Monthly Archives: October 2021

1987 Raptor

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1987 Raptor

To celebrate Halloween this week, I’m doing a profile on Cobra’s very own trick-or-treater: Raptor. Raptor is infamous for not being very good, and indeed, I have some obvious things to criticize him for. I also have some things I like reasonably well about him, though, not so much much as to offset his bizarre super-villain reject appearance.

There’s a lot to not like about Raptor. The first and most obvious thing is that the figure is totally outlandish, and looks more like a rejected Spider-Man villain than a Cobra. As I’m still reading some of the Marvel comics for the first time, one thing I really dislike is how much the character’s media appearances are tied to Jinx and Billy, whom I’m very disinterested in. In a slightly more redeeming light though, I like that he’s a direct accomplice to Fred VII Cobra Commander, and that gives me some reason to think about the character a little bit.

If he were a one-off type of character, I think the fandom and myself might treat Raptor with a little more love. The problem is that he’s part of a pattern of crazy Cobra designs from 1987, including shoddy characters like Crystal Ball and Big Boa. An eccentric shirtless weirdo wasn’t too far out of the ordinary for Cobra by this point, with Zartan and Dr Mindbender also coming to mind. It’s just that you got this guy, the other aforementioned ‘87‘s, and Cobra-La, all at once, which left Cobra heading in a bad direction, overall.

With that said, the two main issues with Raptor are that his design is dumb, and his character leaves something to be desired. The toy itself, is actually pretty decent. Besides a kind of derpy head sculpt, he has sharp detailing across the entire toy and plenty of painted details to show it. I really like the feathers on his arms and boots, as well, the falcon-buckle looks nicely sharp. All of his details like this are apart of the silly bird-theme, but the toy is still nicely detailed. If his quality were as low as ‘86 Roadblock, there would be no need to even look at this figure, but contrarily, there’s some redemption for him based on his overall sharpness.

I like his accessories too. Like his contemporaries, he lacks a gun which is a sad omission, but his soft-goods cape/wing thingy looks excellent and has a detailed, premium feel to me. Also included is his pet falcon to add to your personal GI Joe zoo. It clips onto his wrist, and sits there, like any other GI Joe bird. Overall, it feels like he lacks something here just for the fact that his parts don’t really do all that much, though it’s worth saying that figure doesn’t look cheap anyways.

A perfectly mint complete Raptor shouldn’t cost you more than $15, although on odd occasions they will go for more since the market’s so bad right now. With even a little damage, the figure’s value plummets and will only fetch a few dollars, if anyone still cares to bother. Most of the time, the soft-goods are prone to tearing, and his falcon is usually missing it’s feet. For me, I was scraping the bottom of the barrel when I finally decided to go for this figure, the same as most GI Joe collectors. Overall though, I’ve warmed up to him a lot, and I’m glad I have one.

gi joe fred Vii vintage figure hasbro

1987 Raptor Links:

3D Joes

Half the Battle

1994 Techno Viper

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1994 Techno Viper

1994 and the Star Brigade line in particular are memorable for the amount of tooling Hasbro recycled during that period. One source of repaints came via the drivers for the obscure Power-Fighters, which included Gears for the Joes and a Techno Viper for Cobra. Just for being seldom seen and offering alternatives for some good sculpts, they’re fun repaints, though, that’s about the extent of what you can say about them.

Like a lot of collectors, I’m really fond of Techno Vipers. They do a great job filling a support role for Cobra in a way that’s a lot more fun than the Tele-Viper. I like Tele-Vipers too, but that figure is arguably the worst sculpt from ‘85, while the Techno Viper has little competition for the best Cobra from ‘87. Despite that, there’s only one solid variation of the Techno Viper, and it’s this repaint from the very tail-end of the line.

You never really see this Techno Viper or Gears very much, even by 1994 standards. I attribute some of that to the fact that the Power-Fighters never got out very well, and to this day are hard to find items. It’s also worth mentioning that on top of that, the Power-Fighters are awful toys, and the only reason you’d want the sets is for the odd repaint drivers.

The ‘94 Techno Viper is a solid recolor which for the most part, has darker colors than the toy it’s based on. It’s also a lot worse looking than the original Techno Viper, mainly because so many paint applications were cut for this release. On a figure like Gears, that really didn’t hurt the Barricade sculpt too bad. However, the V1 Techno Viper was a very detailed and well-painted figure, which makes this ‘94 release look much worse by comparison. There’s a lot of blank space on the ‘94 release, where the paint is so sparse he doesn’t even have a Cobra symbol. The helmet too, is a particular area where I feel the toy is bowdlerized compared to the original, featuring only two colors compared to four.

Early production samples of this figure feature all of the copper colors replaced with bright yellow. You can see pictures of this variant on the back of the box (3D Joes), which implies to me it was changed to copper a bit later in the production process. It’s a curious thing that they swapped the colors like that, though I must say I’m glad, because this figure would be way worse with the yellow.

In my collection, this figure has often had the role of an officer, a generic idea I often apply to one-off repaints. Sadly, there’s not much else to do with a figure like this. Army-building this figure is far from easy, likewise, there’s no other practical role or niche to put him in. So for that, he defaults to being a simple team leader. I enjoy him in this role, and have sometimes contemplated him being a unique character akin to Skullbuster. Still, I’ve never found him important enough to develop that idea much further.

1994 Techno Vipers are very hard to find, and costly too. Last one on eBay as of this writing sold for $92, probably a little more than it was worth, but it’s what you can expect to pay if you want one. These have always been on the pricey end, and I have to say I find it amusing how figures like this one haven’t increased in value parallel to V1 Cobra Commanders and Funskool Sky Divers. I suppose that speaks to how niche this figure remains, and for that, it’s pretty interesting.

When I was 15 I thought this was clever. Fun times.

1994 Techno Viper Links:

Forgotten Figures

3D Joes

Half the Battle

1988 Psyche Out (Night Force)

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1988 Psyche Out (Night Force)

Night Force would almost be an overrated subgroup in GI Joe, if you only looked at figures like Falcon and Muskrat, where nice looking toys were put in different, arguably less cohesive colors. The appeal of Night Force, in my opinion, largely comes from the figures who had normally bright colors swapped for more serious business colors, like Lightfoot, Crazy Legs, and in the case of this profile, Psyche Out.

gi joe vintage cobra night force tunnel rat 1988

A GI Joe who specializes in Psy-Ops is a pretty bizarre idea for a character. There’s a few other characters he could pair up nicely with, but personally, I find it hard to do much with him. It makes it even weirder to think about why he’s a member of a night-ops team, but I suppose it was really just an opportunity for Hasbro to recycle a mold from yesteryear. I find something fascinating from a more conspiracy minded point of view about Psyche Out, and personally enjoy pairing him up with Chuckles and Scoop as a propaganda/conspiracy team (though, I have no cool pictures to represent that).

Given the nature of this figure, the fluorescent green of V1 Psyche Out really wasn’t that obnoxious. Still, the colors are superior on this version. Palette-wise, there’s a lot of hues that overlap between this figure and a few other vintage classics. His off-white shirt is pretty similar to Mainframe’s color; likewise, the olive pants are in line with Heavy Metal and a few others. It makes him look more cohesive with those golden-year ‘85 and ‘86 figures, and less like a stereotypical 1987 figure in all of the worst ways.

This figure looks pretty nice, but in the end of the day I can’t find too much to do with him. I’ve had the figure out at my desk for two, maybe even close to three years now contemplating that cool photo I’ll take of him, but “standing aimlessly by a hummer” was the best I could come up with for now. I like the toy enough to want to do something with him, but he kind of just comes off as a good-guy version of Crystal Ball.

I still don’t own a single Night Force figure that has their original parts, so for my Psyche Out, I just use a selection of my favorite pistols or the original’s gear. Night Force Psyche Out included a backpack, an antenna for his head, two clip-on wrist radars, a radar hand-device, and a seldom seen pistol, all in black. It’s nice for being different, but these parts really don’t look any better than the original’s. As I already find Psyche Out’s normal equipment to be weird and niche, I feel no need to acquire these parts.

A complete Night Force Psyche Out runs around $130 currently, but one with only a couple of his parts in nice condition only fetches about $30. Having figures and repaints without their original parts feels pretty lame. Despite that, I really can’t say some little black satellites are worth $100, especially not when he looks fine enough with other parts.

gi joe vintage cobra night force tunnel rat 1988

1988 Psyche Out (Night Force) Links:

Forgotten Figures

Joe A Day

Half the Battle

3DJoes

2012 TBM BAT (Blue)

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2012 TBM BAT (Blue)

So all the way back in the now distant year of 2012, The Black Major produced a run of 1986 BATs in his typical colors and patterns. It was pretty much the same drill you’ve seen a few times with his Cobra Troopers, Cobra De Acos, Crimson Guards and others, but it was a good lot of figures regardless. At the time, some of these figures saturated the market and floated around for low prices, though 9 years later, they’ve become a bit more of a rarity.

I like Cobra BATs, to a certain extent. In general, I’ve been excessively fond of robot characters since I was a small child, so figures like the ‘91 BAT or the BAAT got a lot of use in my playtimes. Still, the BAT removes the interesting human element from Cobra, so I can’t focus on them too much. They have a role in my Joe world, though they may not be as important to me as they are for others.

The thing that really sucks about the original BAT, is how much it costs to get one! Seriously, it was an expensive figure that might run you something like $30 when I got into collecting, but now complete BATs routinely haul $80. I really don’t know why they’re so much more expensive than Vipers and Cobra Troopers, but it’s entirely led by demand, and people really loose their marbles for BATs. Since Hasbro refuses to reissue old sculpts, it really leaves TBM as the only option for affordable BATs. When these 2012 BATs came out, you could almost get a full quad for the price of 1 Hasbro BAT, I’m pretty sure that will be the same when his new ones come out this year or next year.

Today, I’m looking at the Cobra blue BATs he produced. Although there’s a good number of other color schemes I enjoy, I’m focusing on these. Blue BATs are something I’ve seen people ask for a lot, in reference to how they appeared in the Marvel comics. These BATs aren’t quite Marvel-accurate, but they look pretty good regardless.

I can imagine some reasons for why there would be some random Blue BATs running around alongside normal BATs. One idea I have is that they’re simple production variants, and that BATs aren’t very consistent in terms of coloring and construction. Another angle you could use, is that their uniforms are made in the same factory or from recycled materials for Cobra Trooper and Viper uniforms. It’s basically just a dust-cover, so it’s actually strange that the BATs have their own unique outfits. They lack a real niche, but they look good, and there’s a few explanations I can think of for them.

There’s a few mold changes between the Black Major BATs and the Hasbro BATs. Notably, the TBM figures have fatter backpack pegs, and different pegs for the arm attachments, to prevent people from swapping them onto the originals (and presumably, then selling them). It was a really nice gesture at first how far he went to make it easy to tell TBM figures and parts apart from vintage ones, though I think there’s really no need to go this far.

Besides the chest stickers occasionally falling off, and their natural stance being a tad weird, the TBM BATs come across to me as being good, if not, average quality. His more recent releases, like the WORMs/Cobra Commanders, strike me as being a bit better, but the BATs were also better than some other releases, like the Night Stalkers. At the time, they were pretty amazing, though I personally suspect the paint might be a tad more crisp on the new ones he’s making, given the quality of most of his newer releases.

For accessories, you get everything that was present with the original BAT, including a backpack and four arm attachments. Personally, I’ve always thought a few of the arm attachments look a tad corny, namely the claw, but it’s only corny to a charming extent. My favorite was always the flamethrower arm, which seems limited in usage, but is certainly a terrifying concept, plus the sculpted details are the best on that one.

I believe the mold for this particular bootleg was given off to Red Laser Customs, who made some very interesting variants out of it. I will admit though, I’m not very clear on the specifics of how that worked. There was a lot of discussion and information that floated around on Facebook and Instagram back then, but I hate those websites, so a lot of it went by without me knowing too well.

The biggest problem is pricing a lot of old bootlegs is finding them. Mind you, some of these figures, especially these older releases, appear to exist in decent numbers. Still, you won’t be able to find a 2012 TBM BAT in a specific color at any time you want one. The good news though, is that he’s making a new set of BAT customs, and in all likelihood, will retread old themes as he did with the Cobra Trooper. If you’re not to obsessed, it’s probably a better option just to buy those.

gi joe bootleg hasbro vintage cobra bat gi joe bootleg hasbro vintage cobra bat

2012 TBM BAT (Blue) Links:

Blue BATs by 00zxcvb

Other than that, I don’t have any links. If you have a cool photo or some content on this BAT, feel free to link to it in the comments.

Featured Images from ARAH Gallery (October 1st, 2021)

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This week’s images from my personal forum, ARAH Gallery, are from Amazing A-man and Scarrviper. Thanks for sharing them!

Dockside Deals – Scarrviper

gi joe diorama headhunters gristle

This image really shows how much potential is in the Headhunters, especially Gristle. It’s  a treat to see such a great scene with Headhunter Stormtroopers, now that those figures have gotten so expensive. Also, I need one of those forklifts!

Still Haven’t Got the BET – A-man

gi joe diorama serpentor BET

Using a Captain Power vehicle as the BET from GI Joe the Movie is not only a fun idea, but also something very nostalgic feeling. Repurposing oddball toys as things I was more interested in was a staple of my playtimes growing up. It’s also nice seeing more photos of V1 Serpentor before they all disintegrate.

If you enjoy fantastic images like these, make sure to join ARAH Gallery. Also, check out some more great images that were featured on the blog last week.