Rough Riders: The A-Team Command Chopper (1983)

Rough Riders: The A-Team Command Chopper

with Motorized Enforcer Van (1983)

My 'photograph it and then part with it' 😭 mission continues with the Rough Riders: A-Team Command Chopper, a toy that I loved as a kid, even though the A-Team never actually had a helicopter that looked like that in the TV Series. One should never let logic get in the way of joy.

The Enforcer Van requires one AA alkaline battery to work. That powers the front headlights and makes the rear wheels turn, which propels the vehicle forward at a satisfying speed. When the Van was housed in the Chopper's base the rear wheels connected with two rubber holders (one on each side), which in turn transferred motion to the Chopper's rotor blades. When the Van was dropped out (via the trigger at the back of the Chopper) the blades would stop turning. When you pick the Van back up, the Chopper blades would start turning again. Magic!

That's basically all the Chopper does. An Enforcer van was included in the box, but four other vehicles were sold separately, all of which fit into the Chopper's underside, too. They were the Street Smasher; Battle Blaster; Face's Vette; and Speed Gunner. I didn't have any of those.

The image on the box mentions 'Stunt Side Wheelies' and shows each one having a switch on top that controlled a '3-Speed Shifting Action', but the one in the package didn't have the switch.

Unfortunately, the box is too big for my scanner. The only parts I was able to properly scan were the end flaps, which serves as the header picture of this post. Both sides have the same image. The pics below were taken with a (borrowed) digital camera, so there may be varying amounts of distortion, based on the lens' ability to capture at the height I needed. It's the best I could do.

The illustration from the box with some digital fuckery to remove the annoying bits: