MOBAT with Steeler

Early this month I recorded a podcast wherein I outlined my 'Original 13' team - that being, if I was to reboot the team, who would make the cut. In an attempt not to reinvent the wheel, I looked long and hard at the actual Original 13 and determined who did not make the cut. Characters like Short-Fuse, Grand-Slam... even Grunt and Rock & Roll had far more compelling predecessors. Another huge consideration was vehicle and playset choices. I wanted all the bases covered. 'Base' being the operative word, the Original 13 would have included the '83 Headquarters and all the vehicles that interacted with it. The VAMP, MOBAT... instead of the Dragonfly, I opted for the obvious utility of the Tomahawk with it's transport function. Looking back over the early comics, my affinity grew for the MOBAT driver - Steeler. If he had only gotten a bit more time in the sun he could have been a real fan favourite. His filecard alluded to frequent clashes with authority. And in world of very disciplined soldiers, having a 'Wolverine' type in the mix might have spiced things up a little. His comic appearances did not however live up to this potential, and being 'the tank driver', as soon as the MOBAT toy began being phased out, so did he embark on his voyage to obscurity. But with his potential in mind, he made my cut as the armor specialist, and the tank commander. And I started to really dig the guy.


And the tank. There is some allure to the Original 13, the green team, that a Joe fan can't ignore. The figures are dated. No doubt about that, even from an o-ring perspective. But the vehicles? The attention to detail is unsurpassed. Such quality. Such real-world adherence, but always with a dash of science fiction. A tank. A jeep. A jetpack. You get the picture...

So after falling in love with that early gear, the Steeler (potential) character, and the fact that I had an '83 HQ, a VAMP, a Dragonfly but no MOBAT, I promptly bid on and won a very nice 1983 MOBAT.

A startling 2 weeks later, it arrived. (That is very quick in my experience).

Now the MOBAT has since gone down in history as being comically small. This factor together with the fact that it was cleared through customs very quickly and attracted no customs duty made me think I was probably going to pick up something the size of a shoebox. So I strapped on my backpack, hopped on my bicycle and zipped off to the post office. Shoebox size? No, try case of wine size! Fitting it in my backpack was not a possibility so I cycled home one-handed with a hulking box under my other arm. Going under the subway was a near-death experience. Was the MOBAT larger than I had anticipated?

From left to right: Power Team Elite; Chap Mei; Hasbro; Lanard. Love how high the Corps! tank rides. That thing is floating.

No, the seller was just a very meticulous packer. After stripping away layers of paper and bubble wrap, I had my prize. The blueprints were unfolded and packed flat in a rigid sleeve with a very minty Steeler Filecard. Nice touch that, and much appreciated. The figure was possibly the mintiest action figure I had ever beheld. I don't think anyone manipulated its joints in its entire 28 years since production. It showed - my attempt at bending his knees resulted in his right thigh cracking and breaking off. I glued it back appreciably well. No heartbreak there. The main selling point to getting an original Steeler over the 25th anniversary version was that sweet helmet. It was present, complete and clean. The visor was a bit longer than I had been led to believe, but it's the 80's! Tech like that wasn't efficient on space. And he came with that sweet, sweet uzi. Oh object of my desires. The same one Snake Eyes came with, just in dark grey, and I'd say it's still the finest example Hasbro has ever produced.

As for the MOBAT? The toy was in great shape. Only three decals, a little dust and a very mend-able crack on the machine gun but certainly no deal breakers. And the mechanism works like a charm. Okay, it's pretty slow as the clip attests, managing just over 4.5 km/h (adjusted for scale). But after all these years, it works. One could do far worse.

And there isn't much more to say. It's chief criticism is that it doesn't have much going for it beyond the feature. There are no crew hatches, and Steeler's command position doesn't allow him to seat very deep in the vehicle. But scratch the surface with me readers.

Tow rope and tools. But I think there was a scaling dispute between the designs and the finished product. The very small size of those tools suggest that this tank was meant to be larger, or the figures smaller. Seriously, Steeler could probably only fit two fingers in the spade grip.

The mold is immaculate. there is a real dearth of flat surfaces on this thing. Any place they could have added a mold detail, they have. And they bulleted it on the blueprints. Tools, tow ropes, small-arms stores, hatches, vents, rivets, spare track links... marvelous. A quality mold this is. And it possesses the one thing all tanks should have standard but so few do - real tracks with working bogey wheels. And the MOBAT, in spite of it's slight size has the other thing tanks should have. A really good heft. Even without the two 'D' batteries, she weighs about a kilogram. More so with the batteries in.

Again with the tiny tiny tools...

This toy has reduced me to an 8 year-old again. I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I do. I sleep with it on the pillow beside me and make it ride across the bed and scare the cat in the dead of night. And just when it's appeal began to wear, I pair it up with the HQ and lose all sense of reason. What a thing of beauty. The design team were so switched on back then. Such a unified aesthetic, great quality, detail, interactivity, purpose. Such purity of purpose. No ninjas, Dreadnoks, Eco-Warriors. Just the most well-equipped and proficient soldiers fighting a shadowy organisation that had an affinity for snakes. Up until the MOBAT, I had never owned a G.I. Joe main battle tank. To be fair, there aren't as many as one might expect. But I don't know if a Mauler or Grizzly or (gasp) Brawler will likely usurp this little green bastard. I really love this tank. I have plenty hulking Abrams, but never got this much enjoyment out of them. It's like they are just other tanks. The MOBAT is my protagonist.

Further size comparison. I'd say the Abrams is pretty close to 1/18 scale.

How do I envision it's use? Well it is a mini tank, making it perfectly suitable for Joe's typical mission requirements. It's fast, fully automated so it can either be used remotely or accommodate a driver and commander/gunner and is comparatively light so it can be hauled by a C 17 Globemaster and still allow for an APC and VAMP.

Shifters

For the bulk of my childhood, GI Joe was a toy and nothing more. The filecards offered information enough to paint a decent picture of the figure, but there were no cartoons and very few comics floating around.  So who could blame me for using the figures  a little more... creatively?

With influences like Star Wars/Trek and superhero flicks, Joes became placeholders for more fantastical characters. Tomax was a Jedi. Charbroil was The Flash. Hydro-Viper was a mutant. Balrog was a vampire hunter. Zartan was the vampire. Out of these very disparate influences a common thread of narrative emerged for me and my buddies. We even gave it a name. Shifters.

It was in the wake of The Matrix, where kung fu and bullet time was very much in vogue. I wanted to incorporate superhuman powers into our protagonists, giving us free reign to push the envelope on action sequences. All of a sudden, your character could come out on top of overwhelming odds, leap vast distances, perform all sorts of acrobatic feats and move at inhuman speeds. And if that wasn’t fun enough, he could transport himself to parallel universes.

The gimmick here all started where, at a certain point in history, Cobra became a world power. It’s dominion was that of North America and an underground resistance movement was spearheaded by the former members of the G.I. Joe team and their followers. Rob’s, Al’s and my protagonists were Cobra enforcement operatives tasked with hunting down and brining to justice those who would seek to threaten Cobra’s rule. The hunt culminates in thwarting Conrad Hauser’s attempt on the life of the supreme Cobra leader. But instead of turning him over, Hauser convinces them to fly to the site that once was Cobra Island where the decisive battle between the forces of G.I. Joe and Cobra was fought. Amid the twisted, moss-covered wreckages, they find the remains of Cobra’s final weapon – a mass-brainwashing device, capable of using satellite networks to subvert the minds of the nation. The only ones unaffected were those on Cobra Island. At the same time, deep Cobra moles in key positions coordinated their efforts along with the mass-brainwashing to install themselves as captains of industry, ministers, military leaders and even the president. On returning to the continental US, G.I. Joe find themselves labelled as traitors and outlaws.

Sound familiar? Well, they say there isn’t an original idea out there. But I was playing this out back in ’99, okay! So IDW and Paramount can ki$$ ma @$$!

Around about that time, Cobra has grown wise to this subversion of their top agents and bombs them to kingdom come. But they survive...

As a sort of impending death, knee-jerk, the three have used their latent shifter powers to escape into a kind of limbo. There they meet their handler, Tyrell, who drops a few bombshells.

They are a trio of Shifters super beings able to move through the multiverse of parallel dimensions. They are each hundreds of years old. They were tasked with hunting down reality-hopping baddies. They discovered something that made all three elect to induce amnesia within themselves. But fate brought them back together.

So they get back into the saddle, and for a brief time, this was the best time I ever had with my action figures. Possibly the best time I ever had with my two best childhood friends. The possibilities were endless. From the most conventional military settings to the most far-fetched fantasy world. There was a roster of recurring

 characters, a shadowy inter-dimensional organisation pulling the strings, journeys of personal discovery, love won... and lost. And through it all, three individuals that weren’t merely custom characters. They were our ideal protagonists, not our interpretations of another author’s work, not existing within predetermined rules and limitations. They were pieces of us, to shape as we pleased. Our influences in both character and plot could never be described as original. Far from it, we emulated any and all action/sci-fi/fantasy influences that took our fancy. I even bought a strobe light to play out a similar scene to the opening of Blade, you know, the one in the club, where blood sprays from the sprinkers? But the culmination of all these influences meant we were creating something superior – a culmination of all of them. It was a play pattern without limitation in that we could be in outer space one week, in an ancient civilisation the next and STILL maintain continuity and character development. It was unlike anything to come before, unlike anything that came after. It was a fantastical time. Possibly even a swan song for my friends and my imaginative life. Since then my pursuit of this hobby has been a lot like chasing rainbows.

Retraction

Remember in Feb when I said toy reviews on Youtube were shit and I needed to up their game? Well, that was before this guy just exploded. Best leave it to him then. And he's got a waaaay bigger collection than me. Hey, maybe when time and bandwidth allow I'll post myself talking toys, but way to go, FORMBX257.