About the Electric Trucking Set:

In 1984, Tyco released the GI Joe Electric Trucking set. For this 40th anniversary set (yes, one year late) I’m focusing on the Cobra lineup. Among many details and bits, it included two tanks, one jeep, one cargo truck, and a very 80’s computer banks room as part of the cardboard set. There were also blue “little green army men” included as Cobra Soldiers, but there are enough existing Cobra Soldiers that I’m not going to worry about making customs of them.

Tanks Design:

This is a bit of a fusion project, as it turns out. In Marvel’s GI Joe #1, there were two different kinds of Cobra tanks on display, but I don’t think they were intended to be existing tanks (Trimpe would have made them real-world vehicles had they been aircraft!). Maybe one looks like a Russian T-10 and a Russian T-54- just guesses.

For the two tanks, I’m mixing the upper parts of a Soldier Force tank with the lower body of a cheap Amazon tank. Despite the design mismatch between the upper and lower pieces, they don’t look horrible together, and mixing the tanks makes this custom feel like some customizing went into it, not just a spray paint job. The source tanks are both more current tank designs than either Russian design, too.

This is a very lazy vehicle. Unlike the MOBAT, which can accommodate half of a figure, this has no opening hatches. It’s a glorified display piece with no figure access.

The mix/match approach also leaves me with two leftover tanks, which could become the GI Joe tanks from the Electric Trucking set, depending on how this project goes.

Colors and Paints:

Basic Cobra Blue, like the Electric Trucking set and the comic book (although the comic book’s was greyish blue, but we’ll just ignore that).

The wonderful Toyhax decals really “round up” the work done here and make the cheap vehicle parts look better than they are.

Thanks for looking.