 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another vintage Cobra toy review for the third week of Cobra Month and this time we're going to do an army builder. We really needed to do an army builder for Cobra Month, really Cobra had some great army builders and we have a really great army builder for this review. We're going to look at the 1985 Cobra Polar Assault Trooper the Snow Serpent. This is the Snow Serpent Cobra's Polar Assault Trooper. He was first introduced in 1985, he was also sold in 1986. He was discontinued in 1987 and in 1987 we did get another Cobra Arctic Trooper the Ice Viper as a vehicle driver. The Ice Viper was the driver of the Wolf Arctic Attack Vehicle. In 1992 the head of the Snow Serpent was reused for the Heli Viper, which is one of the ugliest action figures I have ever seen, but sadly not the ugliest. The Snow Serpent was Cobra's first cold weather specialist, but by this time GI Joe already had several Arctic Troopers, the first of which being Snow Job from 1983. In 1985 we got Frostbite as a vehicle driver, the driver of the Snowcat, then in 1986 we got Iceberg. Let's take a look at the Snow Serpent's accessories starting with his weapon and This is an AK-47 with a folding stock molded in grey plastic. The AK-47 was a Soviet assault rifle developed by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It's an appropriate weapon and a very nice representation of that real-world weapon. And I like the folding stock, that's a nice difference from other AK-47's we got from GI Joe figures. The 1982 and 83 Cobra officer also came with an AK-47, but with a fixed stock rather than the folding stock and in a darker grey color. Around his waist he had a blue pack that is listed on the card contents as a parachute pack. This actually looks like a reserve shoot strapped around on the front of him like this. This is a pretty nicely detailed accessory. It loops around and latches through this buckle here around his waist. It's a nice blue color and it's a nice, kind of a nice color that breaks up all the grey. A little bit of blue helps keep the color scheme from being a little too boring and monotonous. Nice color and very nice detail. What this accessory means is that not only are the Snow Serpent's Arctic troopers, they are also paratroopers. The parachute pack is molded out of a softer plastic, it's very pliable. You do run across some of them with broken straps sometimes, but they're pretty robust and usually you can find them intact. Attached to the side of his backpack is another weapon, his missile pod, this missile launcher, which connects to the backpack by this peg and this slot here and that is very convenient. I wish more accessories would work this way where we had a place to store them, so that is a nice bonus, I like that very much. The contents of the card on which the action figure was packaged call this an anti-tank EK99 missile and I don't think this is a copy of a real world anti-tank missile system. Normally you don't see anti-tank missiles that are fired like this with the missile tip sticking out. This may be loosely based on the M47 Dragon or the FGM-148 Javelin, but it's not an exact replica of either of those missiles, this is kind of a made up thing, but it still does look pretty good and it means that the Snow Serpent is also an anti-tank missile specialist. The missile came with a folding stand and with the stand you could stand it up like that, looks pretty good and the Snow Serpent can stand behind it and fire it at GI Joe tanks. This stand does come off, so you will often find this missing, you will see a lot of these anti-tank missiles with the stand gone, so that's something you'll need to look for. Even though we've looked at a lot of accessories, we're not done yet, he has more. He has his backpack, which pegs into his back like any other GI Joe backpack did and this is a very large backpack, it has some nice sculpting and detail on it. Like I said, it does have this tab on here to attach the anti-tank missile, you can just tab it in like that, push it in and it holds on pretty well. This is a very nice feature, I like this a lot, this is great. This is a nice looking backpack, it's large because the Snow Serpent in the Arctic environment is going to need a lot of survival gear, so this is appropriate, great looking backpack and finally the Snow Serpent has a pair of Snow Shoes. This is pretty cool, he has two of them of course, one for each foot, they peg into the feet by this hole, it has a foot peg there, that's how it attaches to the feet. They are both the same, there's not a separate left and a right one, so you can fit them on either feet and it does fit quite well, quite snugly and it's reasonably well detailed. This is a nice change, a lot of the Arctic troopers that we got especially from GI Joe, they had skis, they came with skis, so we got a lot of skis in GI Joe, so this is a nice alternative to the skis that we usually got. The Snow Shoes work pretty well as a figure stand, with the Snow Shoes on you don't really need a figure stand for the Snow Serpent, in fact they're pretty stable and you can even get them in different poses with these Snow Shoes. Out of curiosity I wanted to see if Snow Jobs skis would fit on the Snow Serpent, just to see if maybe you could have them as an alternative to the Snow Shoes if you wanted the Snow Serpent on skis, so we're just going to test that out right now and it looks like no, they do not fit, the Snow Serpent's foot just goes a little bit too far for this front little notch here where the foot goes, Snow Jobs' foot fits in there pretty well, but the Snow Serpent's foot will not fit that ski. Let's take a look at the articulation on the Snow Serpent, he had the standard articulation for 1985 GI Joe action figures, that means he could turn his head from left to right, he could also look up and down, he could move his arm up at the shoulder, his upward movement might be slightly hindered by the sculpting of the fur line collar there, he could swivel his arm all the way around and that definitely is obstructed by that fur line collar, he could bend at the elbow about 90 degrees, he had a swivel at the bicep, he could swivel his arm all the way around, the figure was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside so he could move at the torso a little bit, he could move his legs apart about so far, he could move his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of the Snow Serpent, starting with his head and on his head he has a light gray helmet, you can see that goes all the way around, some ridges on the top of his helmet, he has blue goggles and he has a black face mask, almost looks kind of like a hockey mask or something like that, this face mask has a nose that kind of sticks pretty far out there and the paint on that nose can wear off, that's probably the most frequent paint wear that you'll find on this figure, so take a look at the nose and if you want one that's in great condition, just check to see if any of the paint has rubbed off there, this helmet and mask covers the entire head and face which makes this figure perfect for army building, you can't see any features, there's no individuality to it so you could get a lot of these and put them together and pretend you have an entire army of Snow Serpents, this really is the perfect army building figure, on his chest we see he has a fur lined collar and that goes over his shoulders here and the sculpting on the chest actually goes over the arms a little bit and that's white on top of a light gray winter coat and this is a nice subtle color difference between the white collar and the gray coat and it's kind of nice I think in these early G.I. Joe action figures now that they can have some subtlety like this they didn't all have to be high contrast and neon colors, he has some blue straps and that looks like it's actually a harness that would go to his backpack and his parachute and that blue is a nice little splash of color against the light gray that looks really good continues around to the back and this is a highly detailed chest piece here this is a lot of detail on this winter coat that he's wearing you can see a zipper there he's got some seams and some pockets he's got some buckles on his straps on his harness it even has a strap here with a little buckle on both sides I'm a little bit torn though because these are unpainted details and as you know I'm not very fond of unpainted details it would be nice to have these sculpted details painted in however I think that with this color scheme adding an additional paint application or color there would be too much I think that would make the figure look too busy so on the one hand I like the detail and I don't think that it should have been painted but I do prefer painted details so I'm a bit on a bit of a quandary here I like it in some ways and I don't like it in other ways on his right arm he has this pouch here and on both wrists he has these gloves these furry gloves and what's interesting is the fur doesn't go all the way around it almost looks like he has like white Sasquatch arms or something like that it looks like he has furry arms on his left arm we have a nice red Cobra sigil and that's another nice little spot of color on this otherwise you know very muted colored figure the waist piece continues the theme we've got a zipper here we've got the blue harness and belt that continues around to the back we've got some nice sculpted detail on the trousers and this may in fact actually be a jumpsuit I think that's what this is this supposed to be a jumpsuit with a blue harness over it the legs are also done in this light gray plastic with a couple large pouches here on the front and there's some nice detailing along the sides looks really good but it's also kind of plain he doesn't have any weapons sculpted on his legs no pistols no daggers nothing like that no grenades but that's fine I really think that if they had done too much down here it would have been a little bit too busy there's a lot of detail on this figure already and you don't want to overdo it and then we have some blue boots that match the color of the harness let's take a look at the file card the file card was printed on the back of the card on which the action figure was packaged you can see some of the artwork from the front of the card there it shows its faction as cobra obviously and it has a portrait of the snow serpent here his specialty is cobra polar assault codename snow serpent it says his file name is classified but I don't really think it should have an entry here for the file name we're not talking about an individual snow serpent here there were a lot of snow serpents in cobra forces and they all pretty much look the same so I don't think it should say it should say file name classified here it's not that his file name is classified but these guys would have a lot of different names primary military specialty is arctic operations secondary military specialty is infantry birthplace various countries this section says snow serpents are the arctic specialist branch of the eels in parentheses cobra frogman when the file card refers to eels they are talking about these guys the cobra frogman that were also introduced in 1985 the same year as the snow serpent they must undergo the same rigorous training program as the eels with the addition of a six month cold weather course somewhere above the arctic circle so if cobra eels are elite soldiers within cobra snow serpents are the elite of the elite other aspects of their training include airborne operations in parentheses under arctic conditions anti-tank procedures and the use of snowshoes skis and kayaks I like the way this file card references all of the accessories that the snow serpent comes with talks about anti-tank procedures and he comes with an anti-tank missile it talks about airborne operations and he comes with a parachute pack that's a nice coordination between the action figure and the file card this bottom section has a quote it says if the eels are the elite of cobra's naval branch then the snow serpents are the best of the best how else could you characterize an individual who would parachute onto an ice flow in sub-zero temperatures and then be prepared to march 50 miles with full field pack assault rifle and anti-tank weapon so in the hierarchy of cobra special forces the eels are the elite and the snow serpents come from the ranks of the eels and are a step up from the eels in the comic book miniseries gijo order of battle published by marvel comics issue number three the snow serpent is featured on page 19 with a really nice drawing of the snow serpent the information here is the same as on his file card he seems to have a different missile pod this is probably based on one of the concept drawings from before the figure was released and also you can see he has his snowshoes stored here on his back and that's a feature that the figure did not have it would have been nice to have that that would have been a great feature that may be the one downside to all these fantastic accessories is that if the snowshoes are not on his feet he doesn't have anywhere else to store him he can store his missile pod but not the snowshoes so I think maybe a couple pegs on the backpack or something for the snowshoes would have been a nice bonus the snow serpent was among a set of fantastic cobra army builders that came out in 1985 a 1984 may have been the best year for cobra but starting in 1985 we got to get a lot of really great army builders we had in 1985 the cobra eels the frogman we had the elite trooper the crimson guard of course the snow serpent we had the cobra tele viper which was the communications specialist we even had a vehicle driver the lamprey who was the driver of the cobra moray hydrofoil oddly enough the basic viper figure the cobra infantry trooper did not come out until the following year 1986 taking a look at the snow serpent overall this is a figure that is extremely well detailed he has so many details that some of the details are unpainted which normally is something that I do not like but it is almost forgivable on this action figure the choice of colors on this figure is superb the obvious color scheme on a figure like this would have been all white kind of like snow job but they didn't go all white for this figure they gave us some nice light gray with a few other colors thrown in this is add some color interest to this figure which could have been very plain and boring the snow serpent is loaded with accessories and they are all appropriate accessories for his specialty there's nothing weird here these are the exact accessories you would want to get with a snow serpent even seems like you get some bonus accessories with the missile pod and being able to connect the missile pod to the backpack is great they really went the extra mile with this figure's accessories it's even a pretty robust figure there are not a lot of common points of breakage on this figure of course like any vintage action figure you'll find some with broken thumbs and broken crotches but overall this is a pretty tough figure you don't run into too many broken ones I think the main thing you need to worry about is probably paint wear and really you mainly need to worry about that on his nose that black paint tends to rub off but even the paint wear isn't really a major issue you will often find them missing accessories and I guess that's the downside to having so many great accessories is a lot of them do tend to go missing so you might have a little bit of trouble tracking down accessories but it's worth it they are really great accessories I consider this to be a top tier cobra figure and it's really hard for me to think of any arguments against putting him in the top tier he's not a major character like Destro or the Baroness but as far as the sheer quality of the figure goes this is top notch and I'm saying this as a person who didn't really play with a lot of Arctic figures as a kid where I grew up we didn't get a lot of snow so we did not play with our toys out in the snow very often so I don't have that kind of personal connection to this figure but looking at this figure now I have to admire it as far as snow serpents in the G.I. Joe media I don't really have a lot to show you they did show up every once in a while a few times in the animated series and I think we saw them a few times in the comic book but they were never major players so really not a lot to show you as far as media goes the snow serpent was perhaps underutilized in G.I. Joe media he maybe deserved the spotlight a little bit more that was my review of the 1985 cobra snow serpent I hope you enjoyed it and we are reaching the end of cobra month we have one more video review to do this month and we are done with cobra month I hope you've been enjoying these cobra review videos and I hope you'll stick around after cobra month I've got a great lineup of toys to review next month you don't want to miss those so make sure you subscribe to the channel on YouTube make sure you like this video if you did like it on YouTube and don't forget to like the Facebook page I've got a lot of updates there you do not get anywhere else thanks for watching I'll see you next week with another vintage cobra toy review see you then