Renegades Cobra Trooper

by KansasBrawler

As I’ve said before, I wasn’t initially sold on the Renegades cartoon series. Firefly made me re-evaluate my complete rejection of the concept, but it didn’t quite push me over the edge into fandom. However, the Renegades Cobra Trooper was the final push over the edge and I’m really glad this figure convinced me to give something that wasn’t my G.I. Joe a try. It was definitely worth it.

For those of you not familiar with the Renegades cartoon series, the Joe team is forced into going on the run from the government after raiding a Cobra facility and stealing sensitive data revealing Cobra’s sinister plots. Cobra, in this universe, is a respected, multinational corporation and the designs for the Cobra Troopers really reflect this concept. While they’re still rocking the Cobra blues, since Cobra is a legitimate force in this world, their look is far more military than paramilitary. I like that the creators turned the dynamic on its ear and I’m glad that the Hasbro design team was able to effectively translate it into action figure form. The base of the figure is the very nice and simple PoC Dusty. However, he does get new lower legs and knees and a pair of swappable new heads. I really like the Dusty look here, and it wasn’t until I was looking at the figure on YoJoe’s entry for him that I realized he uses so many of Dusty’s parts. Part of that is because of the paint scheme and the other part is that he gets a really nicely designed bulletproof vest that helps obscure the similarities the two figures have. Dusty’s arms give him short sleeves but he also has a pair of armored pads on the shoulders that I really find myself liking for some reason. His legs continue with the military look, however the looser pants cuffs do give him the look of more of a rent-a-cop than a soldier, and I really like that detail. His two heads use the same basic design with the cool-looking angular helmet and red goggles, but one head has the more classic masked Cobra Trooper look while the other allows you to see the bottom of his face. Were I the army-building type, I’d probably have the unmasked Cobra Trooper be a unit commander and the masked ones acting as grunts, but as I only have one figure, I generally keep him displayed with the masked face because I think it looks just a little more Cobra that way. The vest really helps bulk up the Cobra Trooper and the high collar obscuring the bottom part of his face (assuming you’re using the unmasked head) really makes him look a lot more intimidating. Rent-a-cops are usually the butt of jokes (see Observe and Report or Paul Blart: Mall Cop), but these Cobra Troopers definitely look like guys you wouldn’t want to mess with. Those red goggles peering out from just above the collar really have a pretty sinister vibe to them and I really like that. I also like that they put “Security” on the back of the Cobra Trooper’s vest. It’s a nice nod to the fact that while they’re operators on par with our real-world Blackwater both in terms of skill and involvement extra-legal activities, they’re still just security guards to everyone. There’s no need to be afraid of them, they’re here to protect you.

The idea of Cobra’s non-threatening nature is carried through in the paint job. Let’s be fair, in our society, if a guy is wearing a blue uniform and looks official, that means he’s a cop. Cops are here to protect you, but just by sticking with the classic Cobra color of blue, it takes that motif and perverts it much along the same lines as Barricade in the Transformers movie turning into a police car. If you can’t trust the people that are supposed to protect you, who can you? While I think I’m reading in a little more depth to the concepts behind a kid’s show, as I’m thinking about it now, that’s a really deep and disconcerting concept to deal with. Cobra looks like the good guys, everyone thinks they’re the good guys, but they aren’t and that’s pretty spooky. So the Cobra Trooper isn’t just a sea of blue, they used two different shades of it, a light blue for the cloth parts of the uniform and a darker blue for the bulletproof vest and armored pieces. To sell the Cobra look a little more, there are also some nice red accents at the cuffs that pop nicely. A red Cobra sigil (or would it be a logo since they’re a legitimate business entity now) on the front and a white one on the back make sure you won’t forget whose side this guy is on. The dark gray for the helmet, belt and removable kneepads also fits nicely with the motif and you can almost realistically see this guy standing guard at a Cobra facility or busting up protestors outside Cobra’s main business offices.

The Cobra Trooper also comes with some very good gear that is very appropriate for their security role. I’ll start off with the accessory I’ve already mentioned, the bulletproof vest. The vest is very nicely detailed and has a lot of pouches that would be great for carrying nonlethal weapons to subdue unruly protestors. There’s also a hole in the back of the vest that you can run the end of the handcuffs through, however, I don’t like how it hangs there so I don’t really use it. And yes, I did just say “handcuffs.” The Renegades Cobra Trooper has an in-scale pair of functional handcuffs. While you can’t actually close the links, they slip over a figure’s wrist very nicely and can be removed easily and, more importantly, without risking damage to the handcuffs. I was amazed when I first saw the pictures of these little cuffs and figured they’d just be a nice little decoration like the small radio that attaches to the PoC Shock Trooper’s vest, but the fact that these cuffs are functional is just incredible. Like any good security guard, the Cobra Trooper also has a very nice nightstick. Hasbro could have just reused the relatively simple one that came with Mutt but instead they gave us a brand new piece that looks really nice. He can hold it either at the end or from the handle that juts off perpendicularly so he can use it like a tonfa as well. However, when a non-lethal strike from a baton can’t deter someone, the Cobra Trooper also gets a plasma rifle. Full disclosure, I hate the design of the plasma rifle— it looks way too much like something made up for a cartoon and the handle is positioned really awkwardly so it’s hard for him to hold it. I generally keep my Cobra Trooper equipped with ones of the more realistic rifles that the 30th Anniversary Viper came with (that originally came with the 25th Anniversary Baroness). I understand the desire to have something that looks a bit more like Renegades with the figure, but what looks cool as a 2D drawing doesn’t always make for a great 3D piece and personally I think this particular accessory fails. I really would have liked to have seen this version of the Cobra Trooper come with the PoC Shock Trooper’s taser since it would make sense for a security guard and be an intermediate step between a strike from the
nightstick and switching to the lethal force of a plasma rifle.

The Renegades cartoon series turned into a pleasant surprise for me and that wouldn’t have happened without the two really good Cobra figures that were released shortly after the first DVD set was released. Hasbro being able to do some branding between a cartoon and the action figure line again really helped out both sides of the property in my opinion. I’ve already mentioned that I didn’t really give Renegades a chance until I saw the figures and to be honest, the figures I saw that were left on the pegs were the ones without the Renegades ties (except of course for the really weak Cobra Commander they did). I know I saw 30th Anniversary Stalker on the pegs a lot more than I did Renegades Firefly or Renegades Cobra Trooper. Again, maybe I’m reading too much into what I saw, but I think being tied to Renegades helped move figures because kids who watched the cartoon were able to play with action figures of those cartoons again.