2014 TBM Female Cobra Troopers
I almost completely forgot about the female Cobra Troopers the Black Major made until I found them in storage lately. I have mixed opinions about these figures, but I do like them a lot overall. Interestingly though, I’ve found these are probably among, or are the least popular factory customs that have been produced, which seems worthy of some commentary.
Whenever female Cobras have been announced, I’ll admit it gets my attention. Outside of Baroness, the toys have always glanced over females in Cobra, but they’ve been there in both the cartoon and the comics. So as toys they present something unique and relatively unexplored for me to collect.
However, as I found with these and the 50th female Cobra Trooper, I just don’t have much need for generic female Cobra Troopers. There are contexts where they make sense, but it’s rare I find myself in the situation to use them like that. You might notice that most of the pictures in this post are pretty old, which is partly because I couldn’t come up with any ideas for new pics besides simple ones of them standing around. Which is a problem I have with the concept more so than this figure, but it’s the primary reason I don’t use these more often.
The figure is constructed from the upper half of the convention Cobra Night Stalker and the lower half of Baroness. Comparatively, the convention Night Stalker used legs from the Cobra Infantry Forces. This discrepancy is subtle and improves the black one in particular, not because the parts are better, but because it makes them more interesting as something different than what it’s based on. It’s a variation of the older figure, but not something that invalidates it.
The biggest issue that most had with this particular run that I have found is the quality. For the most part I found my figures to be about on par with the original TBM Cobra Troopers, with the occasional loose joint or something like that. The paint was good on all of mine and I didn’t get any with casting defects, so that’s enough for me. In certain cases it was hard for them to use their parts, but that’s an issue with the parts being mediocre more so than the figure itself.
For parts, you get a helmet, a Spas-12, and a riot shield from the POC Shock Trooper. It’s a pretty weird allotment of parts, though not bad perse. The weakest link is by far the shotgun, which seems poorly suited to the figure. It’s very large and doesn’t really look proportionate with the figure, plus she has a very hard time holding it. The riot shield is a real treat and as probably the best part from the ridiculously hard to obtain Shock Trooper, getting it in bulk was very nice. The helmet is nice, but unfortunately sits on the figure’s head only by balancing it. The best you can do to get the helmet to stay on is to use something like Blu Tack.
These haven’t appreciated much in value, which makes sense since they were very atypical and not very popular. Typically these go for $10 to $15 depending on the color scheme, and less than that for a few like the yellow ones. The truth is, if you want something different this figure is very much worth having. If you can get past that the parts are mediocre, and the quality is beneath the typical TBM customs, they’re a decent take on the idea of female Cobra Troopers.
I never got any. They lingered around for year but I never made a solid effort to get any version. They’ve gone up a bit in price, (Some sold for $25 to $30 a figure! I’d invest in the club’s female trooper before I’d pay that!) but that’s connected to ARAH going up in price all around, with newer collectors overpaying for things, including things like factory customs whose long value is questionable.
The straight arm Flash factory customs also seem less popular for an obvious reason.
Concept wise, and this is really the convention version’s fault, I must ask why most Cobra women dress like the Baroness. A ground up all new figure would be cool. I’m reminded of the guy who made all new Joe female army builders in o-ring format but strangely made them modern scale, thus alienating two groups of collectors.
I’d wondered why the helmet always looked off in photos. And the shotgun isn’t a GI JOE item at all is it? (not up on modern era accessories). Where did Black Major dig it up and why’d he run with it?
I’m for female army builders, but there’s the realism angle some GI JOE fans have makes me question the concept. You really want our Real American Heroes gunning down nameless women? Snake-Eyes slicing up ninjas and vipers, then he cuts down some women in catsuits?
I remember most of these for $5 to $7 each. And, even at that price, I just couldn’t pull the trigger. The design just isn’t compelling to me. I had an idea of using one of the Soldado colored versions as a named character. But, never got around to it and I don’t have enough interest in doing so to actually find one: much less pay for it anymore. Like the De Acos, I don’t really have any laments over missing these.
I never realized there was a difference between the TBM and Night Stalkers figures. I honestly think the Baroness legs look better!
I don’t think I ever wound up with any of these figures, and it wasn’t even so much that I was against the idea of Female Troopers, but rather, the stupid and overtly sexualized design of the figure made it useless in many ways. Outside of it not fitting with the G.I. Joe theme, it makes it so the figures can’t really be taken seriously, unless directly facing the camera.
I’ll give the figures credit for being something different, and the various colour schemes were all kind of neat, it just didn’t work out in the end.