Select Page

Continuing my “Top Ten” countdown of the items we saw last weekend in the Concept Case at the G.I. Joe: Convention.  With my number 10 entry, I focused on the G.I. Joe: Renegades Scrap Iron with his melted face and awesomely animated body style.

For my ninth entry, I went back into the archives… generally I’m not a fan of simply re-releasing figures as they appeared two decades ago, with only minor alterations, but the figure I saw in the case made me rethink that idea.  Besides, I’m a huge fan of those crazy 1989 army builders, so I couldn’t help myself.

9 – G.I. Joe: 30th Anniversary HEAT Viper

HEAT Viper is just one of those crazy figures you can’t help but love.  Bright yellow, purple, and with his trusty missile-boots he has all the earmarks of the wacky Cobra Troopers of the late 1980’s.  I was actually pretty amazed at just how well Hasbro translated that crazy design to the modern style.

Using the 30th Anniversary Airtight tooling and what appears to be a resin sculpted HEAT Viper helmet, Hasbro is able to replicate the look and feel almost perfectly.  It does appear that some sculpting modification was done to get the purple strip down the front of the figure, but beyond that, this would be a pretty straight forward kit-bash.  In talking to Dave, one of the genius sculptors for Hasbro, the HEAT Viper head was sculpted and appeared in his display case at the Convention, but it has not been “tooled” yet.  However, he also had sculpted a Crimson Guard head for a tour in Providence a few years back, and that head ended up getting tooled and used.

Anyway, since we have Alley-Viper, and will soon have Night-Viper, it seems only appropriate that we add HEAT-Viper to the growing ’89 trooper ranks.  Can Frag-Viper be far behind?

Check out the images below.

no images were found