Hi, I'm copying Jurassic Park as cheaply as possible speaking of which GI Joe did the same thing Let's look at dino hunters Everybody hooded core commander seven eight eight here this week We are looking at a GI Joe mission play set that has become rare and expensive on the aftermarket Is it so valued because it's a great toy? No, was it popular back in 1993 when it was released? No, is it a hidden gem that we can appreciate now all these years later? No, it is an oddity from the 90s It was GI Joe's attempt to compete with the toy line supported by the most popular movie in 1993 Robo cop 3 Wait a minute a Jurassic Park it was Jurassic Park It's my privilege to welcome peg warmers as a guest on this show to talk about Kenner's Jurassic Park toy line Which was available at the same time as the play set. We're looking at today GI Joe's dino hunters is a very quirky set It also provides a window into what was happening at Hasbro at the time hold on to your butts HCC 788 presents the dino hunters This is the GI Joe dino hunters mission play set It was a toys rs exclusive in 1993 only it was discontinued for 1994 The mission play set included one vehicle one dinosaur and two action figures ambush version two and low light version four The vehicle is a modified GI Joe Desert Fox from 1988 nothing in this set is new Everything is reused except for the artwork on the box. It looks like they did new artwork for that for the Grammaristically inclinated dino hunter sometimes includes a hyphen and sometimes it does not Also, the mission play set is called dino hunters, but the vehicle is called the dino hunter Also, sometimes the vehicle name does not have a hyphen and other times it does so take your pick This mission set was released at a very unique time for Hasbro and for GI Joe In 1991 Hasbro bought the toy company Tonka Tonka had purchased Kenner an old rival of Hasbro's in 1987 So by acquiring Tonka Hasbro also acquired Kenner Hasbro kept Tonka and Kenner as separate divisions from Hasbro's toy operation in Rhode Island There was internal competition with Kenner getting a lot of the prime movie licenses One of those licenses was Jurassic Park This placed a lot of pressure on Hasbro to compete with another division of its own company for the same toy purchasers This dino hunter's set was created very deliberately to compete with Kenner's Jurassic Park line in 1993 Kenner's Jurassic Park toys were a big hit at the time. They had some awesome dinosaurs and vehicles Pegwarmers is joining us to show us what was on the toy shelves and competing with GI Joe's dino hunters Clever girl Hey hooded cobra commander. Thanks for having us on I'm Kevin from Pegwarmers I'm Jordan from geek anything and we are here to show off the competition for GI Joe dino hunters This is the majority of the Kenner Jurassic Park line. Yeah, this is I want to say something like Probably 70% of the actual product from the original release for the movie Okay, and then a little bit after that like I know there's a couple pieces here that were from the They didn't have a sequel yet, but there was more toys to be had right, right But there's quite a bit here. I mean, obviously I don't have all the dinos to drag out But I did bring a pretty solid offering of samples. So there's an enormous Playset. Oh, yeah with a huge fence Which you could set up either like this in a long row or in a loop Yeah, you can loop it back all the way around then it connects to both sides of the actual Command compound. Okay, hold it. So that's Got some like dino damage features and different things built into that Then I guess the next big items would be the two vehicles. Oh, yeah, those are fun We've got the Jeep and the Explorer. Yeah, the jungle explorer. Yep. Okay And these both have different action features built into them. There's a this was like a lasso for Yeah, the the seat actually sort of does the uh the pivot the extension So it comes out so they can try and lasso stuff and then this one's got a flip out missile launcher in the back Plus it does dino damage where like the whole The whole front end comes off and then you can like lift the top out just like in the movie So it's all sorts of cool fun features that a lot of toys don't even do anymore. And they're they're both very like uh Screen accurate like, you know, like pretty pretty good representations of the The vehicles from the movie, which is nice Absolutely what you what you see on screen is what you're playing with at home The basic figure range Is pretty standard Kenner. They're all sort of like five inch five points of articulation characters I'd say the maybe the weakest part of the whole line is that they didn't have actors likeness They didn't have actors likenesses until later on like they only had a few people early on but then They had some figures that looked nothing like the actors, which we've talked about on peg warmers before right But then they fixed that with later releases where they did like wave two figures with updated head sculpts and things like that Which is at least nice for those who wanted it. But I mean, it's it's still the first wave was a little rough Yeah, um, so I would say it's probably like the weakest point in this whole line and then the dinosaurs are beautiful Oh, yeah, and there's all different kinds too. They had smaller basic ones But then I know unfortunately this one doesn't work anymore But I know my doll. Officers has like a screaming feature where it makes actual sounds The frill comes off of it. They had another doll. Officers that actually spits water out if you feel it Which is always really cool The raptors have like head attacks and stuff like that where you can like move the leg And then the head like lurches forward and opens its mouth Some of this stuff like the t-rex has like a a real feel kind of skin to it Yeah, it's a rubbery It's very cool A bunch of them also have panels that you can rip off for dino damage again Absolutely One of the things that I always thought was interesting about Jurassic Park in their marketing And it goes right into kind of what this episode is about of like Fending off the competition Was that their whole tagline was look for the mark of Jurassic Park And all the dinosaurs that you can't really copyright have a jp logo printed on them Yeah, which was always something that stood out to me and it's something that even now is just a collector I look for it every time I find a dinosaur toy just in case. It's the one that I somehow don't know about already And they have something similar going on with the newer ones like the modern stuff But it's not it's not the same as the kenner logo the the jp Combination that just became iconic with the brand as it went on This is what was on the toy out to compete with dino hunters or maybe dinosaur dino hunters was on the shelf to compete with this Um, but we just wanted to get a chance to share this whole line with the with the viewers so they could see You know what what kind of competition there was? Absolutely And it's it's hard to even call it a competition comparatively because you look at The dino hunters product and then you look at this and like just the dinosaurs alone Blow it out of the water The the the pack-in buddy dinosaurs are almost better than the the t-rex that came with the dino hunters Yeah, the hatchlings they included every single human character came with a small dinosaur So if parents didn't have the money to buy both they at least had something to go with their human characters I think the only real flaw with the line overall is that they didn't make everybody from the movies, right? But like we're missing a few key characters, but beyond that it's it's perfect All right, hoodie. Thanks for having us on. Thanks so much. Thank you so much peg warmers Don't forget to check out the peg warmers youtube channel the link will be in the description of this video This vehicle is not the first vehicle to be called dino hunter In fact, it's not the first vehicle released by a division of hasbro to be called dino hunter A trademark was filed in december of 1992 by tonka with its address in potucket road island This was after hasbro's acquisition of tonka and that trademark was for dino hunter There was in fact a tonka truck set called dino hunter released in 1992 and this is it This tonka dino hunter set included a truck with a metal body a cage trailer and a small plastic dinosaur Which I don't have this was all in a smaller scale than gi joe This tonka truck has some nice decorative stickers You may notice the dino hunter on the truck and the trailer do not include the tm trademark label this set did come out in 1992 before the gi joe dino hunters But the trademark wasn't registered until december of 1992 I can't be sure but it's possible the hasbro team registered the dino hunter trademark because tonka was already using that name But they did so with every intention of using it for the gi joe set after gi joe transition from a purely military line In the 1960s to the adventure team in the 1970s There were boxed mission sets that included a vehicle a uniform and sometimes an action figure And a bonus toy related to the mission some of those mission sets in the 1970s included secret of the mummy's tomb The shark's surprise abominable snowman trapped in the coils of doom Search for the golden idol and others they didn't release a dinosaur mission set But they did include some mythical creatures the vehicles uniforms and bonus toys were often reused for other sets So this dino hunter set made of reused parts is very much in line with that tradition The gi joe a real american hero line from the 1980s and 90s had other mission sets like special mission brazil The dino hunter set is the most similar to the 1970s adventure team sets You could say this is an homage to the earlier history of gi joe Or you could say even the idea of dino hunters was recycled. Here is the box for dino hunters This box is in very bad condition It has some water damage and it's very warped But i don't usually collect boxes anyway a box is just kind of a bonus So we can look at this and kind of imagine what a kid in 1993 would have seen in toys rs This artwork appears to be unique Even the vehicle art does not look like just a color swap of the box art for the desert fox It looks like they actually put some effort into getting new artwork for this set There's even some new character art for low light and ambush It looks to me like the box is the only true unique piece in this set on the back of the box There are some photographs of the toys inside the box. This is supposed to be actual size There is some new information I got about the photography on this box Thanks to 3d joes and I will talk about that later But for now, let's just look at the back of the box the photography We see the vehicle the dinosaurs and some photos of the action figures Is a little different from the figures we actually got in the box and then we have two file cards Which I will talk more about in-depth later. These are of course 90s style file cards And there should be five flag points on this box right here But as you can see the flag points were cut off according to the artwork It looks like there's supposed to be some line or string connected to these grapple hooks But the vehicle comes with no such thing the back of the box provides some backstory and purpose for the dino Hunters which is helpful because there is no media for this set It says cobra island is swarming with dinosaurs Having recently been uncovered from the bowels of cobra island cobra commander plans to transport these walking fossils To mainland cities and towns to cause worldwide panic The all-terrain dino hunter takes gi joe on a secret safari to capture the dinosaurs and save them from cobra's evil hand The joes must hurry to preserve and protect the dinosaurs and the world This provides two important pieces of information first the gi joe dino hunters are not trying to kill the dinosaurs They're trying to capture the dinosaurs and where do the dinosaurs come from? They came from the bowels of cobra island So the island pooped them out. Let's look at the vehicle the dino hunter used by the dino hunters I do have the blueprints for the vehicle and I will refer to it some when describing the features on the dino hunter But as you can see, it doesn't have a lot of information But I will use some of those descriptions when applicable the dino hunter is modified from the original 1988 desert fox six-wheel drive vehicle the desert fox included a driver skid mark And the less said about skid mark the better. I've already reviewed the desert fox I will say the dino hunter has no true new parts even though the turret is modified from the desert fox The launcher and the grapple hooks are both reused from other sources I will take this opportunity to show off this custom desert fox created and sent to me by the youtube channel painted plastic This is the arctic fox with driver hardpack. It even includes a file card This isn't really directly related to this review, but I'll take any chance. I can to show this thing off I think this is an amazing custom and it looks great. Thank you again painted plastic. I'm very grateful to have this I did an unboxing and assembly of this dino hunter's vehicle if you'd like to check out that the link will be in the description The colors on the dino hunter are not terrible considering the era There is some neon with the grapple hooks and the turret and the missiles But it's not overwhelming and the other colors are attractive The top half is a bluish green color, which you might call teal The bottom half is tan very close to the color of the top half of the desert fox In fact, I guess you could make a custom all tan vehicle with the bottom half of the dino hunter and the top half of the desert fox But that would be a very expensive custom We round it out with some light gray accent and dark gray wheels and some stickers for extra splashes of colors Obviously, this is not well camouflaged, but it may not need to be camouflaged for this mission And the colors go really well together. It almost looks like dreadknock colors If there's any doubt that this just reuses the mold from the 1988 desert fox the copyright stamp on the bottom still says 1988 hasbro I will point out this dino hunter's vehicle is missing a couple stickers It still has all of the prominent and easily noticeable stickers It did have an incomplete sticker sheet, which I had to restore Unfortunately, some of them were not present, but the ones that were present are on the vehicle Let's look at the parts and the features of the dino hunter starting with the front and this grill on the top half And then on the bottom half the tan part There is what might be interpreted as a coiled line for a winch But there's no winch actually there also in the front on top We have headlights which are rectangles cut into the top of the body of the vehicle showing the tan underneath That's a nice way to do headlights without clear plastic or just using stickers on the hood molded into that teal body We have some vents and some raised sections which may be armor or they may be for a supercharger for the engine We have some running lights on the sides and we have some colorful stickers We also have this raised dash shield. The front wheels are dark gray And in fact, they are the same as the back wheels. There's no distinction They connect to an axle by a mushroom clip which you can see at the center of the wheels And they will spin independently and they will also steer you can click the wheels into a left turn position Or a centered position or a right turn position So you have some steering at the front wheels There is texture on the step into the cab and then we have the cab the interior of the vehicle It is molded in that tan color It has two seats One on each side and there is a center console with a gear shifter There is a light gray dashboard with a light gray steering wheel That steering wheel is on the american driver's side and it does not turn it just clips in So even though there is steering for the front wheels, the steering wheel does not control that You can place your dino hunters in the dino hunter by bending their legs and knees and placing them in from the side You may have to scrunch them a little bit to fit their helmets under the bar But they can both fit in easily and they're deep enough inside there that they won't really fall out very easily Even though they don't have back pegs or a seatbelt around the cab. We have this light gray roll cage It's the same light gray color as the dashboard It connects to the top of the body in the front and the back And on this crossbar. There are some head lamps also on the side of the roll cage on each side There is a peg For a missile attached to those pegs on the roll cage. There are two very bright Yellowish green neon colored missiles. There is one on each side They are the same the blueprints call these two Mobile based sonic missiles these missiles are the same as the missiles on the desert fox just in a different color Behind the cab. There is the bed in tan plastic with a raised platform There is a texture pattern on the bed and the raised platform and on the platform is the turret So far this is all exactly the same as the 1988 desert fox just in different colors But we're about to get into some modifications to the vintage desert fox mold This turret is in the same very bright yellowish neon green color as the missiles It will rotate 360 degrees and the launcher on top of it will elevate and depress This is very similar to the turret on the desert fox, but it's not just different in color It has been modified to fit the launcher on top It's a double spring loaded missile launcher that's on the top of this turret and it has some nice details It is in the same light gray plastic color as the roll cage It looks really good great detail on it and it fires these neon green grapple hooks And if this looks familiar to you, you are right. This is not a new piece. This is an action figure accessory It might be easier to see if I remove it from the turret So you can take a better look at it the blueprints call this double missile launcher the double barrel grappling hook launcher And this is a remold of the missile launching backpack from the 1992 Flak viper obviously it is in a different color, but it still has the backpack So I guess one of the dino hunters could wear this as a backpack Obviously it doesn't fire the same missiles, but these grapple hooks are also not unique I will get to that in a moment The only difference I can see in this dino hunters launcher is on the sides These holes on the sides that they've added so it can be mounted to the turret There are triggers on the back to launch the grapple hooks And I will demonstrate the launch later after I've attached this to the turret But I just want to look at the grapple hooks for now They are in the same very bright yellowish green neon color as the turret and the missiles And these are not entirely unique They are remolded and slightly enlarged from the grapple hook that was included with the 1992 DEF cutter version 2 You can see there's a slight remold here and the hooks on the dino hunters grapple hook is slightly larger But it is otherwise the same accessory You can see there is a string that connects cutters grapple hook to the launcher And even though the dino hunters grapple does not have the string It still has the hole for the string This makes me suspect they did intend this grapple hook to be tethered to the launcher But at some point before production, they canceled the string which is understandable Have you seen the price of string these days? In case you're wondering if they made any other modifications to this grapple hook to make it work with this launcher No, it fits perfectly well in the backpack for the flak viper and it will launch from that backpack And it fits perfectly well in the launcher for the dino hunters. So it is interchangeable Let's take a closer look at that turret. It has texture on the front and on the back It has a sticker that doesn't really look like a control panel and it has foot pegs at the base So you can place an action figure on the turret It's best to bend the figures legs and you can place the feet on the foot pegs And you can have an action figure Manning the turret comparing the dino hunters turret with the desert fox turret Other than the obvious color difference on the desert fox machine gun turret There is this armor shield around the machine gun That has been cut out on the dino hunters turret to make space for the missile launcher Even though this has been modified. It is still compatible. It still has this notch So you can remove the machine gun from the desert fox And you can mount it on the dino hunters turret and it works perfectly fine It's a compatible machine gun turret. I want to demonstrate this spring loaded launcher So i'm going to replace the grapple hooks in the launcher notch side up And you just press them back until they clicked Then we can mount this thing back onto the turret with the holes in the side That is pretty easy and it does stay on pretty securely once you get it on So now we can demonstrate how to fire these grapple hooks out of the launcher Normally I demonstrate these spring loaded missile launchers by firing at doctor mind bender But these are made for capturing dinosaurs So I have doctor mind bender riding a dinosaur There are two triggers on the back of the launcher.  It just bounced right off. So let's see if we can get him with the second shot There we go and the dinosaur is unharmed. We're not done looking at features on the dino hunter It has four wheels in back two on each side It's the same dark gray wheels as the front and they spin independently Except for this one on the back on my example This one fits much tighter than the others and does not spin That is peculiar to my example and yours probably will not be the same in the back There is this side facing seat. It is molded in the teal color of the top half of the vehicle It seats one action figure and it faces this computer control panel That means you can hold a total of four action figures in this vehicle Two in the front one on the turret and one in the back You can place a figure in there and he should fit pretty securely But not quite as securely as inside the cap But you can hook his legs under that computer panel and he shouldn't fall out very easily at the very rear There is this keep back sticker capture operator only and there's a tan bumper with a tow hitch And a light gray antenna attached to the bumper the dino hunter cage trailer Is it exactly compatible with the gi jo dino hunter vehicle because it has a peg And the back of the gi jo vehicle also has a peg But there is a space behind that tow hitch where you can kind of slide that peg on the trailer in there and And it it it sort of works the dino hunter has all the same assets as the desert fox And i really like the desert fox it has lots of features It holds four figures and it looks cool the desert fox is colored for desert missions The dino hunter doesn't really need to be camouflaged. It's made for hunting dinosaurs It's not really a combat vehicle dinosaurs are colorblind anyway, right Just like whomever chose the colors for this vehicle If these colors looked okay for that guy, they probably look okay to a dinosaur Now let's look at the infamous dinosaur from the dino hunter's set This is a hard plastic dinosaur with no articulation. It is a very inaccurate tyrannosaurus rex This looks like a little kid's toy like it's from baby's first dinosaur assortment This t-rex is in a base yellow plastic color with green paint sprayed over the head And down the back and along the tail and on the outside of the legs It has painted eyes and white teeth The dinosaur has a leathery skin pattern and alligator like ridges all the way down the back and the tail It has horizontal ridge lines from the neck all the way down the belly and all the way to the end of the tail The arms are pulled closely to the body Why are the arms pressed so awkwardly against the chest? The dinosaur appears to be the only new piece in this set. It is not reused from any previous gi joe toy but Surprise it is almost a direct copy of this 1985 tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur from imperial toys You can see the copyright stamp on this one says 1993 hasbro And on this one it says 1985 and this is the imperial toys logo Obviously, they're not exactly the same the dino hunters dinosaur is a little smaller and the imperial dinosaur has its arms outstretched But other than that it has the same skin pattern the same ridges on the back It has the same head and mouth and eyes It has the same pattern down the front and they're almost exactly the same color That means the one piece from the dino hunters set that looks unique is actually a copy of something else There is nothing new in this set So how could this happen? According to vinnie deliva who worked on gi joe for hasbro at the time the dinosaur was licensed from imperial The arms had to be changed because the product integrity group said the arms were too thin They had to retool the dinosaur with the arms pressed to the body The toy photography for the back of the box had already been done and had to be changed to show the updated dinosaur Thank you to 3d joes for that information. It will be in their upcoming book Carson was kind enough to give me a preview of that page I was not able to find that information anywhere else So thank you to Carson and 3d joes for that insight the dinosaur will fit in the tanca dino hunters cage trailer So the gi joe dino hunters can capture this guy Let's turn our attention to the two action figures that came with this mission play set ambush and lowlight gi joe vehicles rarely included two action figures One example would be the 1987 defiant shuttle which included payload and hard top Both of these dino hunters figures are recolored copies of earlier figures They both had standard articulation and they each had an accessories tree these accessories that were attached to a plastic frame The accessory trees were not assigned to a figure But it makes sense that ambush should have the green one and lowlight should have the black one For reasons which will make sense when we look at the accessories Let's take a closer look at ambush. This is ambush version two version one was released in 1990 He was the concealment specialist now. He is the dinosaur camouflage specialist. Let's look at ambush's accessories I have only one accessory on the figure the only accessory that was not on the plastic frame And that is the helmet this helmet is in tan plastic It has texture on it This is a remold and a recolor of the helmet that was included with version one of ambush It's the same helmet in a different color this tan color Does closely match the tan color on the lower half of the figure the remaining accessories were on this Accessories tree all these accessories attached to the frame. They are all molded in the same dark green plastic color This was a standard practice in the 1990s on that frame There was a figure stand and some weapons all of which were reissued from other action figures There is nothing new and original on this accessories tree This machine gun is a reissue of the machine gun that came with 1987 tunnel rat this assault rifle is a reissue of the assault rifle from 1990 sky patrol airborne This laser gun was originally issued with 1987 Battle force 2000 blaster this pistol was originally issued with 1988 Shockwave this machete was originally issued with 1988 muskrat Finally this knife was originally issued with 1988 hidden run Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of ambush starting with the head and on his head. He has brown hair And brown eyes and eyebrows a bushy brown mustache connected to sideburns This is of course the same head sculpt as version one and the hair color is almost exactly the same The hair color on version two is maybe slightly more red than version one But it's almost identical. It'd be really hard to tell these apart Moving on to the chest ambush is wearing an olive green shirt That shirt has pockets on the upper chest left and right and another pocket on the lower right side There's no flesh colored paint above the collar. So we have to assume that's a green undershirt as well In fact, there's only one paint application on the chest this very bright orange bandolier Lined with grenades the file card calls this bandolier with tear gas grenades These are all the same details on the chest of the version one figure But the version one figure has this subtle camouflage all over the uniform And that camouflage is totally missing on the version two figure The arms feature olive green rolled up sleeves on the upper arm the same color green as the chest The lower arms have long sleeves down to the wrists and a texture on the sleeves It looks like a knit shirt and he has bare hands Since he is wearing a black undershirt with long sleeves It would have been nice to have a spot of black paint on the undershirt that's visible above the collar So it would match the color on the arms the waist piece features tan trousers with a wide Bright orange belt the same color as the orange bandolier on the chest The belt has some details, but no pouches. It has a nicely detailed belt buckle The legs are in that same tan color around the right thigh There is an orange band with more grenades the file card calls these leg strapped canister smoke grenades There are no weapons or pockets on the left leg on the lower legs It looks like he has his trouser legs rolled up to the shins and below that he has bright orange socks Or boot covers. I'm not really sure, but he has black boots and on his right ankle He has a black knife. It's hard to say which is better for paint applications version one or version two Version one didn't have a lot of paint applications to begin with But it did have this camouflage pattern, which is lacking on version two So that's a point in the favor of version one other than the orange the colors aren't too bad Version one looks better But the tan green and black on version two is almost as good The orange is just so distracting. Let's look at ambush's file card, which is still on the box There is artwork here, which mirrors the new artwork on the front of the box It looks like he is carrying a rock viper machine gun in yellow But this accessory is not included with the set the file card calls it a modified dino stun tranquilizer gun with scope His codename is ambush. He is the dinosaur camouflage specialist So does he camouflage dinosaurs or does he camouflage himself from dinosaurs? I guess if dinosaurs are colorblind, you can wear safety orange for that His file name is erin mcman. His primary military specialty is camouflage specialist secondary military specialty is infantry His birthplace is walnut california and his grade is e3. There's a quote presumably from ambush It says trying to capture a dinosaur is like wrestling a whale in a fish tank I imagine getting a whale in a fish tank is even more difficult The first part of this paragraph copies the version one file card, but changes it a little bit It says ambush has no trouble staying out of sight when he was 10 years old ambush participated in a neighborhood game of hide and seek Then disappeared for three days The national guard had be called into aid in the search Which ended when he started getting hungry for his mom's home cooking on the version one card They just found his hiding place under the porch before joining the army ambush studied ancient history in college especially the stone age and dinosaurs Dinosaurs existed long before ancient history or even the stone age So these studies would not help him hunt dinosaurs His prehistoric knowledge and stealth like qualities made him a perfect choice to capture and save dinosaurs from cobra island Having read so much about them in books Ambush jumped at the chance to see a living dinosaur with his own eyes despite the obvious dangers of the mission Okay, dinosaurs are prehistoric So he may have read about them in books But the writer of this file card doesn't seem to know or care about the difference between ancient history The stone age and prehistory That's just all in the past and that's where dinosaurs are right I studied civil war history and that's also in the past Am I qualified to hunt dinosaurs this file card does continue the story written on the back of the box They are trying to save dinosaurs. So most of the weapons described on here are non-lethal Let's turn our attention to low light. This is low light version four low light is the night spotter Which is implied to be a sniper low light was in two sub teams Slaughter's marauders and dino hunters He had two hair colors and two faces version one of low light was introduced in 1986 He had blonde hair a gray suit a black cap and red goggles version two of low light was introduced in 1989 in slaughter's marauders It used the same mold as version one but in slaughter's marauders colors He still had blonde hair version three of low light was introduced in 1991 It had a totally updated sculpt.  It looked like a totally different guy The face was sculpted to look like dav marr who was a designer in hasbro's rnd department This happened a lot with gi joe at the time if there's a face that looks like it could be a real person It probably was made to look like a real hasbro employee Dino hunters low light uses the same mold as version three with the updated head sculpt But they changed the hair color back to blonde. Let's look at low lights accessories. He has a helmet This is the only accessory that was not attached to the accessories frame It is a black helmet It has a black visor attached to it a night vision visor Which can be moved up or moved down over the figure's eyes This is nearly the same helmet that came with version three of low light But the version three helmet has a strip of red paint across the visor This is the accessories tree that's usually given to low light and not just because it's black to match the helmet But because it includes the weapon from low light version three It has low lights submachine gun with scope It is modified slightly from the version three submachine gun You can see the spaces on the stock have been filled in but it is otherwise the same accessory The file card calls this a modified dino stun tranquilizer gun with scope Also on the frame is a figure stand and a bunch of other reused accessories As with the other one there is nothing new on this This assault rifle was originally issued with 1990 sky patrol airway This pistol was first issued with 1990 sky patrol skydive on the artwork on the card It does show low light carrying a pistol, which may be this one. The file card calls it an xk66 ripple fire short rifle This doesn't look like any kind of rifle again We have the knife from 1988 hit and run the final weapon is this laser gun looking thing And this was first issued with 1991 Mercer version two. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of low light This is a straight reissue of version three with different colors Louder colors. We're still going with this idea that dinosaurs are colorblind, right? Because if they're not this guy's not gonna make it looking at his head. He has yellow blonde hair and beard That's a very bright yellow. I'm pretty sure that shade of blonde does not occur in nature He returned to the hair color from version one and two But he also retains the head shape of version three He has black eyebrows and black eyes, but he does not have the black face paint That was on version three. He really looks like rock and roll This would have been a good head sculpt for a new version of rock and roll There was a rock and roll released in 1993 the star brigade Armour tech rock and roll if you're not a fan of the star brigade figure You could just imagine this as a new version of rock and roll on his chest He has a yellow mesh vest over a dark green shirt He has a black harness over the mesh vest These are all the same details as version three but with different colors Yes, that yellow is very bright But i'm trying to go easy on the colors on these figures because they're not in combat They're trying to capture dinosaurs So i'm assuming the bright colors don't matter as much The arms have that dark green shirt with the sleeves rolled up on the upper arms The lower arms have that same yellow mesh all the way down to the hands So i guess he's wearing a long sleeve yellow mesh shirt Under a long sleeve dark green shirt with the sleeves rolled up and another mesh vest over that The arms on ambush and low light have similar details I don't know if they planned it that way, but it worked out that way The waist piece is olive green with black belts and black crisscross straps across the front and the back Those straps go down to pistol holsters on the upper legs The legs are in that same olive green color with black pistol holsters on the outside of each upper leg And black pistols in those holsters the file card calls these two Leg strapped nine millimeter pistols on the right upper leg. There is this detail I think this may be pockets, but i'm not sure he has black bands across the knees I guess these are supposed to be knee pads Unfortunately the hinge on the lower leg is not painted So you can see the green hinge if you bend the knees and that's pretty unsightly His trousers are zipped down to the ankles and strapped to the right outer leg There is a black knife and he has black boots Although the colors on version three are better It's hard to beat that basic black the colors on version four are not bad Especially on the lower half of the figure The lower half of the figure has pretty good military colors In fact the upper half of the ambush figure other than the orange has pretty good military colors too These are each half of a good figure I'm glad they gave him back his blonde hair from versions one and two the change to black hair was abrupt and unexplained But he still looks like a different person. He has a different head shape He looks like a totally different guy. So why not make him a new character or just make him a new version of rock and roll Let's look at lowlights file card. The artwork mirrors the new character art on the front of the box His codename is low light. He's the dinosaur knight spotter. His file name is cooper g mc bride His primary military specialty is knight spotter Secondary military specialty is marksmanship instructor. His birthplace is crossby new mexico and his grade is e six This bio is an odd mixture of previous file cards For example, the serial number matches the version two file card But not the version one and version three file cards The primary military specialty on the version one file card is infantry on the version two file card It is knight spotter on the version three file card It goes back to infantry 11b and on version four it goes back to knight spotter The version one secondary military specialty is marksmanship instructor on version two It's still marksmanship instructor on version three It's sharpshooter and on version four it goes back to marksmanship instructor. They changed his place of birth He was from crossby north dakota. Now he is from crossby new mexico There's a quote here presumably from low light himself It says I predict a successful mission as long as those dinosaurs aren't hungry Well, if the dinosaurs eat the dino hunters, they won't be hungry Therefore success this paragraph starts the same as version one and version two But the birthplace change from north dakota to new mexico is reflected in the text So they did that on purpose and i'm not sure why it says as a child in new mexico Low light was afraid of the dark timid of animals and shy of loud noises Fears he obviously outgrew or he wouldn't have volunteered for this mission The other file cards say how he outgrew those fears But this one just skips over it chasing dinosaurs through a thick jungle isn't going to be easy But low light never backs down from a challenge It's amazing to watch him guide troops on missions behind enemy lines Then silently get them out of there under a blanket of pure darkness It's crazy But low light sees better in the dark than he does in the light While he's wearing night vision goggles, so he better see you pretty well in the dark If he can't then they are defective and you got to return those to amazon These skills will come in handy leading night assaults on cobra island while trying to capture dinosaurs in the dark Not exactly a typical day at the office If he's going to infiltrate cobra island at night He probably shouldn't wear bright yellow looking at how the dino hunters were used in gi jo media Well, they were not used in gi jo media But both ambush and low light appeared in the cartoon and the comic book low light made his first Animated appearance in the sunbow era in the episode arise Serpentor arise part one Ambush first appeared in the deak era of the animated series in the episode united we stand Looking at the comic book series published by marvel comics again The dino hunters did not appear but both low light and ambush were in the series Low light first appeared in issue number 55 and ambush first appeared in issue number 111 Low light was more significant than ambush in the comic book series But in animation both low light and ambush had some good moments looking at the dino hunters overall This set is uninspired. There is nothing new here Even the dinosaur the modifications to the dino hunter vehicle came from action figure accessories Otherwise, it is just a recolored desert fox The action figures are reissues of older action figures with accessories that are reissues of old accessories The concept of a mission play set was a call back to gi jo from the 1970s Even the name dino hunter came from tonka There was an attempt at a story on the box and in the file cards, but it really needed to be fleshed out Where exactly did the dinosaurs come from? How did they get under cobra island? How were they discovered? What was gi jo going to do with them if they captured them? It was obviously important to release this set with as little new tooling as possible It feels rushed out, which it probably was Kenner was releasing Jurassic park a toy line supported by a popular movie with lots of cool vehicles and dinosaurs Thank you again to peg warmers for featuring those toys Since this was a toys rs exclusive It was produced in lower numbers and is thus rare and expensive now unless you're a completist or a dinosaur enthusiast This is an easy pass despite this I can kind of understand it and I can respect what they were trying to do G. Wayne Miller's book toy wars describes the environment of hasbro at the time It was an era of expansion and upheaval The acquisition of tonka and kenner had placed hasbro's gi jo team on the hot seat By 1993 the line was struggling in the market and they were competing against divisions of their own company The one asset they had was the established brand of gi jo The dino hunter's set was perfect for a toys rs exclusive Exclusives usually consisted of recolored product. The retailer wasn't expecting anything all new Anything could be thrown into gi jo to boost the sales space aliens Mutants street fighter eco warriors and dinosaurs The brand team was doing anything and everything to save it. It wasn't really gi jo They were saving they were fighting to save the jobs of people working in the boys toys division at hasbro These were people with families and homes They may have just been numbers on a spreadsheet to the corporate bean counters But to the managers who had worked with them for years. They were real people. Is dino hunters good? No, is it creative and innovative? Heck no, they copied everything Is it worth the ridiculous prices it goes for on the aftermarket? Probably not dino hunters is more important than it appears to be It's a time capsule. It contains the dna of long extinct gi jo It was hatched from the desperation of a struggling brand It's a collection of the efforts and hopes of people trying to save the careers of their friends For those reasons, I can't hate it. It's still pretty silly and kind of ridiculous But it has a history that I can't appreciate That was my review of the dino hunters. I hope you enjoyed it And thank you for your patience and waiting for this review to come out. Thank you to peg warmers for joining us I always love working with peg warmers. Make sure you check out their channel Thank you to audrey for being a tyrannosaurus rex and thank you to marianne for being the camera person And also behind the scenes a tyrannosaurus rex Don't forget to give the video a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel and share the video with your friends If you'd like to support the channel. I have a patreon. That's a great way to do it You can get your name in videos like the names you see scrolling on the screen right now I'll be back soon with more vintage gi jo toy review until then remember only gi jo is gi jo


Everyone, so glad you can make it. Welcome to New America NYC at Civic Hall. I'm Pearson Holtz, and I have the pleasure of working with the Future Tens team. For those of you who are not familiar with Future Tens, it is a partnership between Arizona State, New America, and Slate. So we're very excited. And at Future Tens, we explore emerging technologies and society, and we ultimately aim to be a citizen's guide to the future. Today we're excited to focus on at our future above. A vibrant, artistic, and cultural movement that provides a unique perspective, a black perspective, for examining the politics, aesthetics, and cultural aspects of science and technology. So before we get started, we would like to personally thank our partners at 67 Orange Street in Harlem, who will be providing a signature cocktail for us after the event. So join us for the reception. It will be fun. And also, we're currently broadcasting online right now. There's live stream. So if you have a question during the Q&A portion, you are ultimately consenting to be recorded. So please keep that in mind. So we have dynamic speakers this evening, and here to kick off the conversation is our moderator, Ayesha Harris, who is the culture writer at Slate. So kick it off, Ayesha. Welcome. Thanks for coming out. I'm super excited to discuss this topic. I will introduce our amazing guests this evening. To my right, we have Natasha Womack. She's a filmmaker and the author of African Futurism, the world of black sci-fi and fantasy culture, and also of the multi-media series RELAT 2212, about RELAT and mathilmatic, a rebel strategist and third-generation citizen of planning hope. In the middle here, we have Wale Oyejide. Did I film something? Yes, I think. Wale is the designer and creator of the fashion brand, Kerry Jones, as well as a writer, a former attorney, and a courting artist and producer. And all the way on the far right is Michael G. Bennett. He's an associate professor at Arizona State University School for the Future of Innovation in Society, the Center of Science and Imagination, and the Risk Innovation Lab, as well as a lecturer in the Standard Gay O'Connor College of Humanity. So to keep this off, Natasha, since you wrote an entire book about African Futurism and kind of the history of it, I would love if you could kind of let the audience know that everyone watching kind of give an overview of what it's about, and also tell us a little bit about how you became an African Futurist. Sure. Well, one, thank you for inviting me here to stand from really enthusiastic. African Futurism is a way of looking at possible futures for ultimate realities through a black cultural lens. It's the intersection of black culture, technology, the imagination, liberation, and I always add mysticism. It differs from traditional science fiction. One, in that it uses the future, the past and the present as one, it really engages the feminine aspect of consciousness and looks at intuition and feelings as a source of knowledge that's as valuable as saying, well, thank you. And it also addresses or looks at race as a technology. That's the time it's been reviewed. There's a lot of engagement around nature as well. And it's highly intersectional. So it's seamless and has a very fluid perspective that's very nonlinear. So I think that a lot of people see themselves as having futures. And in your book, you describe what kind of a tragedy is like, African Futurism. Right. Who are those folks? Well, yes. If there was like a foundation of sorts in this community, and you would reference Octavia Butler, you would reference a sub-rock, and then a George Clinton, you can't really be around. So can you talk a little bit about, like, how you found yourself within African Futurism? Because it seems like a very personal sort of getting into the women sort of, because of a personal, not a decision, but you have to kind of create that space. That's a big part of it, is creating space to get to that. So how did you come to that? Well, I think that for a lot of people, we get to the question, and then over time, you discover the answer, you know, with most things. And for me, with Afrofuturism, I discovered that I was always an Afrofuturist, and I just did not know the term, or didn't know the prison through which to really look at it. As a kid, I liked science. I liked history. But, you know, history and science, I'm supposed to be living to be a marriage, right? I'm supposed to be a math person, I'm supposed to be a science person, I'm supposed to be a leading person. So, you know, there's a lot of judgments around that. But ultimately, when I went to college at Clark Atlanta University, and that's someone who was talking about what we now call Afrofuturism. And over time, I've really met a lot of people who are engaged with these ideas, who they were looking at, sound, and the imagination, and technology, and music, and culture. They wanted to see themselves in the future. They wanted to claim their relationship to science from a cultural perspective, in terms of those who contributed in the past, or overlooked. And really wanted to engage these ideas for self-vibration, for social change, and felt that it could be very transformative. So, as I discovered, more people who were very much engaged in this, I started to find the type of Afrofuturism. And that really helped narrow my focus. It's very much, I would say, a journey of self-discovery kind of takes over. But like that, much like the music that we call Afrofuturism, you know, the vibrations just get to you, and you're like, oh man, where am I? Well, I would say Afrofuturism is very much that same place. Michael, one of the places you work is the science of imagination. What does that mean? And how does that apply to your use and experience with Afrofuturism? Because Afrofuturism is always about imagination and thinking outside of the box. And I'm curious how that applies to people. So, this is really a direct wisdom all the time. It's going to be in my mouth if it's in the process. So, the center for science and the imagination is, you're going to the first part of your question. It's really focused on a series of projects, a range of projects created, but they all come out to this notion that there's still a lot of work to be done at this intersection of science and science communication. The public, there is publicers, as well as back and forth, more back and forth on our action of more transmission of traffic and whatever you want to call it, between conventional science communities and aesthetic or artistic communities. And so, to put some light on that so we can live more concrete on one of the central programs, the formal programs that's underway at CSI, as we call it, out of ASU right now. It's concerned with the upcoming bicentennial of Frankenstein, the novel. And so, a series of publicly facing engagements that range in terms of actors participating in it. The range from museums to practicing scientists to social sciences to lawyers like myself are all gathering around this novel and more importantly, the central concepts behind it to explore what it might actually lead into innovative and practically by definition controversial work inside of the world and present in the future. As far as my own engagement with that for future is at, in some ways, if you go over what's happening now to a time at the CSI, there have been a series of moments, a series of works, a series of events here that have been really critical to folks who apply initially discovering that I didn't immediately associate with what that real future is and what perhaps it is that are not encouraged yet, but Samuel Delighting, of course, is a major figure for that real future as a personal aid. Along with probably comic books from the 1980s and the old movies that I can read these days his writings are so profound and it's through him that his writings that I came across and continued to come across most of the years that are central in the 19th century as a political one that I want to call it. Well, your, you do a ton of stuff. You have Curie Jones, your fashion line, you also have an exhibition. Is it, it's our Africa, that? Yeah, Africa 2080 it's basically an ongoing series of work. You want to kind of depict the staff of cities over the years in the future. Yeah, so I don't, there, I think there were some, Yeah, there were some images in the other room up there, but just to describe a little bit, there's a series of digital, digital images, and each one is a different city from Africa. And you are in it and also a different people. Yeah, it's super narcissistic, but for anyone who does fashion, if you've ever seen Kanye West, this is us. Yes, it's very time-consuming. But it's about us, first and foremost. But for me it was the idea that all of what we do, and I think at the base level, what we do all this year is storytelling and some form together. So for any of us who ever watched Star Trek or Star Wars or anything with people with funny ears and as a kid, many of us saw ourselves, both the series of those on the screen, until it's natural when you go on to tell stories of your own, you're going to eject pieces of your heritage, pieces of your culture, pieces of yourself into it. So for me, ultimately, if I'm telling stories and full tales about my people, we're going to end up representing the way we look and the way we feel. So when I thought to convey images of different places in Africa, to use your content with numerous different continents, sorry, cultures and countries, then it's very natural to say, well, well, well, what would be the place that things like this in Nairobi look like in the future? I was supposed to think about the kind of stairs we'll be in for the future that we see on television that tends to not reflect a wide variety of cultures, even though they seem to be at the base level. It's not as broad as it could be. So. And those, your images, there's, I think in at least most of them, there's hovering kind of like drones and space aircraft, and you have text underneath them as well. Let's see. For the whole, for the entire thing at the beginning before the actual, and you can find one on this website, he writes, the following is an ongoing series of stories that scrutinize aspects of present-day African society and attempt to telegraph the ripple effects in the far-flung future, which I feel like in many ways encapsulates kind of what Afro-futurism is about, which is kind of, and many people have said this, it's taking, it's from the future, it's from the past, it's from the present. And I just, could you tease out a little more like control your background instead of how you sort of came across that within the work of control? I think generally we think that science fiction tends to be all over the nature. So if you think about Star Trek and the Star Wars they're stories about these cultures a long time ago and they got too far away or far in the future, but they're ultimately telling stories about us. So you watch Star Trek and you have your first interagency kiss on national television but that's allowed to happen because it's all this futuristic land that allows us to kind of lean to each other on a person-level interlife. So for me, oftentimes when you flip through the newspapers on the rare occasions when they come to the continent of Africa, it tends to be doom, gloom, grizzly, it makes sure you're not making this your world for that few terrorist attacks. Well, these things do happen and they do exist, but a lot of my work is intended to kind of convey a more full picture of life, not only on a continent but specifically in Nigeria which is where I'm from. So when I tell these stories, whether they be in the presence of nature or shot into the future, it's always the idea of kind of telling them what's happening now but with a wider scope with a more human scope. So when there is brutality, sickness, violence, you're still getting into the perspective of real people with actual emotions and connections. You're not getting these like faceless crime people who are disposable who use as puppets. You're not getting a story about the first black who dies in the film because they are. Again, if you die first, get a family pride about it. So that's... Ultimately we're using stories as an eagle to kind of tell you about us and who we are and what film could make sense. So out of futurism has pretty much existed for a very long time. So I'm curious if there's anything you can kind of notice. I mean, it could be other factors as well as just like time happens and history happens but like, is there like a very hard difference between a full out of futurism and what's out of futurism after? Well, I can say one of the reasons I love the book Afrofuturism was because a lot of people were engaging with these ideas but they felt like they were very much alone. They were by themselves. They felt isolated. They were, you know, thin and a friend and they're talking about metaphysics, you know, under a rock somewhere and they felt as if they shared these with the larger public or larger black culture that there would be this mass rejection. So it was just this concept that people couldn't connect with themselves. That's why I wrote the book but when I look back to the time when Afrofuturism and the time it emerged, I think for many people engaged with those ideas. It was a way of sharing and in trying to wrap their mind around some of these concepts and really develop the language around it. So when you look at Dr. Alondra Nelson who put together the first out of futurism, Listern and a lot of their early writing to, you know, regretting the others, they were really, they were really trying to synergize and to find a language to articulate how these different concepts intersected. But you have to think about it. You're talking about you're looking at music, to technical culture and you're trying to match that with actual science and you're trying to connect that to, you know, the history or the contributions that Africans and indigenous cultures have made to technology and they're trying to loop that back to the future.  And I remember when I spoke with my friend in college who was talking about what we now call Afrofuturism. My first question was well, what is this? I said, what is your foundation? What is this philosophy? Because I came up in a, we thought metaphysics tradition which is very foundational if you have a thing that you do it. So I'm like, okay, so give me a scholar give me a philosophy or a point of view and he couldn't name that. Now he was familiar with other kinds of metaphysics and various terminologies but when it came to identifying Afrofuturism he didn't know that word. And so for some people they don't always have the courage to kind of fight the fight and step out there and be the lone wolf and talk about these subjects publicly. They can feel a little rejected but once there's this, it's established that look, no, there's a community but beyond there being a community there's a lineage there's a history of it and you can connect with all of these people in the past who engage with these same ideas for people of color in particular it's very empowering to feel like they're not an anomaly and that this perspective is rooted in the, rooted in our understanding of humanity and it's rooted in our own culture. In a strictly calendar based sense I'd say there's there's certainly several differences like a before and after a corner of the term several different dimensions and change within what we recognize as Afrofuturism but one of the most important of them it's the only one that I mentioned and I don't talk too much about it is that I think that the concepts, the fundamental concepts behind the term have become much more relevant in the early in the 90s I certainly thought probably once a week that I was living in a science-facial environment just randomly randomly stopped happening in the world and that brings the rate at which I sense that now is probably five times a day. Can we expand a little bit about that because I do think it is important to discuss how we can apply this to today and how it manifests itself in everything that's happening. Sure, sure. So I wouldn't be so bold as to try and defy Afrofuturism but I am bold enough to say that companies and their functional aspects the thing is that many of the artworks, the activities, the individuals that we associate with the term that many of them want to do and one of those things is characterizing various aspects of Black subjectivity history of Black folk in this country or around the world that's fundamentally a science-fictional so a classic way in which that's done is to say take a kind of radical religious history perspective on the Atlantic slave trade and to say that in addition to the conventional interpretation of it as being this economic and ultimately obviously fundamentally racist event you can also understand it as a kind of an alien abduction item to run with this metaphor of alien abduction and kind of open up two science-sictional concepts two science-sictional neologisms two science-sictional tropes of various types many aspects of contemporary Black existence and so that honestly is a really personal attractive aspect of Afrofuturism it's one that I've said a long time ago it's one that I felt pretty regularly before I had an idea of what the term meant and again to run around I feel with increasing frequency now when we look around at the state of the world whether we're talking about assaults on the biosphere whether we're talking about police brutality which is a chronic issue of these days or gun violence by the way I'm speaking about violence to all the people out there live stream land folks in Paris, folks in San Bernardino folks in Chicago folks in Staten Island thoughts good wishes and vibes go out too I wish I could say more than that but coming back to the main point many aspects of what's going on now often times get captured under this term of the Anthropocene especially the ecological damage of the assault on the biosphere fundamental notion there being that humans now are having such a profound impact on the globe, on the planet in the same way that we might talk about the Jurassic which is being the one dominated by reptiles we can now talk about this period that we're in being dominated by human activities but to run with a science fiction thing just a bit further I would say for those of us that are interested in various ways committed to Afrofuturist thought it was my call that could really say a fundamentally horrific for many, many folks that are black in this country and around the world it's a fundamentally horrific period that has been for a long time I think that's why I might be an imagination part of Afrofuturism because it's about imagination and transform your circumstances to be able to see something beyond what happens to be in front of you and therefore connect with that and almost project yourself into that experience by seeing it first and moving past a certain projected reality just to chime in on that sorry just to chime in on that a piece that should be appended to what I just said is that as Martin Sinker who wrote Afrofuturistically before Derrick Daly in my few years as he has suggested one of the things that's so interesting about black American approaches to as I called it the Cthulhu scene is that there's a radically most tragically visionary approach to the apocalyptic life it's not defeatist Sinker says in effect that that's a bulk of black culture is post apocalyptic but only by necessity it's as a result of what's happened and it moves on from that in a strange kind of way again tragically visionary way it embraces apocalypses because there is no choice really you have to apply your imagination to create new things given the strictly way of everything so from an African perspective much of the stories and incidents told of the continent of Africa to the rest of the world have a very stark particular picture you said more African people immediately conveyed certain interests but at large it didn't even matter so what we do in storytelling whether it be precipitated or in the African pictures to clean is the idea of kind of reclaiming your narrative and telling you stories so that people won't tell it to you or for you and telling you stories so that you can then have a basis to live your life for atonement so instead of having somebody in Hollywood telling an African it's like what are we going to be like we can then have people who are from there who are living and understanding who can kind of convey what they believe so that we're basically reclaiming the image of what has become a force of power I'm curious, I mean this is a few years back but what did you think of Disturbed Mind in terms of did you see Disturbed Mind? Yes, so awesome film pretty problematic, addiction to medrians so that stands as me because I am one really attractive looking film so it's kind of a different point but the inspiration just came out of this interesting film and I'm sure it's amazing because I love his work and I did that similar I just didn't have interest in seeing it because I heard this from a lot of different Africans as well it's just that we had this fatigue of suffering so while there is a degree of negativity and violence and I'm sure it's a different factor at a certain point you just get tired of seeing people needlessly slaughtering each other without much else so that's what I haven't seen in the film so it's not fair for me to completely tide it but there's a degree of like I've seen it so I know that people felt similar to Montauro as a slave without having seen it and so it kind of made me like I saw it on the film but when we submission came out I was thinking that people would be really insulting regardless of how great this film is it's a whole story I was thinking too when it comes to Afrofuturism I think one of the things that excites people about it is that it triggers the sense of agency and your ability to tell a story but also your ability to really connect to a narrative that's not stoic sometimes the way black the black culture narrative to share is that it's kind of this online struggle of sorts and there's a truth to that there's total truth to that but I think another perspective is looking at the incredible resilience and out of that resilience comes a sense of optimism that then gives you a level of agency and so there's kind of this realism that's always placed upon us in our storytelling as if we're supposed to talk about a specific thing in a specific way and if you don't have this kind of foreign arc to it then you are not adequately capturing the the story of our cultures but when you step into the creative world and the realm of the imagination not to mention things that have actually happened you can't create your own story so there's just this concept that our imaginations can be hijacked because as people of African descent was supposed to tell a particular kind of narrative when we could dream of anything we want to dream of and have a sense of agency in our real world but as well as in our own creative lives and it's that creativity that has helped us to transform our experiences and facilitate a level of forget the survival but flourishing in unusual times for white sometimes it seems like people of color especially black people that's a lot of the arc whether it's half of the futureism or not it's the idea of hope and not focusing or even not not focusing but not dwelling too much on the struggle so how is that half of the futureism different say than something that is not that is equally as hopeful and sort of resilient example Kendrick Lamar is alright that's a very powerful hopeful resilient song I wouldn't classify it as half of the futureism is it just solely the technology aspect or the science fiction aspect or is there more than half that kind of separates the science fiction aspect but I think it Afrofuturism takes it to space it takes it in some cases to the supernatural maybe come flip sides in the same form so it doesn't have to be purely rooted in the here and now where there's a sense of limitation in the three dimensional realm there's always this understanding that there's rewarding in the three dimensional realm and whether you're talking about the physical reality of actually being in space or you're talking about other worlds generally speaking there's always this connection to that sense of self and this larger identity so you aren't just a human being you can be a universal being that's kind of three dimensional space and in some Afrofuturism constantly reminds us of that whereas other Americans that may talk about hope and aspiration that's not what you're saying so Chris the student you encountered Afrofuturism in college right or you became aware that it was actually I didn't I heard the term Afrofuturism really more in recent years I don't remember hearing the term in college where it actually stuck okay let's put it that way and did you guys also kind of encounter it in or younger I remember using the term on EPF and up in Parisville about going where it came from so it's one of those things that works in the back of your head and it's like these are going to sound awesome it's a trick to position if you're not used to seeing so it's attractive and it has it sounds cool because it is so I think there's one of those things that's going to make sense I asked this question because I'm interested in knowing how like is Afrofuturism a movement or a concept that is accessible to everyone regardless of what their education is what their background is because a lot of it is resiliency and hope and I feel like if a lot of people are not as educated if they are really in poverty it might be more difficult for them to access that part of their imagination and wanting to find that space and create that space and you guys are kind of within that is it a mixture of different types of people within Afrofuturism and recent I find that generally speaking regardless of background it's just a matter of what you reference as a connecting point if you say George Quinn if you say a John Coltrane some people access it very much through music and they go exactly what you're talking about without having to use any special language to give a big description I found that many people it's interesting because sometimes we talk about Afrofuturism like this higher thought process if only educated people can discuss it when it very much is rooted within so many people and they express and they connect with it very easily you don't need to spell it out because it's in their soul it's a part of their imagination it's a part of their experience so we're using certain terminology to really codify it but in terms of people connecting with it they know exactly what you're talking about they've experienced that level of transformation that level of liberation sometimes through music or through dance or through contemplation they see themselves as being larger than the spaces that they're in and when it's shared that hey this is something we can talk about publicly their game you can totally surprise about who connects and why they connect and you're just asking the right question and they're more knowledgeable than anyone you could imagine because it's just a matter of asking the right question it seems to me that as is the case with so many vinyl artistic moves I guess is one way to describe some of the things that happened some of the awesomeness of Afrofuturism with so many activities in that category there's a wide spectrum of application so perhaps someone who is struggling to put food on the table on a weekly or daily basis might not be reading the theoretical writings of someone like homeboy shooting maybe they are maybe they're not but maybe they are seeing the video for Missalia as you relatively WTF video which is profoundly Afrofuturist and you can get a hyper compressed sense of some of the things that we're talking about here by seeing by hearing certain recordings maybe then by hearing very short poems if someone is really skilled maybe by reading or tweeting by the way I hope they're tweeting so I've learned very quickly even years ago with making music the idea of owning what you create is futile and the fools earned so if you make something you put up with the world you have no control over who appreciates it nor should you so when you have a genre like whether you have a future about you're going to make it whoever feels like the next to it and you ultimately have no right or I believe you have no right to say you can't relate to that because you didn't experience the same way I did you didn't grow up the way I did so for me it's ultimately it's almost like opening this whole new hallway into a library that everyone is ready to access and the most people didn't know was there so in the sense I see people like us as gatekeepers when people were in front of the doorways and look at their other stories and check out and they're just this whole and complete and diverse as all of those that you've been supposed to perform so it's just kind of opening the spectrum to life and experience through as a result you mentioned Star Wars a couple of times here we've also talked a little bit about how one aspect of us features them is the body, the black body being sort of an alien not of this planet the other and since Lupita Nyong'o has been cast in Star Wars there's been a bit of a sort of controversy some people are kind of upset by the fact that she's playing in the first place because like I think she's the only main black female character in the movie that we know of and first of all she's gorgeous and she's going to be motion capture so I don't know what I'm going to see with the face so a lot of people are upset about that I'm curious because part of Afrofuturism is kind of embracing the alien who's claiming it what do you guys think of people being upset about this and are you here for that I have to say that I can't talk about it without saying it but do you think do you think people are jumping out of her representation you are like a weakness right I'm kind of waiting to see but I do understand that people are they get very excited about representation as we should because that's sort of the holy grail I want to see images of people on the continent are advocating the same in the future I want to see that image I don't want to imply I don't want to see a metaphor I'm an alien and I'm supposed to say oh that's my story I'm going to actually see people who look like me because why should I not so it's the whole idea that people are this is just a concept, it's not a concept it's a reality an attempt to erase people from the future so you erase from the past you erase from the future and then you're sort of hovering for someone to write a story with your complexion so I don't like that lack of agency at all so I understand how important representation is and I just have to give a little shameless love I am doing a movie called Our Star City which I wrote and directed which I am writing or excuse me I haven't and we'll direct and I'm shooting our movie next year and it's about engaging stories of people of color that are in the future or in the here and now very space bound and all of that showing just how easily we connect to a lot of these concepts and it was very intentional and most of the people are people over African descent and that was done so because that means something you know it could indicate some message so I understand why people would be credible we all do there's other projects we command where they put masculine people and pull their hair back so we can tell you know just all this this color these are predators sort of like they look like dreads but you know this is a plot guide and they love it I mean I mean maybe I wouldn't do too much but I know these little things that we look at we're like oh Dark Vader we love Dark Vader why would you think so John and he had a black exterior I mean really you're a holy monster I love you because you choke people in a distance that's a useful skill because I thought Karris had a stone and had lost it and he found it and you know these are like things and I'm like yeah he took it to the start so I think we live in a culture of a professional needless average of people literally every day there's something to be very upset about and I think that there's oftentimes some justification but my perspective on that is to do with what you did is if you're upset about not seeing the video make a film we live in a culture of like everybody's phone can record YouTube is there I would walk into Ralph Lawrence and not see things that represented me so I'd start a mentor I'm not finding means like huge success because the idea literally had you in this room to create what you want to see the world and you had JJ Abrams or George Lucas or Roger Pink so it's horrible write your story and make your film if we all do that there wouldn't be much to complain about I'm not sure we have to see the film because in a sense to respond to your question in a sense we've already seen it and this is the same kind of response that at least a certain slice of the view of the population and largely people of color had the majority arrived why do you have this person who is disabled in a certain kind of way many of the comments were the same thing with Michael Dolan as warm basically the coolest character on the program have to be hidden behind all of this stuff on his forehead and I'd receive a hairline and so forth it's a verenial kind of critique that I don't want to I don't want to dismiss out of hand because I didn't do politics so first of all they're seriously taking seriously but I do think oftentimes that kind of name or that kind of critique of science fiction it can be a bit too serious it can be a bit too serious again this is pop culture it's an era of pop culture as well I need to adjust in my opinion now for the future and then there's instances of these types of moments that are just hilarious right so the reboot that was from Black Doctor for example I thought it was hilarious what they did with the Doctor the Black Doctor who is people now by show of hands the reboot so it's back in born again right so now I guess 10 years exactly so 10 years or so ago a reboot of it and most were short there are a bunch of clones that are sylons now and they're limited number of them in some ways quasi and more and their consciousness loads to a giant ship and another version of their cells essentially their physical bodies stored in large numbers each one of these instances in sylons stored in large numbers on the ship waiting to be uploaded with a consciousness whenever the one that's walking around is killed and there's one that's on the left and he's a Doctor killed over and over and over again like so far in the storyline it's almost like a joke exactly so whereas with the red shirt and the original Star Trek series people like Duke can only be killed once right and then you get upset this Duke just gets killed over and over and over again and he can't read anything I kept watching and I still watch you should too I think we're going to open it up to a few questions from the audience Racism in Afrofuturism where the black experience of subjectivity is placed at the center I asked because earlier this week's series was in the news because she was asked to define the word bitch and one of the definitions was parentheses of black slave and parentheses of a woman so we discovered our AI is racist so I was wondering if you guys could speak to that at all given the centering of the black experience but also this notion of racism as a topic to be explored not just in an allegorical sense but as a visceral reality I think that's a big aspect of a lot of the Afrofuturist works when I was talking about Afrofuturism different from traditional science in many ways one of those forums was and looking at race as this technology and with it being a technology it's this deconstruction of ugliness or it's this narrative of this post-apocalyptic story and kind of framing things in that way to be able to step outside of it because I think one of the things that makes one of the many things that makes racism a little tough is that we see it as something that's always existed forever and ever when the whole notion of even being black or white were created to justify the transatlantic slave trade so these categorization systems the power and balance that we urge for that that we've been breaking out of did not always exist and so when you talk about race as a technology and it's a constant reminder of that and there are other sociological frameworks that people use to talk about race but for me when you say it's a technology it instantly reminds you that it's created and it's created for a specific reason if it's created for a reason it's a technology it can be dismantled and when you look at it in that way I think it can be very transformative but yeah there are a number of works that you know visual art music literature that explores it in that way but just as critical race theory there are a number of essays that really hone in on that thought concept you especially said the Nigerian gentleman do you see a role of Yoruba Orisha culture as a blueprint to our Afro-Futurist in terms of artwork and writing and just basic side I see it as an opportunity to so all of us come from different cultures each of these cultures has a lot of major myths and so with respect from it just being an untagged resource so people who are either of Yoruba Nigerian descent know about this so people who are just kind of plugged into that background know about it but for me it's just the whole big avenue of storytelling the whole new mythos to for lack of a better term to exploit and to tell stories with and I think that's never a bad thing there's actually a short that's out where the Orleesias are heroes and the comic book as well I'm curious considering African-American culture in particular America and how religious it is on Christian it intends to be what role religion plays in Afro-Futurism I'd say that the mysticism is a big aspect of Afro-Futurism so there's a lot of conversation where people are either talking about spirituality generally speaking or they're referencing a lot of African traditional religions or African derived religions a lot of native aspects of spirituality and kind of looking at Christianity as well Islam and so forth and kind of looking at perspectives that connect people to a higher sense of self so there's a lot of you'll see a lot of spirituality in Afro-Futurist writings which also makes it very different from traditional science fiction because spirituality of that larger sense of self is not always openly integrated but you'll see it and probably almost even the majority of the works some level of spirituality One of the most interesting ways in which I see really theological concepts at play Afro-Futurist thought goes again to Apocalypse because it's a really interesting kind of tension and traffic between a kind of conventional or traditional Judeo-Christian notion that is wrapped up with revelations by the stormers towards the end to the New Testament more or less Apocalypse and the catastrophic sense the world is destroyed it's the end of time etc the tension between that and Apocalypse and the etymological sense as you look at the history of the construction of the world it's really going towards an indication of the time in which things transform so much so radically that after after whatever happens there is a deep need for a complete readjustment a completely new set of eyes are needed a deep sense of what academics might call interpretation of necessity arrives and in that kind of space it becomes really kind of interesting that's something that Samuel Delaney talks about at Laney Hello Kai Great panel and you just talked about how racism technology so I think if racism is turned into very new technology you can apply and as a software developer I kind of see it coming out of waves like ok racism 1.0 racism 2.0 so how can Afrofuturism sort of phase it out finally because software has a death period when finally a new technology takes form so racism in technology can be seen after futurism must also be a technology that conveys racism out so I think what we need to kind of keep in mind is just human nature is will but always kind of be what it is so before colonialism and in the present day in my country specifically there were divisions amongst the people there but majority of this country was put together by the English and was a forced situation where numerous ethnicities were forced to become countrymen essentially so you can imagine the negative feelings that arise when you're forced to become neighbors and share resources with somebody who is like a moral enemy of yours beyond the skin cover it's about I don't like you as all you are so when you speak of racism that's absolutely a reality and a constant technology if you will that we need to work on but as human beings we will always find a reason to divide each other that's kind of the question that we need to look at I mean if you take this step further people who do both violence against that are attacking people who are within proximity and people who look like each other so often times awful racism is a horrible deal that conflicts America it's not the sole thing that haunts us it's us this is a bit of a follow up to the religion question perhaps in that certainly the aesthetic elements of Sun Ra's foundational role in Afrofuturism is pretty much beyond question I'm wondering how much attention has been paid from like the theoretical standpoint to sort of like specifically his utopian vision which does have like very strong spiritual and political and activist dimensions to it but you actually like look at what he was saying while he was playing the book of music Sure there's been a number of workshops and more recently a conference that was at University of Chicago that specifically centered around Sun Ra and the mythology around resistance cultural resistance and Thomas Stanley was one of the speakers there he wrote a autobiography of local Sun Ra and he talked about Sun Ra as being very much apolitical in the sense that he thinks the actions that he took he did the contents of politics but he was apolitical in that he was very much about universalism and celebrated your cosmic identity and everyone has a cosmic identity and wanted to really hyperlink people to that state of existence so Sun Ra is more now than ever viewed in the context as a philosopher he always was but now it's being actively discussed There are series of the theoretical and conceptual dimensions of Sun Ra and theorization around Sun Ra there are series of interesting pieces including dissertations that have been written in the last five years so we're going to point it towards that I have a question I think we kind of touched on this a little bit earlier the classes are then black culture something that plays into the community very often and it's something that we rarely talk about and the black community should be moving forward does Afrofuturism touch upon that anyway the division between the educated black men and women and the women in the projects is that a topic that's ever touched upon in Afrofuturism? Thank you guys it's very much about universalism there's anti-racism, anti-classism anti-sexism anti-anything that doesn't allow people to express themselves and so but I can't think of a work that specifically deals with classism from an intercultural perspective which doesn't mean there's not only that it doesn't exist I just can't think of one so I think another partial answer is that you could certainly make links between some of the fundamental works that are associated with Afrofuturism and class analysis in one way or another and one that comes to mind immediately or multiple ones that come to mind immediately the science fictional story is that W. E. Du Bois wrote because as soon as you are on that terrain then not only are you talking about the very notions that we associate with Du Boisian thought and double consciousness you're also on the terrain of the talented 10th right and so there's a an acknowledgement of class fracturing in the black community through this concept but also a kind of social political mandate there to act on it and the moral obligation is indicated there too because he's often talking about the responsibilities of black folk and the Western armies but kind of struggling to think of a work that increases it directly right, not great, not class specifically in a cultural context like I can think of class well if I go to Grail of 2012 when you look at the formation of this new planet that was a former Earth satellite class emerges despite the fact that it was utopian and people didn't want to have class so race doesn't exist as we understand it today but there's this idea of who is here first and you know who really original architects and so there's a sense of class that emerges out of that and I think that kind of goes back to your human nature point that you had mentioned before about there being a desire about some people to always try to create some sense of separation so that concludes our conversation but you guys can actually join us in other words to all of us outside and have some practice thank you


Welcome folks, this is Tom O'Brien of TFNN. We go five days a week, we go seven hours a day, we go 24 hours a day on the internet at tfnn.com. Always remember folks, whatever you think about, you bring about whatever you focus on grows. Hope everyone's having a great day, safe day. Let's make it a great night, folks. To begin, a great relationship, know what you want.  Know what fits well with you. There are millions of men and women, and some of them will make a good match for you, and others won't. The two of you will need to be like a key in a lock, a match that works. Mug and wise, let's take a look at it out here. We have the Dow Industries down 266, Nasdaq's up off 103, S&P's off 37 gold. Gold contract down $12, $0.40 trading at 1980 an ounce. You get silver down 44 cents, $23.17 an ounce, light sweet crude up 78 cents, $73.69 a barrel, notes and bonds. Ten you note, down 76 trading 113, 12, the 30 year down 13 at 126, 17 and King dollar. King dollars on the move, up 376, 103, 865, the euros at 107, the ends at 139, the British pound is at 123 to one US dollar. Our phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Give us a call, folks. I know what's going on in your world, in the world of the S&P's, let's take a look at them. What do you have? Well, bottom line is that you have more selling. We actually gapped away this morning. So right now you're at 54 million and that's after us making a high with, well, the high wasn't bad, with the high was at 100 million. Yeah, the high was at 100 million, so that's a good high. Bottom line, you know, you gapped away, we'll see how this handles the bottom of this consolidation, which is the 402 level, right now on the spy, we're at 410 right now. I do expect you're gonna see an expansion of volume out here today, we're already at 54, that can bang out 70, but that being said, you're going into 67, so, you know. It's gonna make it down to the bottom of this, we'll just see just how much more volatile these markets are gonna get. We're going to the cues, now you got a little different thing happening in the cues because the cues, the volume is expanding, finally, okay?  Now, we did, we made a high out here at 43 million and that's the problem, because now we're going down with 43 million, I suspect this is gonna come in at about 60 million. We go to the gold contract, gold contract out here, side, well, now you get a low move today, it hasn't broken the lows though, we take a look at this, it hasn't broken the lows. I expect it's going to, you know, right now, you went to a price point of 2006 today, couldn't hold it, now you're at 1980, you had 70,000 contracts traded, you know, that's not a good setup. So if we go to the XAU and the HUI, what you're gonna see here, and this is where it's gonna get dangerous, and the reason being, so we put this down again, this is a decisive break, but it's a decisive break right where we expected this to actually go. Now here's where the question's gonna come in. So you can see the XAU is already into the bar. The bar that we're talking about is the high volume bar, which was, you know, when we were doing this, the XAU is a lot higher man, we were up at the 150 mark, no, 135 mark, and now it's making its way into this 125 macro, 123. So when you do something like that, folks, that says that, yeah, man, you can go right to the bottom of this deal, and you know, we very well might, which is gonna be the 121, and we're at 123 right now. We go to the Gold Bugs Index, this is just making its way down here. I suspect before we close out, more than likely we're gonna see it hit. So we take a look at this one, yeah, it just hit. So same setup, the number there is 244.59, and we hit 244.93 thus far. We'll see all that here in a minute. If we go to the GDX, and we take a look at the GDX, the GDX, the good thing about looking at the GDX is that it does have volume. So what you're seeing in the GDX is that we're taking out a B point, but it's not gonna have a volume for an ABC down. That being said, the numbers that we were looking on the GDX, okay, that's starting to dig into that number also, which is that that's the 3106, and we're at 3083. So now with that sets up, that sets up the bottom of that number, which ends up being the 2926. That's how this thing's set up, man, so. And where are we going with this? Well, let's see, we're going right to the dollar, man. This dollar's on the move.  Your first swing point on the dollar is that 105286. But when we take this, and we just put this, let's say, and what I'm just looking for is the last real leg down. So that's where I'm getting the 106, by the way. See, the 106 is the .382 from the highs to the lows. So I suspect, we just missed it the last time. I suspect this time we're going to get it. So we'll see how it handles it. And if we get higher than 106, it's going to be really a problem. That's the bottom line, because yes, we have the debt ceiling talks. The bottom line is that we're coming after Memorial Day. We'll see how this whole thing shakes out, because you get the aspect of the house members are on vacation as of tomorrow. And guess what, folks, it's Memorial Day. Okay, so house members in Memorial Day, there's huge amounts of parade celebrations across the country. They're going to be going home. So we'll see how this thing shakes out. And then you have the deal that McCarthy had, you know, to get the speakership, he said that, okay, bottom line, he'd give his members three days to read a bill. And then on top of that, it only takes one person and the Republican caucus to turn around and say, okay, I want to revote on McCarthy. So there's a lot of different dynamics that are happening in this negotiation versus the one that was in 2011. You certainly didn't have, you know, on the table that the speaker may lose his position. I'll have to go to get a vote again if in fact he can't get something negotiated that they feel that, you know, they're not going to basically have another, basically bloodbath inside the house of representatives. Dow, Dow industries right now trading down 247, Nasdaq's down 94, S&P's off 34, stay right there folks, come right back.