1993 Dr Mindbender
Dr Mindbender amounts to Cobra’s resident mad scientist, and is one of the original crazy Cobra’s before 1987 came along and saturated the line with rejected Spider-man villains. For most of my life, I’ve preferred villains who were drab, boring and mostly devoid of personality, like Scrap Iron, but Mindbender’s different. I’ve always loved the character, and he’s been a central figure among my Cobras almost as much as Destro and Cobra Commander.
For a long time, this was my only Dr Mindbender. I say “mine” but it was another figure that was really my brother’s, I was just allowed to look at it any time I wanted, since as a kid and an adult, I never break stuff. A nice thing about Mindbender, is that he’s a distinct looking character who fills a somewhat obvious role, so even without access to his file card, it was easy to know who he was and what he did. I think there was a big focus on him too, since Cobra robots and Cobra’s monster Blanka, were a major focus of my childhood battles.
As was the trend in 1993, half of Mindbender is reused from an older figure, in this case, the ‘86 Viper. They released this mold in Brazil a few years later, where it was lost, hence why you never again got a whole Viper repaint. Putting that bit of trivia aside, it blends in alright, and the upper half of the figure’s sculpting looks fantastic. One thing I’ve never liked about V1 Dr Mindbender, is that the figure has one of those stereotypical oversized heads from his year, compared to this one, which is cool, tightly sculpted, and proportionate. Besides being slathered in nonsense-tech crap, it’s also nice that the figure looks pretty normal, and doesn’t have grenades popping out of every orifice of his body.
His colors are hideously bright, though I’ve never really minded that, even if I’ve been sensitive to it at times. In fact, I’d go as far to say these colors look pretty good, mixing that dark purple with a vibrant yellow. A few details are black, which balances things out, and the recycled Viper legs do well to tie him back to an existing Cobra uniform. The only thing that’s almost too ugly is the excessive use of yellow on his chest. You lose a lot of the sculpt’s detail in all of that.
His parts! His parts are so awful and wonderful at the same time. It’s an odd runner that as far as I know, was only shared with Lobotomaxx. Included is Dee-Jay’s gun, Voltar’s gun, ‘91 Sci-fi’s gun, ‘89 Snake Eye’s gun, an Iron Grenadier pistol, and the Hydro Viper’s knife, besides the obligatory launcher, missile and figure-stand that this blog usually doesn’t acknowledge. Six normal weapons is actually a bit extra compared to most figures from the time. Obviously, these parts aren’t very good, but I find them to be a guilty pleasure. As a kid, I generally equipped most figures with Voltar guns, though generally, most of these parts wound up getting used by a wide variety of figures. The knife especially became Armor Tech Destro’s trademark weapon, the lightning knife, which he could charge with high-voltage electricity from his fist. Also, I just like giving him Dee-Jay’s awful gun because I’m low-key tasteless.
1993 Dr Mindbender’s are very cheap, running around $9 for a fully complete figure with file card. It’s not too surprising when 1986 Mindbender’s are pretty cheap as well, though it’s still odd given the popularity of the character. If you like 90‘s neon, this is a fun version with a good sculpt. He has most of the problem’s you’ll find with any ‘93 or ‘94 figure, but he’s also the only alternative Mindbender figure, and he’s nice for that reason alone.
