August | 2019 | The Viper Pit

Black Major Desert Scorpion Trooper

For almost an entire decade now, collectors have been bombarded by an entourage of third-party GI Joe figures, mainly produced by the Black Major. After getting more Cobra Troopers than you can shake a stick at, Night Vipers, Alley Vipers, and an endless amount of other creations, keeping up with all of them is getting hard. A few of the oldest customs go mostly forgotten, which brings me to the Desert Scorpion Trooper from the Black Major.

Essentially, this figure is from his earliest production runs around 2010. It’s made from a different mold than all of the Troopers that came after 2014 or so, and it’s reflected somewhat in the quality of the figure. Don’t get me wrong, the quality’s pretty great, especially for what one would’ve expected back then. Though it’s certainly not as nice as later runs of figures. In general, loose arms tended to be a bit more common with these than the later mold. As well, I found that mine had a slight issue with their hips not wanting to sit straight, a problem the later mold also lacked.

The colors and design, to my knowledge are based on an older bootleg made in small numbers by other individuals. TBM’s figure is a much more saturated tan color, compared to the lighter tan of the older figure. The usage of the Desert Scorpion sigil is similar between the two figures. Personally I think TBM’s version of the design is the better appearance, but it can be argued the old figure was closer in color to Hasbro plastic, so there’s room for debate.

I think when these were new, they were largely overshadowed by the camouflage Troopers that came out at the same time. The added realism of the camouflage, coupled with the amount of detail that it provided on the vintage Cobra Trooper mold made for a figure most collectors couldn’t afford to ignore. This guy on the other hand comes off as more of a standard Trooper with a switched up pallete; yet for me this is one of the figure’s main appeals. While the camouflage figures always looked impressive, they don’t blend in well with most of the vintage ARAH figures. The Scorpion Trooper doesn’t look that out of place comparatively.

Like the V1 Cobra Trooper, this figure only included a Dragunov sniper riffle. Newer Trooper customs have gone to add in a Viper backpack and AK47 from the Cobra Officer, but these were more true to the original. I definitely prefer the AK to the Dragunov, but it’s quite a blessing to be able to hoard up tons of spare AKs and Dragunovs when these were so hard to get with vintage Troopers prior. Even if this figure didn’t have the nice extras, I was plenty happy just getting more Dragunovs.

They show up pretty rarely now, so it’s hard to figure out what the Scorpion Troopers go for on average. Most custom Cobra Troopers don’t go for more than $30, and certain figures will still only run around $15. So although it’s a wide estimate, given their rarity I think it’s fair to say you might see them go for anything in between those two numbers.

TBM customs cobra trooper bootleg the black major factory custom gi joe arah desert scorpion

Black Major Desert Scorpion Trooper Links:

Early Factory Custom Desert Trooper at Attica Gazette

Display of Black Major Custom Troopers by 00zxcvb

1997 Duke

I’ve talked once before about 1997 Duke and cited him as one of the worst GI Joes in my collection. Big emphasis on the “my collection” part, but I’d still consider him a figure with significant issues. With that said, elements of the figure are of decent quality, and parts of his design are… interesting enough to be worth talking about.

Me and my brother collected the 1997 GI Joes, and they were the first “new” line of GI Joes I was able to collect as a kid. While they were controversial to collectors for their quality issues, I really have a special fondness for this year, 1998, and 1994 since those were more or less my introduction to the line. Despite this, my bias doesn’t apply to Duke, as somehow I didn’t know of his existence until I was an adult.

Duke’s first obvious problem is his colors. The 97‘s were prone to some experimental color schemes, that in some cases were excellent. In other cases, you had oddities like this figure. Brown hair, lime shirt, red boots? Looking at his colors makes me feel like the hue on my monitor is off, they’re just way too weird and random for a character like Duke.

But the biggest shame? His paint applications are actually pretty sweet. Check out the detail on his breast pocket, or the decoration just above it, multiple colors on the bandolier, camo on the pants, ect. The only thing he’s missing is some paint for the watch, which is oddly left a giant mass of flesh.

This was also the first Duke that was badly hurt by the original’s missing tooling. Duke’s old arms weren’t something that precious (The Hit&Run arms on the Tiger Force and Chinese variants were great), but these replacements were just terrible. As he uses arms from Gung-ho V1, his sleeves are essentially just painted on; the lack of any thickness or detail just looks unnatural. This was the parts combo the kept for all subsequent Dukes too, which really just adds insult to injury.

His parts are pretty decent, but not perfect. He keeps the gun and binoculars from 1984 Duke, while swapping the helmet for a generic one from ‘97 Grunt, as well as the generic black Hawk backpack that practically every figure from that year had. For some reason, they also decided to toss in a 1982 style visor for his helmet too, which is actually pretty cool. All in all, I really just wish he had a better backpack, but it looks like they kinda tried with this one. Kinda.

Sealed or with the Silver Mirage, 1997 Dukes go for around $30 to $40. Meanwhile the figure can go for about $8 loose and on it’s own. 97‘s go for some pretty random prices, but it certainly seems like Duke is on the less interesting end for the most part, with only figures from the Arctic Mission Team really underpricing him.

Note: I thought I had an alternate version of this picture without the filter, but it’s been lost while swapping computers over years. I’d have taken another to show him off better, but I can’t say the figure motivated me enough to do that!

1997 Duke Links: