Cobra Officer (2008)

Environmental specific figures have been favorites of mine since the 80s. I enjoyed playing with the arctic, desert and aquatic characters and imagining them in their unique locations. Living in the midwest, I had snow in the winter, and summer sandboxes stood in for the desert. Outside of the seasons, things like bedspreads and books represented snow fields and mountains.

The Extreme Conditions sets hung around online for quite a while. I picked mine up in a two-for deal at Entertainment Earth months after its original release. Even at the original price, it was a fairly good deal for seven figures, six of which were army builders. While a few in the pack were odd combinations of parts, the straight up Cobra Officer repaint makes for a cool variant of the old blueshirt. As a fan of the tan repaint Joes from 1983, getting a Cobra in basically the same color scheme was nice. After all, why wouldn’t Cobra outfit its troops to blend in with different environments?

As an added bonus, the officer included comic pack Firefly’s demolitions backpack. Here, it’s apparently been adapted to a survival kit purpose, much like the later arctic Doc figure. Sure, the explosives can’t be disguised, but at least the gas can works as a watercan.