Bootleg Cobra Viper (Tele-Viper colors), Red Laser Army Customs
I’ve been meaning to get around to reviewing one of the Red Laser Custom Vipers, and the one that’s caught a lot of my interests lately is the Tele-Viper colored “Telecommunications Infantry” Viper. It’s sort of odd, as on the surface it still looks mostly like a normal Viper, but some of the nuances are what makes this color scheme appeal to me.
For the most part, this figure looks pretty much like a normal, 1986 Viper. He’s still mainly Cobra blue, but swaps the traditional black vest for a purple, Tele-Viper colored one. All of the red is replaced with either more blue or black, and like the Viper Pit Viper, the gloves are painted a separate color from his blue arm guards. It’s a pretty nice color scheme that’s different enough from a normal Viper, but still retains enough of those early 80‘s Cobra colors that he doesn’t look out of place with figures of that era.
To me, I think this figure provides a similar appeal as the different Phase II Clone Trooper regiments from Star Wars. Most Clone Troopers look a lot alike, but their regiment is distinguished typically by a single color. Normally, most Cobras come in disparate color schemes and don’t really form cohesive looking squads. The V1 Viper and Tele-Viper aren’t that different, but when a few colors are changed out like you have on this guy, it makes for a more uniform squad.
With all of these customs, a topic of high interest is usually the construction quality. With some of the other Viper customs I’ve acquired I have run into some issues, but these are pretty good. They hold their guns perfectly, paint applications are very tight and consistent, and the joints are okay. They’re not super tight like a card-fresh figure might be, but it’s reasonable enough they can hold a pose well and no modding seems necessary.
For parts, you get the standard V1 Viper backpack and riffle, with the addition of a removable helmet. The helmet’s nicely done, although it’s a very tight fit over the head. It’s really strange to me that despite there being almost 30 figures of the Viper, Hasbro has never once made one with a removable helmet, which heightens my appreciation for this feature.
Red Laser Customs still has some of these for sale on eBay, at the price of $12 each. If you’re into custom figures and you like these colors like I do, there’s not a very good reason to wait on grabbing some. As the market for factory customs has become more inflated with a wealth of odd and interesting figures, prices for oddball stuff like this doesn’t seem to go up as much. However, army building figures like this at a later date will likely prove challenging.
The Viper Pit 