1987 Dreadnok Cycle
I think in a general sense, 1987 is a very underrated year when it comes to vehicles. Compared to ‘86, you have more fun and better looking vehicles from ‘87, and the only real loss is the Battle Stations, which ended after the Surveillance Port, LAW and Outpost Defender. After typing that, I do realize I’m saying that 1987, the year with the Buzz Boar and POGO is better than the year with the Tomahawk… But 1986 also had the LCV Recon Sled and a bunch of other offerings that were mediocre at best. The Dreadnok Cycle fits into this as a good example of something that isn’t great, but is also better than a lot of the more mid offerings from the year prior.
For a long time, the Dreadnok Cycle was the sort of thing I avoided, mainly because I always thought it looked like something from Whacky Races more than GI Joe. Boring as it is, I’ve usually preferred to imagine my ‘Noks hanging out in grungy civilian vehicles and ordinary Cobra hardware over their own proprietary items. So I never owned one of these until 2017 or so, and even then it was only because I was bored out of my mind and wanted a cheap GI Joe vehicle to pull me out of a slump.
As a gang of bikers (playing their tune), it was cool that Hasbro actually went and made some kind of bike for them, as were it not for the Dreadnok Cycle, the Dreadnoks would’ve never had a bike that wasn’t a recolored RAM. Choppers and custom bikes tend to be really strange looking, so it’s appearance really isn’t that questionable, besides the turret gun that looks a tad more cartoonish than I’d like. Something about the bike makes me think more of a bosozoku bike than a western chopper, I think in particular it’s the tall seat; western bikes usually have small seats while Japanese bikes I’m more used to seeing have tall seats like this. On an unrelated note I just wanted to type somewhere: An expelled Arashikage who became a Dreadnok seems like an idea that should’ve been done, make him a knock-off of Jagi from Fist of the North Star. Maybe as a custom one day…
Past how it looks, the Dreadnok Cycle presents a lot of play value for a medium-size vehicle. Besides it’s driver, it has a swiveling turret, that features what the blueprints call a “‘Blazing’ Shock-Dampened 106m Recoilless Rifle”, which is on it’s own swivel too. The front-wheel turns, and it also has a pair of missiles that seem pretty dangerous, though maybe not as much as the recoilless rifle. It’s good for what it is, though it’s pretty much impossible for a figure to use it’s handle-bars, partly because o-ring joes can’t pose that well, but mostly because the things are just positioned way too high up. The handles are also pretty hard to use on the recoilless rifle, but I’ll give that one a pass since I’m not really sure you’d hold and shoot that like a normal gun anyways.
If you have a lot of patience and some money to burn, there’s some cool recolors of the Dreadnok cycle to collect. Estrela released Ciclofera in 1993, which came in similar but still noticeably different colors. In ‘95 Hasbro released the vehicle again with a missile launcher as the Street Fighter Karate Chopper, before it finally got a convention repaint in ’04, as the Dreadnok Cycle, just in different colors. Buy ‘em all and you could assemble a nifty looking gang of Dreadnok bikes in different colors. At one point I had thought about doing this myself, until I realized it was a lot more trouble than I was willing to put in for the mold.
Dreadnok Cycles have had some very volatile pricing in recent years. When I bought mine less than a decade ago (I mentioned it, but I can’t remember what year exactly) I paid around $8 for it. Then the coof-collector saga happened, and the price sky-rocketed to a whopping $50, where it had been just a year or so ago. Now though, prices are quickly falling, and it’s more common that you can get a good one for less than $20. The red deflector shields on the turret seem to be the item that’s most often missing or broken (they don’t stay on good), but even if you get one missing those, you can find replacements with relative ease. It’s a good vehicle and I’m glad it’s coming back down to a more reasonable price now that the normies are going back to kayaking and prescription drug addiction or whatever they do when they’re not ruining toy collecting.
I found my childhood one just a week or two ago and have been working on a profile of this, too!
But, as a kid, I got a lot of use out of this Cycle. But, I used it for Cobra instead of the Dreadnoks. It was manned by some Cobras with broken thumbs. And, it was one of the backbones of the Cobra army. It was fast and hard to hit. And, the rotating cannon made it easy for the Cobras to hit anything, even as they were out-maneuvering the Joe weapons. I saw the cannon as being able to rip up a VAMP and even damage a HAVOC. It was devastating to the infantry, though.
This was heavily a function of the fact that I was over HISS tanks and I needed something to supplement the STUNs that attacked the Joe bases. So, as I added vehicles in my adult collection, this cycle has completely fallen to the wayside.
Recoilless rifles are not something you want to be sitting behind of unless you are suicidal. Maybe Cobra worked out a solution to the back blast, but really…why bother? They were outdated when this toy was new. And where’s the ammo for it, the age old question on many later vehicles.
Probably don’t want missiles shooting past your legs, either.
It’s a decent toy. It was better than the Swampfire. But so are many things.
Yeah, the high up handle bars make it feel more out of scale than maybe it is. I dunno.
I don’t disagree with your notion on 1987’s vehicles being better than 1986. However I’d say that it’s because the floor is higher. The Tomahawk is still leaps and bounds better than all the 1987 vehicles, but the Recon Sled, Triple T and the Stun are worse than anything from 1987.
The Dreadnok cycle is one of those things where it’s a fun toy, hard to work into a traditional G.I. Joe setting, but as your photos show, there’s potential for fun with it!