 Today we look at a GI Joe character whose job is to deceive you. Not only will he deceive you, he will use any means necessary to control your thoughts. He has devices that will make you feel paranoid and you won't even know he's doing it to you. Call me paranoid, but better safe than sorry. Everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. This is a show where we review every vintage GI Joe toy from 1982 to 1994. This video was planned for the start of April. I was going to make it an April Fool's episode and then stuff happened. So now it's hitting at the end of April. GI Joe is a combat unit. They fight a lot. Every member is guaranteed to see a lot of action. That much violence and danger would tend to cause mental health issues in most people. Psycout has two very important jobs. One is to provide counseling to his teammates. That would keep him pretty busy. He could help his teammates continue to do their jobs and maybe save them from some deep psychological scarring that they would have to deal with later in life. His other job is to manipulate the enemy into making decisions to their own detriment. How does he do this? With invisible rays. His specialty is psychological warfare. Psychological operations have incredible power. For conspiracy theorists, just knowing they exist is enough to induce paranoia. Let's see if this action figure makes us a little nervous. HCC 788 presents Psycout. This is Psycout. GI Joe's Deceptive Warfare Specialist from 1987. This figure was introduced in 1987. It was also available in 1988. It was discontinued for 1989. There were three vintage versions of Psycout. After this first version of Psycout in 1987, we got version two in 1988 as part of the Night Force series. It used the same mold as version one, but in different colors. Also, he had brown hair instead of blonde hair. The final vintage version of Psycout was from 1992. Version three was in the Super Sonic Fighters set. It had all new parts and a very different look. All of the Super Sonic Fighters included ridiculously large backpacks with an electronic sound maker. You could push these buttons and play pre-recorded sounds. The Super Sonic Psycout is arguably more subtle and understated than the first version. If you didn't know and you had to pick which one of these came out in the 80s and which one came out of the 90s, you might switch them. There were only two post-vintage versions of Psycout and both were either convention exclusive or figure subscription service exclusive, so not mass produced. I guess Psycout was not a popular character, but he has enough of a following that it's surprising he wasn't revisited more. Psycout, as a verb, means to behave in a very confident or forceful way in order to make a competitor, especially in a sports event, feel less confident. That does sort of fit Psycout's specialty, at least as described on one of the file cards. By deceptive warfare, they may mean military deception or mill deck. There is a distinction between deceptive and deception. Many standard military strategies and tactics include efforts to deceive the enemy. Deception is a more specific effort to cause the enemy to make decisions that are to his detriment. Mill Deck is a type of information related capability that consists of activities designed to mislead adversary decision-makers with the goal of influencing the adversary to take actions that are advantageous to the friendly mission. Psycout's training may be better described as psychological warfare, Psy-war, or psychological operations, Psy-ops. The primary military specialty on the file card is Psy-ops. According to the 8th Psychological Operations Group Airborne, Psy-op forces are masters of influence, the core of information warfare. We conduct influence activities to target psychological vulnerabilities and create or intensify fissures, confusion, and doubt in adversary organizations. We use all available means of dissemination from sensitive and high tech to low tech to no tech and methods from overt to clandestine to deception. This can be accomplished with propaganda, false flag operations, fake troop movements, fake military camps or installations. Psycout specializes in more high tech psychological tactics. Psycout was designed by Ron Ruddat for Hasbro. Production artwork is archived by a real American book. This image is used courtesy of arealamericanbook.com. Thank you Tim Finn for allowing me to use it. In the pencil drawing, Ron labels the character as psychological warfare, which I think is a more precise description than deceptive warfare. Ron's drawing has notes for some of the features, so I will use them to describe the features on the figure. Psycout doesn't have a predecessor in GI Joe. On the Cobra side, 1986 Dr. Mindbender is probably the closest counterpart. Dr. Mindbender used science for mind control, but he also created other strange sci-fi weapons for Cobra, so that's not an exact match to Psycout's job. Let's take a look at Psycout's accessories, and he has a lot of them. Let's start with his weapon. He includes a pistol in black plastic. The card contents call this a 45 assault pistol. This is a very non-distinctive pistol. It's a bit oversized for the scale of the figure, but that was the trend by 1987. It would be easy to mix this up with other similar pistols from the era. Chuckles, also from 1987, had a similar pistol in almost the same style and the same color. It's just a bit smaller. In 1988, Tiger Force Lifeline included a pistol that was almost exactly the same size and in the same color, but it was in a different style. From a distance, it would be easy to mix these two up. Let's not forget Night Force Shockwave, who had another black pistol in about the same size and the same color and a slightly different style. So look closely at your Psycout pistol and make sure you don't have it mixed up with one of the others. The next accessory is the backpack. The backpack is in silver plastic. It has some technical gadgetry on it and two antennae on the top. Looks like my favorite Martian. It's not said exactly what this backpack does. The card contents just call it a backpack. It seems like it's supposed to work with the other accessories in some way. Psycout comes with a lot of equipment for sending and receiving signals. The next accessory is this handheld electronic device. The card contents call this a variable wave field projector with ELF sonic generator. This accessory is in two parts. There is this silver plastic base with some technical detail and a dial and a handle and a peg and it looks a bit like a hot iron. Then there is this red plastic dish that can peg on and can be removed. ELF stands for extreme low frequency. This is radio waves in the frequency range of 3 to 30 megahertz. Sonic suggests it emits sound waves rather than radio waves but maybe it does both. Next we get to these funny little dishes attached to his arms. He includes two big ear sonic receivers. They are accessories in two parts. There are these silver C clips that attach to the arms and each one of those has a dish, a red plastic dish with a hole for a peg and a cone on one side. Ron Ruddad's concept art calls these speakers and suggests they're supposed to go on the upper arms. They don't fit well on the upper arms though and the card art shows them on the lower arms. Are these speakers or receivers? Do they work with sound or radio waves? The file card suggests that sonic is a misnomer. It's not explicitly stated but these devices probably emit radio waves which have a psychological effect. My understanding of the science behind the effects of extreme low frequency electromagnetic fields on human brains is chronic exposure may lead to depression, stress, anxiety, and poor sleep quality. That's with chronic exposure such as with people who work in industries that require prolonged exposure to ELF waves. It's unlikely to have an appreciable effect with short term exposure as would happen with Psycout's equipment. With all his equipment on Psycout has points and spikes all over. He looks like a hedgehog. Let's take a look at the articulation. On Psycout he had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures by 1987 so 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 bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around. This was an O-ring figure meaning 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 leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt design color of Psycout. If you thought GI Joe figures in the 90s had wild colors check out that 80s neon. Looking at his head he has blonde hair, very yellow blonde hair, parted in the center and kind of feathered looking like Joey Lawrence. I like this face sculpt. It's understated yet distinctive. Over his ears he has this headset that wraps around the back of his head. There's a lot of technical detail, very fine detail. Most of it is silver but the pads over the ears are red. On the Ron Ruddatt drawing he notes this as comms headset wraps around head. And this is probably the most interesting part of Psycout. On the back of the headset there is a silver antenna piece. This is a separate piece. This could be counted as an accessory but it was attached to the figure in the package. This is frequently lost or bent or broken. If it's missing it leaves a big dent and a hole in the back of his head. This is a piece that the figure really needs to look complete. This could be a communications headset but I imagine it's used to protect Psycout from the effects of his own devices. Moving on to the chest he has a bright neon green shirt. Wow that is loud. He has a quilted pattern all over that shirt on the front and the back. There is a slightly raised collar and it's a bit open in the front so you can see a little bit of his bare chest. Over the bright green shirt he has this black vest. At least I guess it's a vest. It wraps around the midsection and looks a bit like a sports bra. Then over that he has this silver chest piece with red straps that go over the shoulders and connect to the bra in the back. That silver chest plate has some technical details. The Ron Ruddatt drawing says it's electronics of some sort which is delightfully vague. Who knows what it does. We finish our look at the chest with this silver empty pistol holster. The production drawing shows a pistol in the holster but it's empty on the figure so I have to guess it's supposed to work with the accessory pistol but it's way too small for that. Moving on to the arms. On the upper arms he has more of that neon green shirt but only on the upper arms. He has a gray long sleeve shirt on the lower arms. It's a bit like wearing a t-shirt over a long sleeve shirt. On those green upper arms he has more of that quilted pattern on the sleeves. There's a black triangle patch on the left upper arm. It's painted black but it's not just painted it's actually sculpted on so that's a nice detail. If this is supposed to represent a real world unit patch I have not found it. On those light gray sleeves on each of the forearms we have three black dots on the outside of the forearm. Ron Ruddatt's drawing specifies these are solar cells. No doubt backup solar power for his electronic equipment and we finish up with some black gloves. His waist piece is in dark gray, a darker gray than the sleeves on the forearms. He has a black belt with a silver belt buckle. He has a pouch on each hip. Ron Ruddatt's drawing specifies these pouches are batteries so Sycout has two ways to power his equipment. He has batteries and a solar backup. The legs are in that same dark gray plastic. On the upper right leg there is a knife sculpted on but unpainted that would have benefited from some paint. On Ron Ruddatt's drawing he specifies this is a commando knife riveted to pants. So you see some rivets on the leg rather than straps that go around the leg. On the left upper leg there is a pocket. It's really well sculpted. There's a buckle. In the concept art it says zippered but that must have changed in pre-production because that's clearly a buckle. The dark gray trousers continue down to the boots and he has some pretty standard-looking black boots. These boots must have been modified a bit from the zippered and buckled boots on Ron Ruddatt's drawing. There was another famous Sycout figure from outside the US. The UK and Europe Tiger Force Sycout. It uses exactly the same mold as the US release but in different colors. Tiger Force was a subset of GI Joe figures released in 1988. In the US there were 10 Tiger Force figures. They were all reissued earlier action figures with updated colors except for one. Sky Striker was made up of reused parts from a couple different old figures. In the UK and Europe some figures were included in Tiger Force that were not available in the US. Among the UK and Europe exclusives was Tiger Force Sycout. The UK and European Tiger Force Sycout has black hair instead of blonde. He has an orange shirt with tiger stripes. He has white sleeves and blue trousers and white boots. These may be common in Europe but they can be hard to come by in the US. Let's take a look at Sycout's file card. His file card has his faction as GI Joe. There's a portrait of Sycout here. A good likeness. His codename is Sycout. His specialty is Deceptive Warfare. His vile name is Kenneth D. Rich. His primary military specialty is Syops and I think this is a more specific description of his specialty than Deceptive Warfare. His secondary military specialty is Social Services Counselor. His birthplace is San Francisco, California and his grade is O2 First Lieutenant. His secondary specialty of Social Services Counselor makes a lot of sense since he has a degree in psychology. He is on a team that sees a lot of combat so there would be a lot of mental health issues associated with that. This is probably a bigger part of his job than the psychological warfare. This paragraph says, Sycout got his degree in psychology from Berkeley and worked on various research projects involving the inducement of paranoia by means of low frequency radio waves. Berkeley is referring to the University of California at Berkeley which is located near Sycout's birthplace of San Francisco. UC Berkeley has an Army ROTC program so he may have participated in that before entering the Army as an officer. The Deceptive Warfare Center is referring to the Psychological Warfare or Cy War Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina which was established in 1952. It's currently named the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. It's talking about paranoia waves here and this is a concept introduced into the G.I. Joe comic book series as far back as issue number two and it was used again with the Cobra Terror Drones. This paragraph has a quote that says, the point at which you win a battle is when you've convinced the enemy that he has lost. This can be accomplished through something as simple as constant repetition. For example, you see a commercial on TV 10 times a day for a particular brand of cookies. One day at the supermarket you're overcome by a sudden craving for cookies. Confronted by an array of unknown brands, you choose the one that you saw advertised. They've won and you've lost. Dammit! Now is a good time to thank my supporters on Patreon. Thanks to their support, I never have to bow to any sponsor. It's like people only make videos if they have sponsors. Like the only thing they care about is branding and that's just sad. As a supporter on Patreon, you get special perks. You can even help choose what is reviewed on this channel and that's the choice of a new generation. Psych out's version three file card goes into a little more depth on his deceptive warfare role. I don't want to dive into this card too much because I'm not reviewing this version of the figure and I will talk about it more when I review version three of Psych out, but I just wanted to pull out one quote. It says, his job involves complicated thinking and multiple layers of deception, making the enemy think you're going with plan A by making such a big fuss about preparing for plan B that the enemy thinks that plan B must be a fake so we actually go ahead with plan B. We can't possibly have a plan C because we can't count that high. That sounds more like traditional military deception. It's very attempting to just read this entire card because it is wacky and there are some nutty things in it, but I will save it until I review version three of Psych out. Looking at how Psych out was used in GI Joe media. Well, he wasn't used very much. He did not appear in the cartoon series with his version one uniform. The figure came out in the gap between animated series. He appeared in his version two uniform in the deep animated series. He was in the two part story long live rock and roll. Since the supersonic fighters were in those episodes, the story emphasized sonic weapons. Even in the episodes featuring the supersonic fighters, Psych out barely appeared. Psych out had a bit more face time in the comic book series published by Marvel Comics. He first appeared in the special missions series in issue number seven. He didn't have much to do in that story. In fact, he didn't have much to do in his first few appearances in the main series. The idea of radio or sound induced paranoia was used in the comic book series several times. The first time it was mentioned was way back in issue number two. The Russians were experimenting with a paranoia inducing ultra low frequency transmitter near the North Pole. That's when GI Joe first encountered the mercenary Quinn. That was long before Psych out joined the team. In issue number 67, Cobra had acquired the ultra low frequency technology from Quinn and incorporated it in their terror drones, which they sold to the fictional country of Frusenland. They used the paranoia waves to induce riots. This was Cobra's plan to create their own market for arms sales. I'm talking about the mind altering technology Psych out uses more than Psych out himself. That's because he wasn't really given a lot to do in the comic book. He appeared here and there in the series as late as 1993. Even in the stories that involved the kind of psychological warfare that was Psych out specialty, he participated less than you would think. Looking at Psych out overall, this is a very strange figure. The colors are wild. It looks like a 90s figure, but it came out in the 80s. The canary yellow hair combines with the neon green shirt to make the top half of this figure as obnoxious as possible. The bottom half of the figure is surprisingly subtle. The accessories are unique. He only has one traditional weapon and that's rather generic. The other accessories are exclusively for bombarding the enemy with radio or sound waves to manipulate the mind. That's a surprising approach for an action figure. He's not a combat troop exactly. He's in a support role, but not in the way that breaker and dial tone facilitate communication. Psych out's job is to attack the enemy between the ears. You could imagine him simply being present on the battlefield and activating his equipment and the enemy runs away in fear. Friendly forces would be shielded from the effects somehow, of course. That isn't realistic, but that was probably the intended play pattern. This kind of psychological manipulation would be considered immoral outside of war. In war, the ability to induce the enemy to surrender or put up less of a fight could save lives on both sides. In media, electronics that induce paranoia were used by the bad guys. Cobra used exactly the same technology Psych out uses to cause chaos in civilian populations. This demonstrates the danger of this technology in the wrong hands. Psych out has another mission, one that's more realistic and one that would serve his team better. It's also a role that Cobra would not have, so that's a distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. Psych out is a counselor. G.I. Joe is a toy line for children. The action figures can fight and be wounded and even die and still be intact for the next battle. In the comic book, you frequently see the characters wounded, even tortured and on the edge of death, but they always recover and return. Most human beings are not that resilient. Facing your own mortality will have some kind of psychological effect. When a Joe's body is wounded, Doc can patch him up and save him from a traumatic death in the battlefield. When a Joe's mind is wounded, Psych out's counseling can save him from a traumatic death later in life, at home, alone with the memories of what he endured. That was my review of Psych out. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you to Marianne for making my hat. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and share this video with your friends. That's what helped this channel grow. You can find me on social media, on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a website, hcc788.com. I could not do these videos without the support of my friends on Patreon, so if you like this channel and you'd like to see this channel continue, please consider supporting the channel on Patreon, you can get some special perks, and you can even get your name in videos like the names you see scrolling on the screen right now. Thank you for watching. I'll be back next time with another vintage GI Joe toy review, and until then, remember, only GI Joe is GI Joe. Watch out, Cobra. I've activated my paranoia waves, and you should be really paranoid now. Nini-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni. Really? Because I feel fine. I don't feel anything. Oh, yeah? Well, I'm really turning up the intensity now. I'm moving to a higher frequency, and it really should be melting your brain. Are you ready to surrender, Cobra? Nini-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni. No. No. Are you sure it's working? I really don't feel anything different at all. I've turned it up to 11! It's on Max Now! You should be ready to give up! Nini-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni. I honestly don't feel anything. I feel great. In fact, I think I may even feel better