Reviewing a vehicle where I don’t have all of the pieces, and proceeding to dump on it feels a little bad. For the Ice Sabre though, I don’t mind doing this, because the chin gun and missiles aren’t going to add that much to my experience. Also, between living in the south where I’ll never get more than a few inches of snow per decade, means I’m almost certain to never photograph this thing again for as long as I live here. So let’s get back into the swing of things by once again stating that 1991 was the worst year of GI Joe vehicles.
Among all of the GI Joe vehicle I’ve touched, none are as perplexing and unenjoyable to hold as the Ice Sabre. Armor Bot is unenjoyable to hold too, but it’s appeal is pretty straight forward. The Ice Sabre is not just cumbersome, it’s confusing as to what it’s actually supposed to be. There’s skis, and anti-air guns, and some weird ass rotating cockpit… and that’s basically all there is to it. It looks really busy, but as a premise there’s nothing too exciting going on here. Yet, without having a real interesting gimmick, the thing just flops around wildly if you try to pick it up. It tries to be something more than the WOLF or Ice Snake and fails pretty miserably at it.
The most prominent feature of the vehicle is the 3-man rotating cockpit. As the box describes it: “In seconds, the rotating, 3-man cockpit pivots to place a new, battle-hardened soldier at the controls-” or in other words, a complex mechanical system just for switching drivers. You dump 3 guys into the cockpit and two of them do nothing until one of them needs a nap, which is a pretty bizarre idea. As a toy, it plays worse than it sounds, as there’s nothing really going on in that cockpit. There’s a set of 3 rotating seats, and you can switch them around from the outside using the little orange knob on top. That’s it. Outside of the seats the interior is boring and almost totally devoid of details.
The missile-launcher on the back sucks too. It’s supposed to have some odd gimmick where you can fire a bunch of missiles at once with a little firing pin. I’ve never obtained this piece and don’t plan on it either. The launcher itself is shoddy and broke at one of the connectors just from a gentle touch years ago. There’s a lot of friction placed on the connector posts, which are also rather hallow, so there’s not a lot of integrity in the design.
A prototype exists with a significant number of differences compared to the production toy; so much so that Hasbro even updated the back of the box to reflect this. 3D Joes does a good job of documenting both versions of the box, so you can check that out to see what I mean. Besides a plethora of small changes, metal pins were removed from the front skis and the hinges where my missile launcher broke. Obviously removing the metal made the design much cheaper, and also could explain why those sections are stupidly flimsy.
For better or for worse, it also has a very, very long profile thanks to the skis. The vehicle is narrow and relatively flat, but is closer to 13-ish inches long (didn’t measure it, going by memory). So for something that holds a crew of 3 with 6 more dudes who can pile onto the foot-rails, it takes up a lot of space in return for relatively low play value. Really, this is the biggest flaw with the vehicle is that it really doesn’t do a whole lot. It doesn’t feel as insanely chintzy as the Rat or the Attack Cruiser, but most of it’s play value is focused into the missile launcher and rotating seats, both of which fall flat.
On a good day you can get an Ice Sabre for barely the price of shipping one, so around $10. It’s an obscure and unappealing vehicle like most of it’s contemporaries, so there’s not much demand for it outside of completionists and the oddball 90’s kid nostalgic for it. The one photographed here is my brother’s childhood toy, were it not for that I’d never touch this thing. It’s easily the worst arctic vehicle ever made, and a contender for worst ARAH vehicle. That’s a whopping indictment to make about a vehicle, but this one fails on almost every front. Even the MOBAT (and subsequent CAT), which is a pretty terrible toy, can always fall back on looking nice; whereas the Ice Sabre looks like it was made from refurbished carnival rides.
I’d argue that the named Cobras of the 90‘s are right up there with the greats of 1984, or at least very close in quality. To me, Cesspool and Interrogator are easily on par with Copperhead and Wild Weasel, and the only real problem with 90‘s Cobras is you only got about two or so new ones a year. Still, the new guys for 1991 are both very good, and here’s some elongated rant on that.
The Viper Pit 