1986 G.I. JOE MILTON BRADLEY CARD #40  PAC RAT MACHINE GUN VEHICLE

Hasbro bought Milton Bradley in 1984, ending 124 years of family ownership. In 1985 Hasbro and Milton Bradley created the Commando Attack Board Game. In 1986 they created this trading card set featuring painted package art from G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero figures, vehicles, playsets and accessories and stills from the G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon.

There are 192 cards and 12 stickers total. Eight cards and one sticker were included in each pack. Evidence has been shown that each pack had the exact same assortment, so if you bought two packs with the same card visible through the blister, you can expect the same card and sticker assortment in those two packs. ​Although these cards are marked as Series One, Series Two was never released in the US. 

These trading cards are extremely popular on the secondary market, largely due to the unadorned packaging artwork painted by Hector Garrido for Coleman, LiPuma, Segal & Morrill, which handled Hasbro's G.I.Joe packaging design and illustration from 1969-1989. 

The G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon was co-produced by Marvel Productions and Sunbow Productions. Sunbow's staff wrote scripts based on character and vehicle designs provided by Hasbro, then artists at Marvel Productions drew storyboards based on these scripts. Animation for all 95 episodes was outsourced to Toei in Japan, along with the 1987 feature, G.I.Joe: The Movie. The art shown below was storyboarded by Marvel Productions and illustrated by animators at Toei.

The P.A.C. / R.A.T.s (Programmed Attack Computer Rapid All Terrain) units are experimental robotic assault systems that the Joe team has put through their paces in the fight against Cobra. Essentially, each P.A.C. / R.A.T. unit is a weapon mounted on an off-road chassis, which can be pre-programmed or field controlled to perform various duties. The P.A.C. / R.A.T.s have these statistics and common features:

Armor Plating: each of the P.A.C. / R.A.T. units are equipped with thick, steel armor plating over their vital areas (which is most of the unit, considering their utilitarian designs). This plating offers P.A.C. / R.A.T. units excellent protection from attack. Of course, targeted attacks that strike unarmored sections of the P.A.C. / R.A.T.s can bypass this defense altogether, since the armor isn't complete.

Combat Processor: the P.A.C. / R.A.T. systems have a powerful computer 'brain' that allows them to be used in various ways, either 'on patrol' or 'on attack'. They can be pre-programmed before a mission, re-programmed in the field, or be simply directed by remote, all functions that are likely protected by a special password known to Joes, so that the enemy cannot make use of them.

Infra-red Detectors: in addition to potent camera arrays and the powerful visual processors necessary to properly target enemy vehicles, fortifications, and personnel, the P.A.C. / R.A.T.s are equipped with handy infra-red frequency scanners, allowing them to see in the dark, or track a target by his heat signature.

Quadruple Machine Gun Array: this P.A.C. / R.A.T. is armed with two pairs of twinned machine guns, one of which can swivel in 360 degrees and elevate up to sixty degrees relative to the other gun set, which is fixed in a forward position. The gun pairs each fire to inflict remarkable shooting damage per blast, though i  sets train on one target, the damage is increased significantly.

Radome: in the event that visual processing isn't really an option, the P.A.C. / R.A.T. Machine Gun unit can instead rely on a powerful radar imaging unit, allowing it to target opponents even when normal vision and infra-red frequencies are obscured. This unit even allows the P.A.C. / R.A.T. to target fast-moving aircraft in its patrol / combat modes.

Unique Off-Road Chassis: the machine gun P.A.C. / R.A.T. is equipped with a more standard propulsion mode, in that it simply has four heavy duty, off-road tired to carry it about, as opposed to the more exotic tread mechanisms the other two P.A.C. / R.A.T.s utilize. The wheels don't make this unit any more stable by any means, but they're definitely easier to repair in the field.