Well, it ain’t a Huey, that’s for damn sure.
As I have mentioned before, when I think “Rambo,” I’m only slightly not thinking about the Vietnam War. So when you say “Rambo helicopter,” my brain can only picture the Bell UH-1, landing in a rice paddy, with John J Rambo sliding off the skid, M60 in hand. Buuuut that wasn’t the case for Coleco.
I picked up my Sky Fire for a pretty reasonable price on eBay, and I was surprised to receive it not just in-box, but in it’s Coleco Canada shipping box! Pretty cool.
Inside, we get a good representation of the Sky Fire (note the all-important space between those words) depicted in classic 1980’s box art illustration, action scene and all. As I’ve mentioned when talking G.I. Joe, I sincerely miss this golden age of painted box art.
Out of the box, I began to realize I’ve misjudged this bird for all these years. There was an impressive amount of assembly involved, and as I fitted the pieces, this was no mere Cobra FANG ripoff, this was in fact a very well-designed and constructed vehicle with some nice features.
The first hurdle with a helicopter like this is getting past the superficial silliness of it — it’s an open-cockpit helicopter. Compared to something like an Apache, or even the open-doored Huey, it just seems like a goofy idea for a combat vehicle. But in truth, and somewhat in practice, it isn’t all that silly, and it certainly wasn’t just an invention of a “lazy” toy designer.
The world’s first production military helicopter actually looks surprisingly similar. The Flettner Fl 282 Kolibri (Hummingbird) was designed by those damn Nazis mid-war during WW2. It was a very stable and effective platform used for artillery spotting, anti-submarine and other short-hop maritime duties. In fact, some aircraft historians have assumed there would have been armed versions had the factories producing them not been destroyed before further developments. Much like the Sky Fire, it looks ungainly at first, but upon reflection, it has decent lines and an interesting flow to the design. It’s kind of interesting on its own to note how few people realize that helicopters were actually fielded during World War 2, not just by the Nazis, but by the US and Great Britain as well.
Anyway, back to the 1980s. The Cobra FANG, which no doubt the Sky Fire owes at least some inspiration to, makes a lot of sense for a Cobra weapon, since it fit their philosophy of use: Light, Armed, Cheap, Disposable. A 1980s gunship, like the Mi-24 Hind, would run you around $10 million in today’s figures, and that’s a steal next to the $35 million the Apache runs (probably more, depending who you ask). Something like this could be produced in the price range of a high-end sports car.
Armament comes in spades on the Sky Fire, with a chin-mounted M73 chaingun, a swivel mounted M60, and 4-Hellfire ASMs, two on each wing. That’s more than enough firepower to challenge another bird twice its size. Add to that a functioning searchlight and winch, and the Sky Fire still maintains a respectable amount of multi-use as well, maybe for light cargo or a rescue mission. And like a good “classic” helicopter toy, the trigger that’s unobtrusively fitted under the tail boom will spin the top-rotor.
The detailing on the engine intakes, the weapons, and especially the instrument panel are really nice, and again dismiss the simplistic-looking nature of the helicopter. Like all of the Rambo weapons, there were definite efforts made to add realism to the individual parts.
It’s pretty safe to say then that the Sky Fire has very much won me over, and I should have gotten one years ago. Sure, I still wish we had a proper Rambo gunship, but this is a downright respectable effort from 30 years past, and it easily holds its own against any similar-sized vehicles from current toy lines.
