1992 Rat

Posted on February 4, 2020 by mwnekoman

1992 Rat

There’s been a wave of 90‘s nostalgia spreading through the Joe community as of late, which as a kid of 1990‘s, I want to warmly embrace. The 1990‘s was full of pieces from the GI Joe line that were excellent, but there was also the things we love to forget. And of the things that we love to forget, one of which is the Cobra Rat.

I’m not really enough of an expert to know why, but the 1992 and ’91 vehicles are a particular kind of terrible. It’s like almost everything from those years was cheap or poorly designed, save for a few examples the like the excellent Parasite or the Storm Eagle. The Rat is no exception to this and is one of the cheapest vehicles I’ve ever handled.

The vehicle is completely hollow with no bottom. In hand, you might think you’re missing half of the vehicle’s hull, but no: it’s totally complete that way. As such, the vehicle’s construction is very simple, mainly consisting of one body piece, with a bunch of smaller pieces that clip onto it. This inherently makes the vehicle feel cheaper than almost any other piece I’ve handled, to the point that I’d say it doesn’t even feel like a GI Joe toy.

Despite all of this, I have a very mild, mild sentimentality towards the Rat. The 25th Anniversary line really took my interest in 2007, which was during my early teen years. Since there was no vehicles until late 2008 for that line, collectors had to make do with what vintage vehicles could support the bulky and frigid articulation of those figures. Incidentally, the Rat has a generously roomy cockpit, helped especially by the fact that any figure’s feet poke through the bottom of the vehicle, so I ended up using it more prominently than I otherwise would have.

The vehicle has at least a few gimmicks, so I guess you could say that’s one of it’s redeeming features. First, is a launching rotor that tabs onto one side of the back of the vehicle, with a second that can be carried on the other side. There’s a pair of rotating saws that clip into the bottom of the vehicle, and lastly, two double-miniguns that can turn to the vehicle’s sides. Most of these gimmicks are pretty bland if you ask me, but I’ll admit the miniguns look cool, and I’ve imagined more than a few times what the fate of the Steel Brigade on the other side of them would look like.

Because of it’s obscurity, you don’t see Cobra Rat’s as often as other vehicles. However, make no mistake: It’s an almost worthless vehicle and practically nobody wants them. So, if you’re in the market for one, the good news is that you’re likely to pay more for shipping than you will the entire vehicle. Aesthetically, I could see how someone might think it looks good enough for display with some other 90‘s Cobra items, but it’s really a terrible vehicle and I don’t recommend it.

gi joe 1990 rat arah alley viper cobra vintage hasbro

Rat Links:

Yo Joe

Joe a Day

3D Joes

2019 TBM Cobra Ghost Mortal (1985 Snake Eyes V2)

Posted on January 20, 2020 by mwnekoman

2019 TBM Cobra Ghost Mortal (1985 Snake Eyes V2)

Earlier in 2019, The Black Major produced a brief run of Snake Eyes figures based on the V2 Snake Eyes mold. The figures had an eclectic mix of color schemes and were interesting, to say the very least. Every now and then, TBM strays from the standard army-builders and instead produces figures that are more novel in style, such as these. The result is a figure that feels as fresh as a brand-new Joe release could be, but the downside is the tooling gets repetitive sooner.

Until I acquired these figures, I’d never owned the V2 Snake Eyes mold. It was never repainted after the 1985 release (Judging by the canned ‘97 boxsets, the mold was lost early on.), and the vintage figure just outpriced my interest in the character. So getting these was very interesting, as for me they were completely new molds. Besides this Mortal, TBM used the mold for some very high-quality color schemes including a standard silver and red Mortal, Python Patrol, Slaughter’s Marauders and more. Given the quality of these repaints and this mold’s lack of exposure, I’d say they’re some of his most interesting work to date.

With that said, I’m not a huge fan of this mold. It’s surprising given the quality of 1985 sculpts, but the mold just lacks the same amount of details other figures had. Likely, this is because the mold is meant to be represented in black, but even the proportions feel off to me. His legs are kind of skinny, the head looks weird, doesn’t have much going on in a lot of spaces… Overall, I’d say it wasn’t the best sculpt from 1985.

The build quality of this run feels pretty solid. Normally, I’m quite easygoing when it comes to these things, but compared to the typical problems you find in factory customs, I’d say the V2 Snake Eyes repaints have relatively few. Mine all had good paint, joints, and no casting abnormalities or anything of the like. Additionally, they can hold their parts well and don’t have gripping issues like the Steel Brigades from a few years back.

As for this Cobra Ghost Mortal color scheme, it’s a pretty nifty repaint. By using the 1985 Snake Eyes mold, it gives me a unique design to represent this character which I like a lot. The original Snake Eyes V1 mold is surprisingly well suited for generic repaints, but I don’t associate the visor look with SE much either, so I like having a different sculpt to represent the Cobra Mortal apart from say, the Invasor. As this is the Ghost Mortal, it swaps the standard red details for extra silver on the visor and sigil, which doesn’t contrast as well, but still looks pretty nice.

The parts really interest me on these figures. It’s funny too, since normally with a 90‘s figure, you’d complain about guns and parts in bright neon colors, but with this guy, it actually enhances his value. This Cobra Mortal included the original sword, backpack, uzi and wolf all in translucent green. It’s crazy, but recolored parts like this feel new and interesting. Standard black parts would have been okay, but in bright colors like these, you can find new uses for the parts with other figures. Clear green is a tough one, but the bright red parts from another Snake Eyes repaint quickly found their way into the hands of Battle Corps Major Bludd.

This mortal seems a little harder to find than the other ‘85 Snake Eyes customs, but overall these figures are still pretty easy to get. Most variations are still available for their original prices, though for how long that lasts, who knows. In general, there’s still more thirst for classic army-builder sculpts than unique ones, and that seems to be reflected in how the factory customs are valued.

snake eyes tbm the black major bootleg custom 1985 arah V2 Hasbro GI Joe

2019 TBM Cobra Ghost Mortal (1985 Snake Eyes V2) Links:

Joe A Day

Surveillance Port

TBM Snake Eyes Recap post at Surveillance Port

Forgotten Figures – Purple Haze Cobra Invasor

Forgotten Figures – Slaughter’s Marauder’s Snake Eyes

Attica Gazette – Red and Silver Mortal

1988 Hardball

Posted on January 13, 2020 by mwnekoman

1988 Hardball

All of the GI Joe figures I experienced as a kid that were prior to 1993 were from my brother’s collection. The majority of his collecting started in 1989, but there was a sparse handful of figures he had that were older than that: shelfwarmers. Among them, one was Crystal Ball; another was Hardball.

Hardball’s a bit of a weird figure, in that it’s hard to say if I like him or not, or if I ever did. I tend to really hate sports and sports-themed stuff, so for that reason I find him corny and annoying. Putting that aside, the figure is well done in a few regards, enough so that I’ve been able to overlook the baseball motif.

Hardball has a decent sculpt and a great amount of colors. The figure’s legs look good and offer some custom potential if you just wanted to swap them onto a different figure. Personally, I’ve always been a bit annoyed by how small his head looks compared to many of his contemporaries, but the sculpt is still nice on it. The painted details and amount of colors they used on the figure starts to become somewhat impressive though. There’s about eight or so colors on the figure counting the unpainted plastic colors, which is about in line with a lot of the figures from 1985, like Buzzer and Alpine. Compare Hardball to figures from around the same time like Muskrat or Budo and you’ll start to see how detailed he is.

For parts, you get a two-piece grenade launcher and a backpack full of grenades. This grenade launcher feels a tad too big, but I’ve gotta be honest and admit it’s always been one of my favorite parts of the figure. As a kid, I thought the rotating drum was a really cool gimmick, and the weapon looks really powerful even if you don’t know what it is. The backpack has a lot of nice details going on too, and it’s bagginess reminds of the ones you saw a lot earlier in the line.

All things considered, Hardball’s not a figure without his redeeming elements. He’s got fun parts, a pretty good sculpt and a good amount of paint to show it off. The downside is that he’s not a very memorable character, and still just looks like a random baseball player wondering around. I never think to use him and usually forget about him, until I see him in a photo or in a list of figures from ‘88.

Hardball is not an expensive figure, and even the current GI Joe market has failed to make him valuable. Sometimes a mint, complete figure with filecard will run $12 if it’s photographed clearly, since the torso is prone to yellowing and the GI Joe tampograph wears off easy too. Keep looking though, and you can commonly find a mint figure for around $5.

Gi joe vehicle RPV Hardball Backblast ARAH vintage action figure Hasbro

1988 Hardball Links:

1983 Gung Ho

Posted on January 6, 2020 by mwnekoman

1983 Gung Ho

Gung Ho is a popular GI Joe character, but oddly for me I have no real attachment to Gung Ho. 1983 was full of cool designs I like a lot, like Snow Job, Doc, Destro, Major Bludd: there’s barely a figure from the year I’m ambivalent to besides Gung Ho. So while I’ve got some classic figures on the mind, I might as well hash out a post about my feelings on the figure.

Gung Ho is somewhere between being iconic and boring. On one hand, the figure is distinct with fun colors and a look that’s fairly unique among early 80‘s figures (this was before 1988 when every forgettable Joe ran around in a vest with no shirt on). On the other hand, being a shirtless marine is about the extent of his character, and I can’t say I find him all that fun to use. By comparison, Leatherneck is far more standard, which seems less interesting, yet I still find that figure more fun to have around than Gung Ho.

Despite my somewhat ill-defined disinterest in him, he’s certainly not a bad figure. The light-blue and green camo colors look eye-catching and distinct. The large marine corps logo tattooed on his chest is possibly the most memorable and well done detail on the figure. It’s hard to compose a group of figures where Gung Ho doesn’t stand out, which speaks volume to his charm.

V1 Gung Ho has some interesting repaints, though domestically we never got more than the brown one in 1997 with the Slugger. In the Action Force line, he got a repaint as the fairly famous Gaucho, and Funskool also used his tooling for their own release of him and a Complan Commando figure. Most of these figures come in colors I find far more interesting than V1 Gung Ho’s, but sadly they’re of value and rarity that’s unattainable for most.

His accessories are nice. He comes with a hand-held grenade launcher, and a unique backpack that’s one of the first in the line to be so bulky. It stands out and has a great shape to it, a shame to not be included with more figures. Personally I think this pack would’ve been nice to see in black with some Cobras, but such was never the case. The grenade launcher has a functioning sling you can use, and a good size grip that isn’t too scary to stick in his hand.

It feels like mint, complete Gung Ho’s tend to run around $15 to $18, but the challenge is in finding ones that are both mint and complete. Gung Ho is very prone to discoloration and it’s more often that his original grenade launcher is swapped for the white one from an Accessory Pack. If you aren’t too picky about these things you can get one a lot cheaper, but it can require some patience.

gi joe gung ho hasbro arah vintage action figure version 1

1983 Gung Ho Links:

Yo Joe

Forgotten Figures

3D Joes

1983 Cobra Officer

Posted on January 1, 2020 by mwnekoman

1983 Cobra Officer

I’ve been in a bit of a lull lately with not much GI Joe stuff to talk about. The Cobra Officer isn’t a figure I can find a lot of original things to say about, and I’m far from being the only person who likes the figure a lot. Regardless, I’ve wanted to profile him on my blog for some time, and talking about a classic seems like a good way to refresh myself as we head into 2020.

I don’t really have the sentimental attachment to the Cobra Officer that I do for the Cobra Trooper. Largely, this is because I just didn’t remember him apart from the standard Troopers in Sunbow, which as a kid was my only source for connecting with the GI Joe lore. The only thing I can say is that I did handle this mold first before I ever obtained the Cobra Trooper, by way of the Python Trooper I had as a kid.

Perhaps that childhood exposure to the mold does affect my opinion on it now. The truth is, I’m more fond of the Officer’s sculpt over the Trooper’s, however, that’s only in a few ways. The added details on areas like the helmet and webgear seem more appealing to me than the Trooper’s relatively simple sculpt. Noticeably, the Officer is much less bulky than the Trooper, which I tend to think looks a little more natural.

An odd thing I hate about the Cobra Officer compared to the Trooper, however, is the figure’s grip. For some reason he has one of the most ridiculously tight grips in the entire line that I know of. For an early sculpt, it seems as though it wouldn’t be that strange, but even the Cobra Trooper and Cobra Commander can hold their weapons better than the Officer here can. It doesn’t ruin the figure, but it’s always been something that bothers me.

For parts, you get just one: the classic AK-47. It’s one of the world’s most common and iconic firearms, so it’s appropriate to be included with one of GI Joe’s most notorious enemies. I agree with the sentiment I’ve seen from others that it would’ve made more sense for the Troopers to have the AK and the Officer to have the Dragunov, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is one of my favorite accessories in the entire line. Even after The Black Major started casting these by the dozens in different colors, I still never get tired of getting this part.

Cobra Officers are not rare, but expensive and prices seem to vary more than with other figures; usually even a rough figure will go above $20. Largely, this is because of the fragile silver paint used on their Cobra sigil. However, even once this paint has completely worn away, these can still go for a premium. Used to, you could by the worn ones and replace this paint application with a decent sticker if you felt so inclined, but today even this is not very practical. I really enjoy my Cobra Officer and can’t imagine my collection without one, but the prices for them sting.

Cobra officer gi joe hasbro marvel ARAH vintage V1 1983 Cobra Trooper black major custom

1983 Cobra Officer Links:

1982 Prototype at Yo Joe

2011 Unreleased Rescue Mech

Posted on December 16, 2019 by mwnekoman

2011 Unreleased Rescue Mech

GI Joe has a pretty lengthy history with giant robots. Usually, it’s never been popular and doesn’t end well, but the sci-fi theme has been there since Marvel #3 (Before the Snake Armor!). We saw robots in Star Brigade right when GI Joe got canceled, again in Valor vs Venom, and then they made a large mech for the 2.5-inch Sigma Six line. That mold was then retooled for a line of robots from the 2010 Pursuit of Cobra line, which ended with them getting canceled.

gi joe pursuit of cobrs 2010 2011 cancelled unreleased alpine mech rescue mech

I like GI Joe having mech on the side, and personally I consider myself a fan of the design used for both the Sigma 6 and POC robots. However, in the case of the POC mech, the toys were particularly flawed, especially the Cobra Deviant. The main reason? It’s a giant robot with almost no decent weapons. It turned the toy into an instant dud that was clearanced just months after release, and unfortunately it looked as though they would have repeated that mistake with this release.

Of course, there was more wrong with the POC GI Joe mechs than just the Deviant’s lack of weapons. GI Joe was in the midst of a death spiral after the retail failure of the Rise of Cobra toys, so a pair of oddball GI Joe mechs that didn’t terribly resonate with the collectors at the time didn’t have good chances of succeeding at retail.

The Rescue Mech would’ve been almost entirely a repaint of the Cobra Deviant. It would have featured one arm attachment that was new, though just from pictures I’m not sure how it’s gimmick would’ve worked. The lack of new tooling would’ve rendered this release and it’s wave-mate Cobra mech very stale as the third and fourth takes on the mold after the Sigma 6 Iron Hammer.

Speaking of stale, the very concept of this toy is almost perplexing and redundant. An arctic rescue mech? Who were they going to sell this to? Sci-fi fans who are afraid of guns? To me, it seems very childish and random, especially given the more serious tone of the POC line. The only thing I can really assume is that it was a poor attempt to make the toy seem more unique among it’s three other recent color variations. The result is a nonsensical concept that serves little purpose.

As an added bonus, it’s known that the arctic Alpine figure that would’ve come with this toy couldn’t sit in the cockpit without taking the figure’s jacket off. That’s partly a problem with the Modern Era construction, but it’s ridiculous for a vehicle to include a driver who’s virtually incompatible with it.

It’s almost shocking how much the fate of the 2010 POC mechs resembles the 1994 Power Armor line. Both came in window boxes, with repaint drivers, and at a separate price-point to the rest of the vehicles. Then, both lines would have had two more toys come out the following year, but were then canceled instead.

If Hasbro ever resurrected this mold or brought back GI Joe robots of at least this quality, I’d probably buy them. If you wanted to make some repaints of this mold, there’s still a lot that could’ve been done with it. The Club could’ve easily made a Star Brigade Armor-Bot homage from it, or someone could’ve just put it in some standard Cobra colors and that would’ve been a lot more interesting. But instead, we only saw this mold rendered in ways that were bland or obtuse after the Steel Marauder, which is sad.

1990 Night Creeper

Posted on December 9, 2019 by mwnekoman

1990 Night Creeper

Ninjas were a big theme for GI Joe from the late eighties going into the nineties, with the height of this topic likely manifesting in the Ninja Force. But, before those figures there were numerous quality ninja figures before them. Besides Storm Shadow, I’d likely consider my favorite ninja the V1 Night Creeper, for both sentimental and some objective reasons.

I sort of have a weird history with the Night Creeper. As a kid, it was a figure my brother had, so I effectively had him by extension. Except, I really have no memories of him at all. I want to think his o-ring snapped pretty early on, so that could be why. Regardless, it was an interesting experience finding his parts years later and putting him back together. The colors are so disparate between the upper a lower half of the figure, I didn’t think they went together. Though, once I did piece him together and discovered how he was supposed to look, it set a real impression on me through my early collecting years.

The original Night Creeper has a pretty interesting design, that in my opinion makes him Cobra’s best generic ninja. The drapey headdress combined with a visor is distinct and has a very assassin-like appearance. It doesn’t make him look as cliche as Storm Shadow, or as chintzy as later ninjas from the Ninja Force. The chest armor and visor in conjunction with his other features leaves him looking pretty identifiable as a ninja, but it also gives him the look of a modern assassin. Overall I’d have to say it’s a nice in-between of the styles you’d see on the typical, terrorist Cobra and the more martial-arts focused side of the line.

There’s a lot of color and paint applications on the Night Creeper too. While some might be adverse to ninjas in magenta, there’s a nicely diverse palette here with light and dark grey, magenta, purple, and a lot of black and silver for details. In particular I think the camouflage pants have an interesting, urban look to them. At the very least he looks a little more stealthy than an Alley Viper!

For parts, you get a large crossbow, two different swords and a backpack from 1989 Snake Eyes that can hold one of them. I’m pretty fond of the crossbow, it makes sense as a stealth weapon. The extra bolts make it look more intimidating than a weapon like Scarlet’s too, which is a plus. The swords are alright and are fairly distinct, but they are what they are and don’t leave much of an impression on me. Lastly, the backpack looks pretty good and suits the figure, however, I find the storable sword gimmick to be frustrating. The tabs that hold the sword break too easily and make me afraid to use it. The end result means I usually ditch the swords for this figure altogether, and only use the backpack and crossbow.

These guys used to go for dirt even when they had a few parts and decent paint, so I managed to amass a decent squad of them between the late 2000‘s and early 2010‘s. There was a bigger collector interest in the white 1998 repaint and the 2004 Urban Division figure, which were both high-quality representations of the mold, but personally I found the original colors more interesting for less money, so it was hard to argue with that.

A complete Night Creeper is consistently worth about $10, give or take a dollar. It’s a common figure a lot of people have, so they don’t go for a whole lot. Despite that, it’s a really cool figure and a great army builder, so it’s nice to see there’s still fun figures like this to collect 29 years after their release. Heck, after writing this I’m tempted to grab a few more.

Night Creeper Hasbro GI Joe ARAH 1990 DIC cobra vintage action figure

1990 Night Creeper Links:

Photo by Nightforce Keith

1992 Shockwave

Posted on November 18, 2019 by mwnekoman

1992 Shockwave

As ARAH went into it’s twilight years, Hasbro made a continued effort to revisit older characters who had been popular in the line’s past, and were still popular in the comic. This meant that for late comers into GI Joe, characters like Duke, Roadblock, Wild Bill and Cobra Commander were still accessible. A few other oddball additions came in the way of characters like Shockwave, when he was brought back for the DEF line.

This figure was one of the few post-1989 figures that was missing from mine and my brother’s collection. My first encounter with the mold was in the form of 2002 Sure Fire, which I acquired in the late 2000‘s while trying to enrich my o-ring collection. Later, especially once I’d already obtained an interpretation of the mold, I sought out V1 Shockwave and rarely put much consideration towards this figure. Simply having a version of the mold and ‘88 Shockwave, seemed like enough for my collection.

The truth is however, is that both versions of Sure Fire just aren’t as fun as this figure. Mind you, Sure Fire V1 does make an excellent army-builder and custom base, but the brighter blue on Shockwave really makes the figure feel at home with his contemporaries. Besides that, both Sure Fires really fall short on accessories, whereas this figure does not.

DEF Shockwave features one of the most aesthetically pleasing sculpts in the 90‘s GI Joe line. He’s decked out in gear similar to what a riot cop would wear, with chest and kneepads while the rest of the uniform remains relatively simple. The detail is very good, with things like sculpted seams that run down the side of his pants, but without resorting to copious amounts of grenades to fill space. The simplistic quality really reminds me more of an 80‘s sculpt when the designs were a lot less busy.

His parts are pretty good too, albeit not perfect. This figure features the first usage of the XM-15, which was a quality sculpt and one that was nice to see a few more times in ‘93 and ‘94. His helmet has a pretty decent look to it, and fits the figure better than the one included with Sure Fire. Lastly, he also included a missile launcher done as a stationary tank that fires a battering ram. It wasn’t a bad way to incorporate a missile launcher, but it’s a little more egregious given the light-up launchers were really what killed the DEF line at retail.

Most of the Shockwave figures are really good, so I think I’m not the only one who ignored this figure for a long time, just for a lack of needing him. He’s way less common than 1988 Shockwave, but when you find a decent, complete example of DEF Shockwave, he goes between $6 and $10. Given the prices on the current Joe market, I think that makes this figure one that’s still a lot of fun without breaking the bank.

GI Joe DEF Hasbro vintage 1992 diorama Shockwave Stalker Roadblock Mutt

1992 Shockwave Links:

Yo Joe

3D Joes

1993 Blanka

Posted on October 31, 2019 by mwnekoman

1993 Blanka

For the most part, it’s my opinion that the Street Fighter GI Joes are one of the weaker 90‘s sub-lines. No doubt, there was some curious figures I had as a kid that saw plenty of play, but most of them had terrible sculpts or glaring flaws because of the tooling they reused (Zangief with exposed robot parts!). Blanka is one figure whom has almost always been immune to my critical outlook, however.

I’m partly biased towards Blanka because I’ll readily admit, he was my favorite Street Fighter II character as a kid and to this day the character I play as the most. So when I was a kid having a figure of my favorite character from the game meant Blanka received an ample amount of my attention. From then and up to now, I felt like one of the appeals that Blanka had was that he was a fairly ambiguous character, even in the game. So it was easy to find a place for him in a variety of roles, as either a friend or foe depending upon what I felt like.

Outside of his head, Blanka is a full repaint of 1988 Roadpig. The muscular, shirtless Roadpig body works well for Blanka and is among the better reuses of tooling for the Street Fighter GI Joe line. There’s not much that seems out of place besides maybe the arrows on his leg, and the physique is a good match for Blanka. The new head is also a pretty good sculpt, nicely sized and featuring a fierce expression that suits the character.

The version of Blanka I’m highlighting is the one that came packaged with the Beast Blaster. It has slightly more muted colors over the single carded version. The green for his skin has been replaced with blue, while the red details have been replaced with two shades of brown. It’s still a pretty eccentric figure, but these colors fit with how I like to use him more, and visually just look better to me on a subjective level.

To incorporate Blanka into my GI Joe universe, I’ve usually had two ways I liked using him. The first way that’s probably more typical, is to use him as a mutant creation by Dr. Mindbender. It’s a fun scenario that ties Blanka into Mindbender and possibly Serpentor. Alternatively, I’ve on and off contemplated him as a more mentally competent ninja character, as an adversary to the Ninja Force. I sort of got the idea when I was 13 or so after playing Samurai Warriors 2 and thinking Kotaro Fuma looked like this Blanka. I guess you could say he’s always captivated my imagination.

Beast Blaster Blankas aren’t as common as other versions of Blanka, but they show up from time to time and aren’t worth too much. Typically an auction will go around $10, and as he has no parts there’s little variation in his value. In my opinion, this is the most appealing version of Blanka, though he’s a figure that might be easier to fit into some people’s collections more than others.

Gi joe Street fighter II 2 Blanka guile chun-li Ninja Force Hasbro 1993 90's

1993 Blanka Links:

Yo Joe

(Note: There’s almost nothing on the internet about this figure! Some content about the green version, but nothing on this guy.)

2019 TMB Snow Serpents Ghost Squad (Sunbow Colors)

Posted on October 14, 2019 by mwnekoman

2019 TMB Snow Serpents Ghost Squad

So the newest wave of factory customs for 2019 is here, and it’s Snow Serpents. The V1 Snow Serpent is a classic mold and one of the highest quality sculpts from the vintage line, but finding things to do with it that are very interesting will be a challenge. So far of the early repaints, I’m pretty big into the Ghost Squad, which is a figure based on the Snow Serpent’s appearance in the cartoon.

The figure is primarily a stark white and not the off-white of the vintage figure. This is pretty nice, in the way that the white now matches with more figures that used a standard white color like the 1991 Snow Serpent or the Ice Viper. Other than that, the web-gear is painted a gray color, while the eye holes in the mask are painted black; there’s some blue for the goggles, and silver for the buckles. The paint applications and color scheme in general is pretty basic, but it conveys a Sunbow accurate Snow Serpent while maintaining enough detail to be interesting, so for that I quite like it.

I’ve yet to figure out exactly what I see these as in my collection, but the colors are interesting enough they could work for a fair bit. As they’re cast in a more standard white, they actually look more natural with most of my arctic Cobras than the V1‘s do. I’m not too big on making new sub-divisions within my standard Cobra ranks, but it is interesting that their colors match almost perfectly with the 1998 Cobra Polar Force set, so maybe the Ghost Squad is a small group of elites who worked with Firefly once. Sound good to me.

In terms of quality, the figures are overall pretty great. On mine, they pose well and the joints are acceptably tight. There’s few blemishes in the paint, and no casting irregularities I could find. All three that I bought seem to have trouble holding a snowshoe on one foot, but that’s easily rectified with some acrylic gloss in the foot hole.

gi joe snow serpent the black major 2019 factory custom bootleg hasbro vintage arah

For parts, you get the full load out of classic Snow Serpent parts including the folding stock AK47, snowshoes, backpack, mortar, and parachute. I was impressed with the quality of the parachute pack in particular, which so far feels durable and works without issue. To match the colors of the figure, all of the parts come in white, which isn’t too bad. My only problem is that the mortar doesn’t stand out very well like this, but there’s plenty of alternatives for that part alone.

These are much less available then past customs, which has some collectors reasonably frustrated. Each color scheme seems to be produced in smaller numbers and some of them are priced closer to the $20 range, unless you buy early or in lots. I figure a lot of it has to do with just how niche many of these Snow Serpent color schemes come across, so the production numbers were probably lowered with lower expected demand. In most cases I’ve not been able to justify the prices for what’s come out so far. Still, it’s an excellent figure and the quality is good, so when you see a color scheme that catches your fancy, I wouldn’t wait around.

2019 TMB Snow Serpents Links:

Python Patrol Snow Serpent at Forgotten Figures

Factory Custom News Thread at ARAH Gallery