1988 Voltar

Among all of the non-Cobra entities GI Joe has to deal with, the Iron Grenadiers are easily my favorite Cobra alternative. Most of their figures weren’t perfect, but as villains, they make a lot of sense and have an interesting esthetic. Voltar’s a good example of this, as he’s very much not perfect, but also a cool little figure in some other ways, that does a lot of things I like.

Voltar was originally part of my brother’s collection, but was one his odd figures that captivated me a lot. I think it’s because he had several things I liked going on, which included: A robotic monocle-helmet, gold, and evil facial hair. He wasn’t enough of an evil cyborg to outclass Vapor, but he fell into his role as a general. At this point in my childhood, he had Power Rangers style battles with Ninja Force Bushido and the ‘92 Eel (who was a good guy, to me).

My fascination with Voltar didn’t end there though, and I continued to like this figure in particular, even into my teenage years when 25th Anniversary was my collecting focus. I really wanted a Voltar to go with my Destro from that line, but that was at the point when acknowledging the GI Joe line after 1986 was a blaspheme. Mixing modern and vintage figures has always looked way too dumb to me, but I still think there was a few odd moments when 25th Iron Grenadier Destro hung out with Voltar and Metal Head just because I liked them that much.

All that sentiment aside, Voltar’s a nice figure in some ways, and a weak figure in others. There’s a ridge on top of Voltar’s helmet, that seems to nicely line up with the one on the normal Iron Grenadier: an underappreciated bit of continuity between them. I also think his head sculpt is nicely sharp, best illustrated by the prototype Long Range figure that reused his head, and looked much better without the oversized helmet (instead, Long Range got a new head that looks much worse). A few parts of his design leave something to be desired, around his knees and his gloves in particular, but other than that it’s a nice looking figure. I like that he uses gold and black to tie him into the Iron Grenadiers, but also introduces magenta as a color for the group.

I like his parts, but they’re definitely not for everyone. He included a backpack, SMG, and a condor. His SMG is pretty unpopular, frankly, I don’t like it much myself. However, when I see it, I just recall a lot of memories of using this gun in various colors as a kid. It looks powerful, and fit into hands pretty well too. The backpack’s okay, but kind of a mess. Then you have his pet bird, which is probably the strangest part of the figure. It really doesn’t tie into the character any at all, though I sometimes wonder if including a vulture was a play on his role as a general for a war-mongering arms dealer. Was there a quota for animal pack-ins? Either way, I’d use the birdy, but mine’s missing the feet.

Voltar was sold in an “Ultimate Enemies” pack with Muskrat. I don’t know why these two have each other as nemeses, but it seems like something fun and goofy enough to think about. While we’re on his role in the fiction, I really hate how Hama treated a lot of later characters like this in the comic. Sure, Raptor was dumb and nobody cared if he was tossed into a volcano and never seen again, but Voltar? He seemed like a fun and resourceful enough character to keep having some kind of role. But, he wasn’t Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, Zartan, Scarlet or Baroness, so he had to get killed off in favor of continuing to over-expose the soap opera of five or six characters.

Voltar’s a cheap figure surprisingly enough, you can get a mint complete one for around $15 with some regularity. Given that I was losing bid-wars on broken Iron Grenadiers at the beginning of the year, I thought he’d be a tad pricier just as a member of the group. Obviously, most folks just don’t care about this guy a whole lot, though part of me wants to be hopeful it’s a sign prices are starting to soften again overall.