Rip It (2000)
By Past Nastification
As a non-golfer, I had no reference for the name “Rip It”. Once I understood that it was a golf term, my bewilderment turned to amusement. The filecard explains how Rip It learned golf as a means of understanding terrain, so it’s a good way to link what could have been a silly name to a figure. He has some anger issues. He’s a Cobra. It’s okay.
This is a figure that I really like and have a bit of frustration with.
When it was released in 2000, Hasbro was working with what it had on hand. It was a time of some dreadful head-to-toe repaints as well as some well done repaints. But if there’s every a category in which the concept of repainting an old mold as a new character works, it’s masked army builders. Rip It should technically have an identical uniform to other HISS tank drivers. The traditional red & black uniform is replaced by a slate blue & black one. It works lovely and even matches the HISS III with which the figure was included.
Like Chameleon, Side Track, and White Out, Rip It was a new character stuck in a head-to-toe repaint body (the others utilized Baroness, Ambush, and Snow Job bodies, respectively*). Again, he uses a masked troop builder body, so it’s easier to embrace than the others. Hasbro didn’t top off old bodies with new heads until 2001. But there’s still something that they could have done differently to give Rip It a bit more individuality: using a different swivel neck head and recoloring it. A Grunt or Airborne or Thunder head with blonde hair? Tripwire with stubble? Ripcord with black hair? Even a Snake-Eyes head could have been painted to match the slate blue/black/red color set used on the HISS tank driver head. But the standard HISS driver head does work.
Rip It came with no accessories, but there is one I urge you to consider purchasing if you really appreciate the character. It’s a golf club. Parker Selfridge from the Avatar movie line came with it. There are probably other 1:18 scale golf clubs, but this is the only one of which I know.
But even with a shared head, Rip It is a good figure that goes unnoticed.
*Before anyone mentions it, I’m aware that the 2000 “Rock Viper” was just a recolored Range Viper. I simply think of that figure as a Range Viper that Hasbro was too stupid to correctly name.
I don’t really like this figure. It should have been awesome, but he wasn’t. Then, Hasbro never re-released the Hiss Driver in any decent colors. Such a wasted opportunity.
I don’t think of RipIt as a unique character, I think of it as a HISS driver in a more traditional Cobra blue uniform matching the original troopers and officers. I think it’s a great figure like that.
Different waist wasn’t enough for you?
I forget this character exists, like Neurotoxin and any other trooper repainted into a character types. Still, he’s a better commander of Cobra’s armored forces (if such thing is needed) than some Brazilian version of Battle Corps Beach-Head.
I think Rip It’s colors are better than HISS Driver, but yet they lack vibrance. Rip-It’s good in the sense his paint doesn’t rub like HISS Driver, but bad in the fact if you use him as a character and army built the HISS 3, then you are denying yourself all those drivers.
Hasbro referenced him in modern era and made HISS COMMANDER in blue, but with other differences. In Cobra guys in blue lead guys in red? I guess Tomax and Xamot wore mostly blue and led the Crimson Guard. Cobra’s never made a lot of sense.
They could have done more with the color scheme. Maybe picked out some stuff in metallic?
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If Hasbro would’ve made a removable helmet, like it later did for the Agent Faces-as-Crimson Guard figure, we could’ve had our cake and eaten it, too. Just leave off the helmet for Rip It…
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I completely missed that it was a different waist! I put the modern era figure in my collection as a Rip It figure, although it’s technically not. But it was cool that Hasbro alluded to Rip It (or at least that’s how I interpreted it).