1993 Detonator
90‘s vehicles are a weird lot, because you guys probably know by now that I don’t have the best opinion of things made after 1990. ‘91 was probably the bottom of the barrel as far as vehicles go, though the quality seemed to be recovering somewhat in the line’s twilight years, big emphasis on “somewhat”. The Detonator is a pretty good example of what I mean, as it’s a cool and unique vehicle with a lot going on for it, but also fails pretty hard on execution.
The Detonator is basically a huge-ass Cobra ICBM-launcher, equipped with what looks like some nasty biological warheads judging by the stickers. It’s really the perfect vehicle for Cobra’s identity, as the threat of getting poisoned or incinerated by a missile at any given time seems like the epitome of Cold War fears (and modern ones too). From the perspective of a military fantasy, it seems really weird they never made another vehicle like this, especially given the popularity of some similar ideas tried by Chap Mei and some other no name companies years later.
Of course, the thing most are quick to notice and deride is that the ICBM’s are made of foam, so you can launch them from the giant plunger in the back. Hasbro was trying to work in more gimmicks with vehicles like this, and I can’t blame them for that given I always wanted to launch a nuke at the Joes as a kid. Which I never did because of this thing’s biggest problem: it doesn’t work! The missiles fit way too tight on the launcher to ever fly off, and the pump doesn’t really push air through it at all either. From an objective point of view, it’s pretty hard to overlook a gimmick-oriented vehicle where the gimmick doesn’t really work at all.
Spare missiles are held in place by some silver clips. Unfortunately those clips are really fragile now, so don’t be surprised if they shatter from the slightest touch. They have a slight sparkle to them, so I assume these parts suffer from something akin to GPS. Unfortunately, they work by pinching the missiles a little bit, so the plastic parts are always under a little stress as long as the missiles are attached.
It’s second biggest problem is that this vehicle is fudgin’ huge, despite that it doesn’t really do that much. This isn’t too bad because the size is admittedly part of it’s appeal, it’s just frustrating that the back half of the vehicle is entirely occupied with the pump and launcher mechanism. As a kid the Detonator was almost more of a Cobra playset, where whole battles would center around stopping the missile launch. As an adult, I still like how well it does to fill up the frame of a photo, but it should be said the thing takes up a lot of space (it’s roughly the same size as the Night Raven).
It has seats for five guys up front, one for the rear gun, and foot-pegs for a guy on each side and a few on the front and rear bumpers. It’s a reasonable crew for what it is, as this vehicle really shouldn’t need that many crew members. With that said though, another minor gripe is that the seats are awkwardly arranged. I mildly dislike how the two guys riding in the back have rear-facing seats, I can’t really see the point of what they do back there.
Oddly I really don’t feel like I have much good to say about the Detonator at all, which is weird to me. I say that because in a general sense it’s a favorite vehicle of mine and I have tons of good memories of playing with it. To this day, I daydream enough events that it’s been involved with to say it’s a major part of my Cobra armory. Partly, I think some of that is just because the appeal of Cobra’s big missile is enough to outweigh the vehicle’s failings. Despite that the failings are rather severe and the things it’s good at aren’t so much… So looking at it objectively, I can’t say I think it’s the best toy.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot there’s a Funskool Detonator. It’s a little different, as the orange has been swapped for slightly more reddish plastic, and the missiles are now short, green ones with a totally different design. It’s an interesting novelty, but good luck finding one now.
Detonators have gotten tougher to find. Mind you, they are not so rare or precious, as examples with enough parts to count as a starter barely go for a few bucks, less than the price of shipping. A complete one with the foam missiles is really tough to find though, way harder to find loose than ones that are still MISB. Though, you can get a sealed one on the low-end for around $100, which isn’t much when you consider that you’re getting the Nitro-Viper with it too.
In spite of that, the Pom Pom Gun is only mostly silly? It’s basically just a little motorized gun emplacement, so there’s really nothing terrible about that at face value. About half of the Motorized Action Packs were pretty neat like this, with the real comedy-gold being the Motorized Vehicle Packs from 
The Viper Pit 