Toxo-Viper (1988)
Yes, it’s Cobra’s original “Leaky Suit Brigade”. If I could come up with a forgotten Cobra army builder, this would be one of the finalists. I suppose I shouldn’t say its too odd looking, considering it came just one year after the weirdness of the dog-faced Techno-Viper.
From mask to gloves to color scheme, the Toxic-Viper is downright strange. I have to give Cobra props for their creative uniform designs back in the day. These days, they’d just throw ’em in a standard hazmat suit and call it good. I would point out that in look and color it resembles the style of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys, but this guy was pretty much simultaneously released with that line’s early offerings. While I’m comparing to other toy lines, something about the helmet that conjures up the mask that MASK’s Hondo McLean wore when he traded in a pick-up truck for a flamed-out ’57 Chevy.
This is also a figure that would do well with a remake in the modern style. The amount of detail in this design would really benefit from the modern line’s ability to reproduce fine detail and crispness in a sculpt.
These guys were put to fairly good use in the comic and the figure itself is nicely detailed, but that color scheme is downright outlandish. I don’t know why, but Hasbro had abandoned the earlier solid blue and red used on the classic Troopers, Sieges, and Vipers by the time 1988 rolled along. It also does seem like they were aping the look of other contemporary toy lines. Too bad Hasbro never released the original Toxo-Viper in more traditional colors, especially during the early 2000’s as they did with his Astro Viper counterpart.
For some reason these always made me think of a mandrill…
This is one case where the Funskool coloring was superior to the American version. The darker colors and the black helmet improve the figure dramatically. (The neon green pack less so….) But, overall not a figure I ever really liked. The V2 figure was always the only version of the character I ever had use for.
I like the figure, but the colors are terrific!
Forgotten because he didn’t carry a big gun and wasn’t a ninja. Fans claim to want diversity in the line, then ignore the characters that aren’t badasses and 100% realistic.