2020 TBM Eels (Copperhead Colors)

Posted on July 21, 2020 by mwnekoman

2020 TBM Eels (Copperhead Colors)

So after a good amount of hype, The Black Major’s latest project has finally arrived, and this time it’s the 1985 Eel mold. There’s quite a few interesting color schemes floating around, though a popular one and the one I liked best was this color scheme based on ‘84 Copperhead.

GI Joe TBM The Black Major eels copperhead vintage arah

In general, I’m not someone who was overly excited for Eel repaints, and that’s for a handful of reasons. The Eel was a good figure that serves it’s purpose, and similar to the Snow Serpent, there’s not much need for a repaint of a character so specialized. Because of this, I think a lot of the repaints went in a more novel direction, which doesn’t work for me with this mold. I also just don’t like this mold as much as other people though, so there’s that too.

This color scheme is very good however, and very useful to my collection. As a personal choice, I don’t like imagining that they have much relation to Copperhead (he’s a rogue agent), but rather are just an Eel division in swamp-centric colors. This to me, makes them a little more unique and gives them a more distinct role in my collection. This way it provides some new opportunities, like giving them the Dreadnok Swampfire, or having someone for Muskrat to fight.

The quality of these figures is very good, maybe the best I’ve encountered from factory customs. In general I don’t judge these figures too harshly for quality, as with their third-party origins and small production runs, it’s usually going to be the case that a figure won’t be perfect. With that said, these are simply excellent. The paint, joints, and even the numerous parts have a solid feel to them, which surprised me, as I was expecting the flippers or mouthpiece at least to have some problems. Instead, everything’s very snug and almost on par with vintage quality.

You get the original Eel’s full assortment of gear, including the two-piece backpack, speargun, mouthpiece and flippers. All of the parts are cast in a winter green color, which looks pretty good. Personally I think black parts might’ve contrasted better with the figure itself, but I really like these oddly colored 80‘s accessories, so I’d rather have them like this than be perfectly attuned to my esthetic sense.

It seems like with factory customs, you get about a year or so of seeing the figures float around plentifully before things start to dry up. These particular Eels are the cream of the crop from this set, so I didn’t chose to wait around on them. However, I’m pretty sure a handful of these will be available into next year, at which point I’ll probably dip my hands into a few more color schemes. I expect you’ll see these particular Eels for at least the rest of the year at their normal $15 to $18, which they’re well worth.

Python Patrol Copperhead

Posted on September 6, 2017 by mwnekoman

Among the more strange repaint ideas Hasbro came up with during ARAH, Python Patrol Copperhead was one of the most unusual. An oddball vehicle driver from the early years of the line, revisited in new colors for the Python Patrol. Personally, I’m really charmed by oddball repaints like Python Patrol Copperhead, and as a figure I think he has some strong qualities. At the same time, he’s also somewhat flawed.

Copperhead is a cool character. A gambler who fights to pay off his debts to Cobra, it’s an interesting choice that helps flesh out the organization and break away from the generic radicals and Mary Sues there were a lot of. Despite this however, he’s never been very prevalent in too much of the GI Joe mythos. According to Half the Battle, Copperhead had a measly two minutes of screen time in the Sunbow episodes, and appeared for a little more than four minutes in Operation Dragonfire. With all that said, it certainly made him an obscure choice for a character that Hasbro could bring back.

The figure is rather colorful and attractive. A few of the Python Patrol figures didn’t receive flattering interpretations this pallete (such as the Python Guard), but thankfully Copperhead is mostly green and black with some yellow and red details. There are some issues with his deco, however. Noticeably, there’s no Cobra symbol on this version of the figure, which just seems somewhat strange to me. Second, his waist. His waist is a solid, unpainted piece of yellow plastic. It certainly looks odd and sadly is a mar on an otherwise great looking figure. It seems understandable that budget constraints might’ve stopped them from painting this piece, but it would’ve been better if at least it wasn’t yellow.

Unlike V1 Copperhead, Python Patrol Copperhead includes some parts. He included both the m-16 and backpack from V1 Leatherneck in black. The backpack is a nice sculpt and I enjoy it’s inclusion with Copperhead, however, the M-16 is a piece I don’t enjoy so much. The sculpt has always felt overly bulky to me, and the grip is also really long and looks weird. On the brightside, at least it’s a real gun he can hold well.

On another interesting note about this figure: his filecard is slightly rewritten. Originally, it was “presumed that Copperhead is native to or otherwise intimately familiar with the Florida Everglades.”. For Python Copperhead, they changed it to the “rain forests of the Amazon basin”. This version also explicitly states he is indebted to Cobra and not simply working for them to pay a different debt, though amusingly one could assume this to mean he’s actually racked up more debts between figure releases. Either way, these small filecard revisions really showed how much care Hasbro was putting into line and characters at the time.

These days Python Copperheads can go for a lot. For a complete figure they range between $12 and $18, which seems like a little more than I paid for mine, but the market is pretty dry at the moment so that could be why. Despite that I think this is a pretty good figure, I think one’s enjoyment of him is entirely dependant on what you think of the Python Patrol. If you love the Python Patrol (like I do), he’s a must have. Howver if you dislike them, the figure doesn’t provide much over the original.

Python Patrol Copperhead Links:

Yo Joe!

Forgotten Figures

3D Joes

1984 Copperhead

Posted on September 28, 2015 by mwnekoman

The 1984 Cobras were the characters that really stuck with GI Joe for a long time. Although many more underrated characters would come out in the later eighties and into the nineties, there wasn’t a single year with so many classics of the same quality as there was in ‘84. It’s really appreciable how at this point in the line, even the vehicle drivers were nice, desirable figures, as is the case with copperhead.

It is presumed that Copperhead is native to or otherwise intimately familiar with the Florida Everglades. Intelligence sources venture a guess that he raced speedboats in high stakes races in Monaco and Japan. His major weakness is gambling. Odds are that he got started by placing bets on his own races. Apparently he compounded his folly by selling his services to COBRA in hopes of paying off his bookies.
Gung-Ho says: “Sure. I know the type. They’re all around the Gulf Coast. Trash. Drifters. They can drive a swamp buggy like the devil himself, rebuild a V-8 with a coat hanger and spit, fight all night and raise cain ’til the cock crows. They got a heart fulla gimme and a mouth full o’ much obliged . . . .”

-Copperhead’s filecard

Copperhead has a cool character with his gambling addiction that partially keeps him in Cobra. It gives him a sort of darkness and a bit of grit that makes him a more interesting character. I always saw Copperhead as more of a crook than the average Cobra, with a fair amount of skill to compensate. It seems like he’s one of those characters whose just a bit easier to imagine in a story than some others. It’s a real shame how the cartoon wrote him out early on, or at least until the DIC episodes (But no one cared about those, honestly.).

Copperhead is fairly buff for a figure from the earlier portion of the line, which gives him a little extra character and really helps to break him apart from the other figures that shared a similar build. I never really knew what was going on with that mask of his, but at the very least I like the look of it. His silver Cobra symbol really finishes the figure off nicely, with a nice contrast to his green color.

This version didn’t include any accessories, although the later Python Patrol repaint chose to pair him with parts from Leatherneck. Although the backpack was perfect, I’ve always really questioned him having an M-16. It could just be that I really hate the particular M-16 included with Leatherneck, but Copperhead just looks better to me with different guns. I’ve paired him with an AK-47 in the past, though thinking about it logically a smaller gun would probably be easier for him to handle while in the water. A Marauder’s G36c seems to fit the bill rather nicely, but when I want something less modern the AK-74U also looks pretty good.

Do you like V1 Copperhead? Feel free to drop me a line on Twitter.