FormBX257

"Hello, everyone!  I'm FormBX257, your friendly neighborhood 1980's GI Joe reviewer!"

-Kevin (formbx257)

Kevin (last name unknown) better known as FormBX257, is a toy reviewer on Youtube. He specializes in "vintage" GI Joe action figures and toys from the 1980's but has branched out to review the 1980's cartoon and comics based on them, too. Although his channel name sounds like gibberish, it is actually an obscure quote from the cartoon (GI Joe: A Real American Hero - 1983) where a character needs the proper paperwork to activate the GI Joe team: form "B-X 2-5-7" and requisition order "M-Z 1-9", to be filled out in triplicate!

FormBX257 started vintage GI Joe videos in 2009 (showing off his collection) and proper reviews of them in 2010, making him one of the oldest toy reviewers still doing reviews and the only one still doing a specific toy line.

FormBX257's videos start off as one would expect of a Youtube toy reviewer - bad lighting, low volume, shaky camera and the dialogue of a shy person not used to talking about his hobby. However, unlike most toy reviewers on Youtube, the quality of FormBX257's videos gets remarkably better over the years, to the point where he's clearly more comfortable (and even animated) behind the camera.

Despite making weekly review videos for the past 5 years, he is not a "Youtuber" - he has an unrelated 9-to-5 job and somehow finds the time to research, film, edit and upload.

Note that FormBX257 is a Canadian reviewing a very uniquely American toy line. Also, in some videos you can see him wearing a wedding band - which he covers up in some camera angles. He rarely talks about his family or ethnicity.

Videos
From the very first video in 2009, FormBX257 has used a glass turntable to move toys and other objects to show them from different angles, which has become part of his signature style. Over the years, the video techniques were improved with using an HD camera and adding some fun "end play scenes" - short adventures using the featured action figures.

In addition to vintage GI Joe toy, comic and cartoon reviews, he has made videos on repairing GI Joes, "haul" videos (videos on purchases made from  toy conventions) and other related subjects.

When he started - his GI Joe toy collection (and the subsequent reviews) varied from toys made in 1982 to 1985. In 2011, he began adding toys from 1986 and is now up to 1989. Although, FormBX257 narrows his reviews to the specific 1980's GI Joe toy line, it is a large toy line spanning the years 1982 to 1994, so there is still a lot of content available for the future. His weekly reviews are uploaded on Saturday and clearly has a long subscriber "request-to-review list".

Recently, he eliminated the "Like/Dislike" rating feature - possibly damaging his popularity and lowering his subscriber numbers. He has not given an explanation as to why.

Problems with Youtube
Some time during the fall of 2012, FormBX257 (and many other Youtubers) complained about Youtube over-enforcing their policies and denying monetization without explanation. On October of 2012, FormBX257 countered this with moving his videos to rival video hosting site BLIP.TV and creating exclusive content for those videos every Friday called "The 1980's G.I. Joe Show".

Currently, he still does Youtube videos every Saturday, but now they are just shortened, non-HD filmed and without "end play scenes" versions of the Blip reviews.

However, only the toy reviews are uploaded to Blip. Youtube is still the exclusive channel for his reviews on the comics, cartoons, repair tips and miscellaneous videos.