Toys
Released in 1987, it is also one of the largest playsets in the toyline series. The Defiant is actually composed of three vehicles.
One is the Crawler unit, which transports the shuttle to a designated location. The Crawler unit is operated by the G.I. Joe member Hardtop, and features dual surface-clearing laser cannons, and 7.62mm machine guns. The Crawler also contained a crank to turn, in order to place the booster/shuttle into launch position.
Second, is the booster shuttle unit, which opened to reveal four computer consoles, a transporter air-lock with sliding door, and crew quarters with sleeping compartments. The booster shuttle was a space station on which the third component, the Defiant space shuttle, piggyback rides on launch.
The final part of the Defiant is the space shuttle itself, which featured a three station cockpit/operations center, retractable landing gear, and hatch covers that opened to reveal a claw with laser gun, and an umbilical cord for outer space missions. The Defiant shuttle is commanded by astronaut Payload.
It is a common misconception that the Defiant shuttle's design is based on the X-33 proposed shuttle design for NASA. In fact, the Defiant was introduced in the comics nearly a decade before the X-33 Venture Star even started development; the Defiant's appearance is based on several lifting body designs from the late 1960s.
Retailing at US $129.99, the cost of the playset - the most expensive toy in Hasbro's G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero lineup - led to Hasbro re-releasing the shuttle two years later as a stand alone vehicle called the Crusader, which used the same mold as the Defiant shuttle. The toy also came with a re-painted version of the "Payload" action figure. Using a metal tab that came with the Defiant shuttle, the Crusader could be modified to fit on top of the booster that was included in the original shuttle complex playset.
Read more about this topic: Defiant (G.I. Joe)
Famous quotes containing the word toys:
“Why should kings and nobles have
Pictured trophies to their grave,
And we, churls, to thee deny
Thy pretty toys with thee to lie—
A more harmless vanity?”
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834)
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner.... Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another—cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)