1993 Alley Viper
Before the superb Black Major custom Alley Vipers and the plethora of well colored Alley Viper repaints in the 2000‘s, you had one alternative for an Alley Viper who wasn’t orange. That alternative, was the Battle Corps Alley Viper.
Compared to other Battle Corps reimaginings, this Alley Viper has gone through a few spats of collector popularity. It seems strange since you’d imagine the neon yellow would be a buzzkill for most normie collectors, but with the original Alley Viper donning orange and baby blue, it does make sense. In particular, I remember when collectors were going mad to get every figure updated in the modern/25th anniversary style, a lot of folks actually wanted this design over the 1989 version.
And for a figure that does lazily reuse the lower half of the V1 Alley Viper, it’s a pretty solid redesign. Personally I tend to prefer the 2000‘s repaints not only for their colors, but also for the swap to V1 Duke legs, as I feel that balances their proportions a little more and makes the sculpt more unique, but there’s nothing wrong with the legs used here. A lot of the V1 Alley Viper’s design and gear are retained on this version, such as how they both feature a knife and grenade on their vests. In some ways it makes the two figures almost cohesive, which could lend itself to using them as a single unit (especially the V1 and the 1994 repaint of this figure.)
When I was a kid I had access to this figure, the 1994 repaint and the V1 version. Of them, the ‘94 repaint was my favorite, with this guy in a close second. I reasoned that the armored look made him a strong adversary of the Ninja Force. So typically the shield and face mask were for countering ninjas.
One of the popular features of this sculpt is the shield and face mask. The face mask has a feline, beast like aesthetic which is very cool. Personally I prefer the look of the V1 mask, but this one has a lot more personality. Meanwhile his shield is a large Cobra symbol, which depending upon how you look at it is either very cool or somewhat overbearing. The original shield was far more practical and interesting looking to me, but in truth I’ve always had a hard time getting that figure to hold it well. Meanwhile the V2 Alley Viper here has a shield that just clips on his wrist, and as a toy this just functions better.
Other than the mask and shield, he included V1 Dial-Tone’s SMG, a modified version of the V1 Alley Viper’s gun and backpack, and a yellow missile launcher. This is a pretty good assortment of parts, and best yet they’re all in black. For some reason though, they changed the foregrip on the Alley Viper gun to be a solid block that the figure can’t hold. Why? Sure, most of the time I want to pose the figure with his shield and can’t use the grip anyway, but it just doesn’t serve any purpose to change it. For that, I tend to prefer posing him with the Dial-Tone SMG.
Complete V2 Alley Vipers run around $20 now. Carded ones show up more than you might expect and actually run about the same price, which I suppose we can thank vintage scalpers for. I like this figure a lot, but for that much money there’s better and way cheaper alternatives, where this figure strikes me as having more of a novelty appeal.
Good old Bumble-Bee Viper. Or Tiger-Alley Viper. No idea what the mask is. I assumed it was a dragon. The nostrils are too prominent for a snake.
This is one of those silly figures where the entire lower leg are painted one color but molded in another, despite Hasbro’s concerns of the costs of paint ops. We get potential paint rubs on the boots but without even the visual benefit of yellow knee joints. I’d just have preferred solid black plastic lower legs.. IIRC, the 1994 Alley Viper has solid orange lower legs.
I was collecting back in 1993 and got a few of them, but never as many as I intended. I think I got more of the green HEAT-Vipers from the same wave for some reason. At the time didn’t seem like either trooper needed a remake.
Nice photos. I always liked this version.