The 1984 Cobras were the characters that really stuck with GI Joe for a long time. Although many more underrated characters would come out in the later eighties and into the nineties, there wasn’t a single year with so many classics of the same quality as there was in ‘84. It’s really appreciable how at this point in the line, even the vehicle drivers were nice, desirable figures, as is the case with copperhead.
It is presumed that Copperhead is native to or otherwise intimately familiar with the Florida Everglades. Intelligence sources venture a guess that he raced speedboats in high stakes races in Monaco and Japan. His major weakness is gambling. Odds are that he got started by placing bets on his own races. Apparently he compounded his folly by selling his services to COBRA in hopes of paying off his bookies.
Gung-Ho says: “Sure. I know the type. They’re all around the Gulf Coast. Trash. Drifters. They can drive a swamp buggy like the devil himself, rebuild a V-8 with a coat hanger and spit, fight all night and raise cain ’til the cock crows. They got a heart fulla gimme and a mouth full o’ much obliged . . . .”-Copperhead’s filecard
Copperhead has a cool character with his gambling addiction that partially keeps him in Cobra. It gives him a sort of darkness and a bit of grit that makes him a more interesting character. I always saw Copperhead as more of a crook than the average Cobra, with a fair amount of skill to compensate. It seems like he’s one of those characters whose just a bit easier to imagine in a story than some others. It’s a real shame how the cartoon wrote him out early on, or at least until the DIC episodes (But no one cared about those, honestly.).
Copperhead is fairly buff for a figure from the earlier portion of the line, which gives him a little extra character and really helps to break him apart from the other figures that shared a similar build. I never really knew what was going on with that mask of his, but at the very least I like the look of it. His silver Cobra symbol really finishes the figure off nicely, with a nice contrast to his green color.
This version didn’t include any accessories, although the later Python Patrol repaint chose to pair him with parts from Leatherneck. Although the backpack was perfect, I’ve always really questioned him having an M-16. It could just be that I really hate the particular M-16 included with Leatherneck, but Copperhead just looks better to me with different guns. I’ve paired him with an AK-47 in the past, though thinking about it logically a smaller gun would probably be easier for him to handle while in the water. A Marauder’s G36c seems to fit the bill rather nicely, but when I want something less modern the AK-74U also looks pretty good.
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