I'd probably like to watch that guy we have some traditions on this channel one tradition is that at the end of every year I do a question and answer video and so the last video that should be posted each year would be the answers to whatever questions you ask for that video usually I'll also take the first week of each year off so the first week of January I take off the reason is because the first video that goes up each year I try to review something big big vehicle big play set and I need the extra time to work on it so usually that first week I take off the second week I post what should be a pretty big video to kick off the year one tradition is Cobra Convergence every July that started out as just Cobra Month I did Cobra Month because I had done a whole bunch of reviews of GI Joe team figures vehicles and it had been a while since I had done anything related to Cobra so a few years ago in the month of July I just decided okay all of July is going to be just Cobra well the following year I got in contact with Timmer and FormBX257 and I asked these guys you want to come together for one big event at the end of July and they agreed so on the last day of July in 2016 we did Cobra Convergence the three of us got together we each did our own Cobra video on that day well the following year we did Cobra Convergence too more participants bigger event we did a storyline for it I had a lot of fun I hope everybody else did and it looks like Cobra Convergence is now becoming an annual tradition and it seems to be getting bigger each year the tagline that I use only GI Joe is GI Joe I didn't just make that up myself that comes from the very first GI Joe commercial back in 1964 so I'm kind of all about our roots I want to remember our roots in GI Joe and part of our roots is go all the way back to 1964 so that phrase only GI Joe is GI Joe is my little nod to the old school 12 inch GI Joe figures from back before our time but without them we wouldn't have our 80s GI Joe if you just can't get enough of me I am on social media I have a Facebook page I'm on Twitter not on Instagram yet I need to fix that I'm working on it I also have a website HCC788.com all of my GI Joe reviews are cataloged there so if you're not sure if I've reviewed something you can check the website through the website you can also order t-shirts so if you just want to wear me on your body you can order a t-shirt there this channel also has a patreon page and that helps offset some of the cost of making this show through patreon I've been able to get better equipment get more things to review and so thank you to everyone who supports the channel in that way and I enjoy supporting creators on patreon myself whenever I see a creator that I think is awesome and I see they have a patreon page and I check it out and they have a ton of patrons I'm like yes my opinion is affirmed yeah so if you'd like to support the channel that way please check out patreon I have some special perks there also sometimes you will see numbers on the screen in videos that is a secret code and there is a secret code book and that secret code book goes to some of my supporters on patreon so they can decode that message usually what it is is a preview of the next video I had toyed with the idea at the end of each video giving a preview of what was coming next I actually did a poll on that twice I did a poll and both times overwhelmingly viewers said they did not want to know what was coming next they want to be surprised with what's coming up each week so instead of doing a preview like that instead what I did was I'll put a preview a hint actually in a secret code and if patrons want to decode that they can use their code book to check that out it's optional it's up to them sometimes I'll throw up something else in a secret code little joke little message or something like that so if you have the code book you can find out what it says and if you like the code book check out patreon there's nothing in the secret codes or on patreon though that you would need to fully enjoy the videos that's one thing that I will always do all the content on this channel is free if you want to support the channel in other ways you can do that and you can get some bonus stuff but the reviews and everything that's on this channel will always be free of charge to the end user so I'm never gonna put anything behind a paywall that you just can't see unless you give me money I don't do that so every week I want to bring these videos to as many people as possible sometimes viewers donate toys to the channel that's been a big help but it's not necessary I want to tell everybody that you don't have to do that it's very much appreciated when you do but nobody should feel obligated to send anything to me if you want to though just send me an email I'll put the email address on the screen right now and I can tell you how to do that and if you send something to me I will put it in a video I'll I'm doing unboxing videos each month where I just take out and show you everything that everyone sent me for that month so if you send me something I will put it on the channel I will put it in a video we've created a community here that feels like family and you are invited to join I've made some great friends in this project lifelong friends that's something that I never expected when I started out but after doing this for a while you would be amazed at what people share with you what they tell you they get in touch with you and we have sometimes the people that are half a world away but we share one thing in common we share an enjoyment of this toy line from our childhoods and that turns out to mean more than you might expect so I'm a very grateful for the friends that I've met through this project and I hope that you watching this here will be one of them that I think was just a basic primer for anyone who is new to this channel if you are new thank you for joining the channel I hope you stick around we try to have a lot of fun here we try not to take it too seriously we try to all have a good time and kind of bond over our shared love of GI Joe it's time for me to get ready to go to Joe Khan I hope to see some of you there no new review this week but working on something big working on something big so please stick around for it thanks for watching and yeah remember only GI Joe is GI Joe