By KansasBrawler The Alley Viper has always been one of my favorite Cobra troopers. Even back in 1989, the design was powerful and intimidating. Alley Viper was probably the figure I was most looking forward to out of either of the Cobra Island seven packs, and that’s saying a lot because there were quite a few figures in those sets
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By KansasBrawler Like I talked about with my review of the 25th Anniversary Battle Damaged Snake Eyes, I’ve always been a little conflicted on my opinion of battle damaged figures. Damaged costumes are cool, but represent a very limited window for the character. However, as I discussed in the Kre-O review of it, the B.A.T. is a character that lends
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By KansasBrawler When Hasbro created the Crimson Shadow Guard set during the end of the Valor Vs. Venom era, I was pretty unimpressed. It was just six Crimson Guards decked out in black and carrying ninja weapons for reasons that were never adequately explained in the filecard. I wasn’t really clamoring to see this concept revisited (though I did eventually
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By KansasBrawler When I was a kid, I never had that strong of a tie to the hooded Cobra Commander look. I grew up on the cartoon and I remember seeing the battle helmet a lot more. Plus, my first Cobra Commander was the awesome 1987 battle armor version, so the hooded look just really didn’t interest me all that
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Your eyes do not deceive you. This is not clever PhotoShop chicanery or a bit of Fake News. It’s actual, really real honest-to-Hama, Storm Shadow Body Spray. Or, to be more exact, Cobra EDT Body Spray. EDT–that must be some cool military acronym, right? Like the manufacturer was going all-in on the mythos with this product. Nope. EDT just means
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By Past Nastification Based on the real world Saab Draken, the Cobra Liquidator is also close in design to the Cobra jet flown by Major Bludd in the opening scene of Sunbow’s The MASS Device. It was probably a coincidence that Hasbro chose to source the Draken as a Cobra Jet, as Sunbow had nothing to do with the GI
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By KansasBrawler I don’t know why, but I’ve always had more of an affinity for the Cobra figures than the Joes. Don’t get me wrong, the Joe characters were great, but I thought the Cobra figures looked more striking. I always liked the more fantastical elements of the Joe line and, generally speaking, the Cobra figures were allowed to be
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By KansasBrawler I’ve always liked the Crimson Guard. The concept of elite Cobra operatives who are not only dangerous on the battlefield but dangerous inside the American home front as well is really cool. However, to me, the figure has always relegated him to the status of Cobra Commander’s bodyguard. That’s neat enough, but I’ve always thought the Crimson Guards
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By KansasBrawler By the end of the relaunch era, I was a bit tired of the vintage Firefly figure. I’d never had it as a kid, but I had at least three versions of it by the time that era of the Joe line had ended. It’s not a bad mold, but it had gotten awfully overexposed by the end
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By KansasBrawler While I had strong childhood ties to both parts of the Joe half of the Danger at the Docks set, everything on the Cobra side was basically new to me. I didn’t have either the Eel or the Night Landing Craft growing up. I was pretty excited to get my hands on these pieces for the first time.
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