30th Ann. G.I. Joe Sky Striker

And here is my 30th Anniversary G.I. Joe Sky Striker, fully armed and stickered up.

_{Man, putting on all those stickers felt like putting decals on a model airplane... there are lots of them. O_o
Not to mention there are a lot of markings options too, so you can customize your Sky Striker to look like the original, or make it look like a Pursuit of Cobra G.I. Joe vehicle, or make it into a personal plane Duke/Flint/Snake Eyes/Shipwreck would pilot.}

Yep, that's certainly one big toy airplane... not as big as many bbi, 21st Century Toys or Unimax offerings as of late, but still pretty darn big.

Since this is a G.I. Joe vehicle, there are several aspects that differentiate the Sky Striker from a real-life F-14 Tomcat (aside from the obvious scaling-down):

- landing gear are located further aft of their real-life positions due to the wing sweep lever gimmick
- weapon stations under the intakes (where the drop tanks would normally go)
- additional fins on the AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles (due to the way they would attach to weapon stations)
- drop tank located on TARPS station in the underbelly
- location of the nose-mounted Vulcan cannon

Of note, the biggest change the 30th Anniversary Sky Striker has compared to the 1983 original would be the retooled cockpit, which seats only one figure this time around due to their bigger size; the 1983 original has two seats just like the real-life F-14.
Another notable change would be the plastic colors used - gull gray with black vertical tailfins (kinda like in the original cartoon) instead of white with white vertical tailfins.

Anyways, even though this version of the Sky Striker comes with a figure of Ace in modern flight gear (as in more akin to Pursuit of Cobra), I've recently decided to put my 25th Anniversary Comic Pack Ace into the cockpit instead, especially since I've stickered this up to look like the 1983 original.


G.I. Joe © Hasbro