Flak Viper

Ah, the early nineties…to me as a collector back then, in high school, and somewhat more discriminating than I was back in the "good old days", G.I. Joe had to be pretty impressive for me to even consider buying them. When I was a kid, I wanted and needed every figure that came out, but as a teenager earning my own money, I had to be somewhat picky when it came to buying toys. Surprisingly, Hasbro must have known this and really stepped things up a notch during this time.

From the late eighties to the early nineties was a pivotal time in the life of Joe. We had a return to military roots after a slight lapse in 1987 with some great military themed figures like Hit & Run, Shockwave, and Recoil. !989 was the year of the Cobra Trooper and Iron Grenadiers and then 1990 brought us the wide array of accessories. But as a kid, I wasn’t too sure what to think about the figures introduced in 1990. The plastic seemed a little more brittle, the characters somewhat unrecognizable. I’ve since learned of the folly of those opinions and have a newborn respect for the 1990 series of Joe. But as a teenager, 1990 kind of turned me off a little bit.

But then came 1991. It almost seemed like a reinventing of the line. We had a bunch of unknowns in 1990, and then in ’91 all the familiar faces came back. We had terrific new renditions of Snake Eyes, Low Light and Dusty, as well as some fantastic new Cobras the likes of Desert Scorpion, Crimson Guard Immortal, and Incinerator. Even the subsets like the Talking Battle Commanders brought us some very cool versions of Cobra Commander, Stalker, and General Hawk.

And then there was 1992. Widely regarded as the beginning of the end by many collectors, I saw lots of intuition and promise in this series. We got an iffy new version of Destro, granted, but we had a cool new Roadblock (still the definitive version of Martin, if you ask me), Duke, a great new Gung Ho, and some cool new figures as well like General Flagg and Big Bear. And of course, we have the only new Cobra army builder of that year’s regular line, the very cool Flak Viper, the subject of this profile.

Many people can’t quite get past the neon that snuck into this series, and even this figure has some bright parts to him, but to me, this figure really works for me. He is the Cobra anti-aircraft trooper and definitely looks that part!

From the broad shoulders and absolutely huge muscled mold, to the great looking draped Kevlar armor over his shoulder and legs. You can actually see that his huge head is almost stuffed into that streamlined helmet, and you can really feel this troopers absolute hugeness. This is a Cobra trooper that would give Roadblock and Gung Ho a run for their money, and that’s even when the Flak Viper is NOT armed!

Speaking of armament, like most of the 1992 figures, Flak Viper came with a pretty cool assortment of interesting weapons. Granted, one of those weapons was a bizarre spring loaded missile launcher, but it works for me. I can see Cobra Commander sending these guys out into the bush to launch missiles at upcoming aircraft from their bodies! The other weapon is a monster of a machine gun, looking like a .50 Caliber sniper rifle, and I can only imagine what this weapon would do to an airplane, not to mention the human body.

These guys serve a particular purpose in my little world as well. They are the basic brutes of the Cobra forces. Troopers with certain physical attributes are earmarked for the dangerous, but rewarding field of the Flak Viper. A certain physical strength lands them in either this field, or as a Crimson Guard Immortal, depending on intelligence and overall devotion to the Cobra cause. These boys are the front line, standing in the trees and taking on air fire as they stand fast, shooting back at tons of thick steel and armor plate with only their Kevlar bodysuits, targeting helmets and raw power. And even after they shoot down the enemy aircraft, they move in with their rifles and take them out, or God forbid they get close enough, they take the bayonets and pure muscle to any unfortunate survivors.

That’s not to say they aren’t at least somewhat intelligent…they have to calculate angles of trajectory as well as wind velocities and how the rockets are going to travel…but no matter how smart any of them are, they all take a primal joy in the sight of flaming metal and smoking remains.

This figure is a perfect example of the personality that Hasbro can put into a figure just by defining some basic physical attributes. The Flak Viper’s armor, colors, mold and weapons are just fantastic, and even subtle things like the facial expression and the painted planes on his chest reveal just what Hasbro was capable of, even in the latter years of the line.

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