 This week we are looking at our first Cobra figure of the year, the Allie Viper. The Allie Viper is a figure that you wouldn't expect me to... Oh, oh I'm sorry. The zigzag lines on the Allie Viper's uniform give me the vertigo. Oh, oh, sorry about that folks. So, Allie Viper, never been high on my list of favorite figures, but he is a favorite figure of Byron Kellogg, a long time friend of the channel. This is the third video in a row that's mentioned Byron. According to legend, if he's mentioned three videos in a row he will appear. Relax hoodie, it's me. Byron! Steve? What are you doing here? Since you're reviewing my favorite action figure, I thought I'd stop by to say a few words about it. Okay, that's fair enough. I don't know if I can think of enough positive things to say about the Allie Viper. You can stay, but no more startling me, and no more giving me the vertigo. You're gonna give me a heart attack. And take that ridiculous thing off. Oh, alright. Everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. It's time for another vintage GI Joe toy review. The Allie Viper came onto the scene when Cobra was adding a lot more sp- Get that thing off the screen! Get it off! Get it off! The Allie Viper came onto the scene when Cobra was adding a lot more specialized vipers. It was a little too late for me. I was out of GI Joe by the time, but I'm always interested in seeing where GI Joe went after my era, and sometimes it went into some pretty crazy places. The Allie Viper is not the strangest Cobra figure, not by a long shot, but one look at the figure kind of makes you go, huh. I can't claim Allie Viper is my favorite figure, but Allie Viper does have at least one big fan. Please welcome to the show my friend Byron. Hey GI Joe fans. JoeMotionVideos82 here, also known as Byron Kellogg. Thank you for joining us Byron. He'll be back later in this video to share his thoughts about the Allie Viper. Love him or loathe him, this is a figure that will not be ignored. HCC788 presents the Allie Viper. This is the Allie Viper, Cobra's urban assault trooper from 1989. This figure was first available in 1989. It was also available in 1990. It was discontinued for 1991. In 1989, Cobra expanded its army into new niche specialties. It was a good year for army builders so long as you wanted Cobra vipers with very narrow specialties. There were three versions of the Allie Viper in the vintage line. You had version two in 1993 and version three in 1994. Version two updated the Allie Viper with a fierce looking fanged face mask and a black and yellow color scheme. Version three copied the mold of version two but went back to an orange and blue color scheme. I should add that this version two of Allie Viper was given to me by Chris Peers of the YouTube show Comic Tropes. There is a minor variation on the Allie Viper. Some of them are stamped on the butt made in China and others are stamped made in Hong Kong. I only have the made in China version because I wouldn't track down that type of variant. Country of origin stamp variants do not interest me. If you want to see a figure with a very similar design but with a different color scheme, look at the 1989 Night Viper issued the same year as the Allie Viper but what a difference the colors make. Imagine the Allie Viper in colors closer to the Night Viper. Allie Viper's counterpart on the GI Joe team would have to be Shockwave from 1988. He was their SWAT specialist so he would be trained and equipped to fight in an urban environment. They have opposite goals though. Shockwave is an expert at freeing hostages. Allie Viper's mission is to invade and oppress civilian populations. The Allie Viper represents a shift in Cobra's priorities. They aren't only interested in fighting skirmishes and achieving discrete mission objectives aimed at material gain. The presence of the Allie Viper assumes they will be taking control of populated territories. The Allie Viper is equipped to put down riots and rebellions. Let's take a look at Allie Viper's accessories and let's start with his face shield. He has this face shield that covers his face. It is attached to the molded on helmet on his head. It is hinged so you can swing it up to reveal the Allie Viper's eyes. It is in a base orange plastic and it has a couple blue angled shapes on it. This is supposed to be his camouflage pattern. It also has a molded on Cobra emblem right in the center. It is removable. You can take it off of the head but I would advise caution. This is a fairly sturdy piece of plastic. It's kind of stiff but it can also be brittle so be cautious when removing this from the Allie Viper's head or putting it back on. How does he see through this? With the shield down it entirely covers his eyes. Maybe it's supposed to be a visor with a view screen on the inside. Maybe it has night vision. The card art shows the visor down below his eyes. You can actually see his eyes over the visor but that is not reflected on the figure. This visor is very similar to the visor on the 1989 Night Viper. That visor is also hinged on the helmet and you can flip it up to reveal the Night Viper's eyes and it is also removable. A Night Viper's visor though is very specifically a night vision system. This face shield functions like a police riot helmet. It protects his entire face. Allie Viper will be confronting crowds of people swinging pipes and throwing rocks. Next let's take a look at Allie Viper's submachine gun. It's a very unusual look. If this is based on a real world design, I am not aware of it. It has a scope. It has a shoulder stock. It also has a magazine that comes out of the side at an odd angle behind the grip. This does not seem ideal for quick reloading. Because the magazine shuts out toward the back at this odd angle on the right side of the submachine gun, it's difficult to get this in the figure's right hand at a good angle. I'm calling this a submachine gun even though the card contents don't specify. It has a foregrip that will fit in the action figure's hand but I don't often use it because he usually has his shield in the other hand. It has a short barrel that would be good for close quarters fighting and I would imagine the Allie Viper would have to use this in close quarters quite a bit. Next let's look at Allie Viper's shield. I want to take it out of his hand carefully because the handle on it is a bit thick. This is a riot shield. It is orange with blue zigzag shapes. It has a view slot so the Allie Viper can duck behind it and look through it. These jagged edges mean the shield could be used as a weapon, a hacking weapon. There is an embossed cobra emblem in a raised circle on the center top of the shield. At the top of the shield on either side there are these semi-circular cutouts. These would be useful for the Allie Viper to place the barrel of his submachine gun so he can fire at people from behind the shield. This is a good practical use of the shield but good luck getting the figure to hold his accessories in this configuration. The handle for this shield runs behind the viewing slot which reduces the usefulness of the viewing slot. The handle is thick front to back but thin top to bottom and it's horizontal which means there isn't really a good angle for the shield when it is in the figure's hand. To place the shield at a good angle you really have to contort the figure's arm into an odd position and because the handle is kind of thin top to bottom it rests in the hand quite loosely. This shield would not be bullet proof but kids most likely pretended it was. For the best use of this shield he should hold it at an angle that covers the most of his body but it's very difficult to get it in that position. Let's compare and contrast this shield with G.I. Joe's shield from the year before for 1988 Super Trooper. Super Trooper's shield is another riot type shield. It's more basic in design. It is taller to protect more of the person and its handle is vertical rather than horizontal which makes it much easier for the figure to hold the shield in an upright position. Now let's look at the backpack. Most people probably prefer the shield but the backpack is my favorite accessory. This backpack has a massive amount of detail and most of it is really awesome. It has this grapple hook here on the top. It is removable unfortunately it doesn't have a string or anything to use it but you can pretend to grapple onto things with it and if you look at the backpack molded on is a grapple line shooter. This kind of rifle looking thing with a scope. There's a grip on it. There's a stock there. This would have made a nice accessory. Actually it would be really nice if this were removable but it's just molded on there. Other than that the backpack has some grenades and some pouches and some other devices. It has another molded in Cobra emblem on it and of course the backpack is in all black and Ali Viper really needs the black to kind of balance out his other colors. With his accessories out of the way let's take a look at the articulation for Ali Viper. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures by 1989 so he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow that allowed him to bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep that allowed him to swivel his arm all the way around. This was an o-ring figure meaning it was held together with a rubber o-ring that looped around the inside. That allowed him to move at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of Ali Viper and the most obvious thing to point out is the color. Ali Viper couldn't be more obnoxious if he tried. He is mostly orange with a blue sharply angled pattern on him, something like a camouflage pattern. It's been said that this works as a breakup camouflage pattern. It's confusing to the eye and makes the enemy less likely to hit a vital area. That may be true, but it would have worked just as well in colors more suited to an urban environment, maybe like gray or blue. Cobra's philosophy of camouflage is different from GI Joes. They apparently want to be seen. They want their approach to inspire fear. Maybe that will give them an advantage, but they still exist in a world where individual troops would prefer not to be shot. For any of its virtues, this orange uniform would make the Ali Viper a very obvious target. And when Cobra wants good camouflage, they are able to do it. Looking at Ali Viper's head, he is wearing an orange molded on helmet. It has a molded in Cobra emblem on the forehead. He has a couple pegs for the face shield. Under that helmet and without the face shield, we see the Ali Viper's face is concealed with a blue cloth mask that only reveals his eyes. His chest is orange. I believe this is a jumpsuit. The base plastic color is orange and all over it he has this blue zigzag pattern. On the right side of his chest he has pouches that run up to his right shoulder. Those are painted blue. He has a pouch in the center of his chest and then he has a row of pouches that run around his midsection and around to his lower back. On his back he has a pair of unpainted straps sculpted in that's probably load bearing equipment for his backpack. I say unpainted but that's not exactly accurate. That blue camouflage pattern is painted directly over those straps and pouches as if they are part of his jumpsuit. On his chest he has a black knife with the handle facing downward positioned to be drawn with the right hand. Then he has a black grenade right next to it. On the arms we have orange once again with that blue camouflage pattern. On the right upper arm he has a blue band that goes all the way around the upper arm and on that band he has another molded in cobra emblem. There are a ton of molded in cobra emblems on this figure and the accessories and that is impressive. Most of the time they would have just used a tampo to stamp a cobra emblem on the figure but for this guy they etched it into the plastic. On his lower arms he has elbow pads that's pretty cool. He has a brown knife on his right forearm with the handle partially covering the back of his hand. That's not a great place for it and it is positioned to be drawn with the left hand. With the knife on the arm positioned to be drawn with the left hand and the knife on the chest positioned to be drawn with the right hand he could quickly draw both of them. This is the only spot of brown on this figure which is too bad because other parts of the figure could have used an additional paint spray that would have added some depth to his overall color scheme and wrapping up the arms he has plain black gloves. The waist piece is kind of plain. It doesn't have a belt sculpted on so that makes me think this is a jumpsuit. It is orange with again that blue camouflage pattern. Moving down to his legs he has orange legs with again that blue pattern on them. The right leg is kind of plain. On the left leg he has a large pocket on his thigh. On the lower legs he has knee pads real knee pads that's not bad at all unpainted unfortunately. Then to wrap it up he has a pair of tall black boots and these are well sculpted boots. I have to say the lower half of this figure is really nice. In different colors it could be exceptional. This breakup camouflage is not unheard of. GI Joe did something similar with figures like 1988 Storm Shadow, 1988 Repeater, 1988 Shockwave and 1989 Recoil but as you can see GI Joe's approach was different. They made different color choices for one thing. With the possible exception of Storm Shadow the Joes were well camouflaged. Even though Shockwave is blue his colors would work well for an urban environment especially at night. It's hard for me to get over these colors even if they can be justified in universe. They're still hard to look at. The black does help I'll give it that. The black makes up for it a little. Let's take a look at Ali Viper's file card. His file card has his faction as Cobra. It has a portrait of the file card here with his helmet looking very different from the toy. His code name is Ali Viper with no hyphen. He is the Cobra urban assault trooper. There is no biographical information here. This is a trooper. This does not represent an individual. It represents a unit within Cobra. This top paragraph says the Ali Viper's are the Cobra equivalent of a police SWAT unit or British SAS in parentheses special air service. Police SWAT and British SAS are not very similar. One is a division of civilian law enforcement employed when a special use of forces needed and British SAS is a military special forces unit. They form the spearhead of Cobra's inner city invasion forces. This elite contingent of marauders are true masters of brutality possessing a style of ruthlessness not present in other Cobra soldiers. Recruited from Cobra's most diabolical command divisions, Ali Viper's use various forms of treachery to achieve their objectives. In order to graduate from their training program they are required to survive a full burst of machine gun fire across their frontal body armor. Execute a 30 foot jump onto concrete with full combat load and run down a 100 meter gas filled corridor without a gas mask. If their body armor can deflect machine gun bullets Cobra needs to market that and make a fortune. I assume they are especially ruthless because they will be beating up unarmed civilians and oppressing urban populations. This bottom paragraph says Ali Viper's are big and strong as well as ruthless. Their body armor alone weighs 50 pounds and they carry at least 30 pounds of weapons, ammo, grenades and climbing gear. You definitely don't want one of these gorillas running up and knocking your door down. Now that I think about it I wouldn't want any gorillas knocking my door down. I thought it would be only fair to bring in a true fan of the Ali Viper so now I turn it over to Byron so he can share his thoughts about the Ali Viper. Now the Ali Viper is my favorite action figure. I really really do enjoy having him. When he hit the pegs in 89 I just had to have it. I purchased this as one from my childhood. I purchased him with my paper out money. What really appealed to me about it was one he has a shield and I had not seen a shield on a GI Joe or with a GI Joe before and that was really cool. Two it's just these outstanding colors. I love the bright colors of it. It really popped. This was in 89 right before GI Joe or Hasbro started getting weird with the bright colors. He was a great action figure. I just had to have him and his backpack was another appealing thing and for the longest time I didn't know that the grappling hook removed and I'm glad I didn't because it may have been lost over the years but this guy is just he's the toughest out of all of Cobra. He is the exact opposite to GI Joe's shockwave. Shockwave was a SWAT officer. This is the Cobra SWAT officer. They carry a lot of ammunition. They're tough. In their training they were made to take a full magazine full of ammunition. They had to jump off of a 30 foot jump carrying all their their gear and had to run 100 meters with no gas mask on through a room full of gas and another really cool thing about it was the visor. That was great. It makes him look more like a knight. You know he has the visor and the shield. I could go on all day about this action figure but I have a feeling that Steve will have a lot to say about it so yeah I I'm not going to review this. I'll let Steve review it so we'll talk to you guys later. Looking at how the Ali Viper was used in GI Joe media he first appeared in animated form in the Deke animated series in the Operation Dragonfire mini series. He appeared in parts two through five. In that series Scoop is a Cobra spy who has infiltrated GI Joe. One of his buddies in Cobra is an Ali Viper. According to the series he transferred to the Ali Vipers from the Crimson Guard. That seems like a demotion. The Ali Vipers appeared a few other times in the Deke series briefly. Their main impact was in that opening series. In the GI Joe comic book published by Marvel Comics I'm less certain about their first appearance. They appeared in the background of a few issues. I know they were in issue number 94. The Baroness used Ali Vipers and Knight Vipers in her assault on the Byrne Institute of Reconstructive Surgery where Snake Eyes was getting plastic surgery on his face. In that issue they were colored red and they didn't have their blue pattern. It's not a bad look for them. They were seen again in issue number 100. They were used for their intended purpose when Cobra took over the US town of Millville. But they were just in the background. Other Vipers were used more prominently. Their most important appearance was in issue number 113. In the Benzene War story arc they were part of Cobra's occupation of the city of Benzene. They were still colored red but they did have their camo pattern. They along with frag Vipers and range Vipers were responsible for the death of Sneak Peak. They paid the price though when they were taken out by Stalker and Dusty. Looking at the Ali Vipers overall. Ali Vipers? More like Ali. Oops. Probably should not leave that in. Obviously the color choices are not going to appeal to me. I could live with the zigzag crazy camouflage pattern in different colors and it's easy to imagine Ali Vipers in other colors. There were other figures of that era that had colors that would fit perfectly with Ali Vipers. It's tempting to compare and contrast the Ali Vipers with the Night Vipers. A similarly constructed figure with radically different colors and colors that I think work well. His equipment is reasonably well suited for his job. I'd like to see him maybe with a baton. Even a reissue of mutt or law's baton would have been fine. These accessories though as designed are a bit cumbersome. The sub machine gun doesn't fit in the hand very well because of the awkwardly angled magazine. The shield doesn't fit at a good angle because of the way they designed the handle. These easily could have been fixed. I'm really digging the backpack in black. A ton of great details. A removable grapple. It would be nice if that grapple gun were also removable and maybe if it had a string for the grapple hook would have been great but even as it is it's an excellent backpack. To me the most important thing about the Ali Viper is what he represents. He is an urban assault trooper in riot gear. Cobra is no longer just a band of terrorists. It has become an oppressor of the people. And despite his extremely loud colors the Ali Viper does have fans. Fans like my friend Byron. And that was our review of the Cobra Ali Viper. Thank you very much to Byron for coming on the show and sharing some positive thoughts about the Ali Viper. Thank you so very much. Check out my channel JoeMotionVideos82. I do stop motion videos. I also do toy reviews. So I'll have it down here on the screen for you guys. So please stop by. Check the channel out. Subscribe to my channel. When I reach 250 subscribers I'm going to hold a giveaway. I've held several giveaways on this channel so far. And the more subscribers I get the more giveaways I'll be holding. So check me out. At the beginning of the year I said this would be the year of the rarity but we haven't reviewed anything rare yet. I think next week is time to change that. We're going to look at something a little less common. As always if you like these videos I ask you to give it a thumbs up on YouTube. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Hit the notification bell and share these videos. That's what helps this channel grow. You can find me on social media on Facebook and Twitter. And I have a website hcc788.com. I like to say a special thanks to my patrons. Their support helps keep this show running. If you like the show and you'd like to support the show in that way please check out my Patreon. You can get some special perks and find out how to decode the secret messages you see in videos. But even if you don't do any of that I want to thank you just for watching this video. Thanks for being here. I'll be back next week with another vintage GI Joe Toy Review. I hope you will join me too. I'll see you then and remember only GI Joe is GI Joe. Come on. You stay there. You come on. Oh no no we're going to do this. We're going to do this. It's a matter of principle. You're going to do what I tell you action figure. You will obey my wishes. All right that's that's sort of it. That's sort of the pose. Expect me to. Wouldn't expect me to. A lot more specializing. Cobra was adding a lot more space.