 A couple months ago, a terrible thing happened. A very nice person named Jaren sent me some of his old GI Joe toys. That's not the terrible part. In that collection, there was a Slaughter's Marauder's Armadillo tank. I was happy to receive it. I didn't have any Slaughter's Marauder's vehicles at the time. Unfortunately, and this is the terrible part, my dog, this dog, ate it. Yeah, she totally destroyed it with her powerful jaws. I was devastated. There's no way I can undo the damage, but I can try to make it up to Jaren. I know Jaren likes the Frag Viper, so I'm going to review that figure. This one's for Jaren. It's time for another Vintage GI Joe Toy Review, and thank you to Mastachinik. I hope I said that right. For doing the thumbnail image for this video, it really turned out great. It's awesome. Thank you very much. One of the side effects of doing this show is receiving donated toys from viewers. Nobody has to do that, but people seem to enjoy being part of the show, and I appreciate their generosity. When I receive these toys, I consider it a trust. People are entrusting me with parts of their childhood, and it's my responsibility to make sure they are taken care of. When a donated toy is destroyed, then I haven't fulfilled my responsibility. It's a serious thing to me. I did acquire another Slaughter's Marauder's Armadillo, and it's a Canadian release, just like the other one, and I will review it. But not this week. I have special plans for it. This week, I'm going to review Jaren's favorite figure, the Frag Viper. I have to admit, I knew almost nothing about the Frag Viper before researching this episode, so let's learn about this figure together. HCC788 presents the Frag Viper. This is the Frag Viper, Cobra's grenade thrower from 1989. This figure was first available in 1989, and was also available in 1990. It was discontinued for 1991. There were no later versions of the Frag Viper in the vintage era. Was there a Cobra figure that replaced the Frag Viper? Sort of. In 1990, the Range Viper had a grenade launcher, but he wasn't a grenade-throwing specialist. Major Blood Version 2 from 1991, from the Super Sonic Fighter subset, had so many grenades sculpted on his body, he must have jingled when he walked. But he didn't have a mechanism for launching them. Did Frag Viper have a predecessor? Not exactly. The 1986 Cobra Viper had the RDT-7 assault rifle with grenade launcher. The 1982 Cobra Trooper had a sculpted-on grenade launcher, but that doesn't make these figures grenade-throwing specialists. There are a few potential GI Joe counterparts to Frag Viper. In 1983, Gung Ho had a grenade launcher. In 1986, Leatherneck had a grenade launcher attached to his rifle. The most direct counterpart to Frag Viper is 1988's Hardball with his multi-shot grenade launcher. The Frag Viper continues the trend of adding highly specialized vipers to the Cobra roster. In 1985, we had the Tele Viper. In 1986, we had the Viper, the infantry trooper. After that, we had Techno Vipers, Ice Vipers, Hydro Vipers, Toxo Vipers, Alley Vipers, Heat Vipers, and many others. I'm generally happy to get Cobra Army builders, but sometimes I think they got a little too specialized. A lot of these guys would have to sit on the sidelines until a situation arises that requires their specialty. Some of them aren't equipped as infantry troopers and would be mostly useless in a firefight. However, some were equipped to be infantry troopers and you could use them outside of their specialty. Frag Viper benefits from having a firearm in addition to his grenade flinging device. It's the accessories that really make this figure, so let's take a look at them, starting with his grenade-throwing device. I have one of his grenades in there and I'm going to take it out so we can take a look at that later. But first, let's take a look at how he throws his grenades. The card contents call this a SESTA, and that's exactly what it is. A SESTA is a throwing tool associated with the sport Jiali. Jiali is a sport from the Basque country, a territory located between the border of France and Spain. Jiali is a high-speed sport in which a ball is hurled with the SESTA, kind of a curved basket, and the rebound is also caught with the SESTA. This accessory is made of black plastic. It attaches to the figure's wrist by pressing the hand in first and then snapping it around the wrist. Attached to the SESTA, it has what looks like a gun with a ventilated shroud and it has what may be a magazine sticking out the side, so maybe this is a gun as well. This SESTA seems to have a broken band on it. I have one that is intact and unbroken, but what I've found is the unbroken one will not attach to my figure. There's just too much pressure on the wrist and it just pops off. However, this one with the broken band fits a little better. There's a peg on the back of the SESTA and that peg attaches to a thick, flexible rubber hose. Either end attaches and the other end attaches to a peg on the backpack, and I believe this is supposed to be a feeder hose for the grenades. The throwing portion of the SESTA is this forked hook, and you can place one of the three included grenades into that hook. But does it work to throw the grenades? Well, when I try it, about half the time the grenade gets stuck, but when it does throw, it doesn't seem to throw it very far. It really doesn't really work as a hurling device for the grenade. We've done a lot of bizarre accessories in GI Joe, but this is one of the most bizarre. Setting aside the possibility of the minigun attached to the outside of the SESTA, I'm still not sure that's what that's supposed to be. This device has only one purpose, throwing grenades. When not in use for that purpose, it doesn't holster anywhere. It attaches to his right hand, since the peg on the backpack is on the right side. For most people, that's their dominant hand. So he has to hold his gun in his left hand, and his right hand is useless when not chucking grenades. I originally thought this hose was supposed to be a power cable for the SESTA, but I think it's really meant to feed grenades from the backpack. I don't think that would really work, but at least they're trying to demonstrate a way to rapidly fire the grenades. Frag Viper's next accessory is what the card contents simply call a gun. Yes, that's what this is. I don't think it's based on a real-world weapon, it's pretty stylized. It looks like it could be a submachine gun. It looks good, it's a fine-looking weapon, and it gives Frag Viper something to do when he's not throwing grenades. He can go on missions with a squad of vipers and return fire with the rest of them. Next we have a black hose connector that connects the helmet to the backpack, but I have to say it does not fit well. The pegs on both the helmet and the backpack are a little too thick. I guess they had to be, otherwise they'd break off too easily, but it makes this very difficult to attach. This is a standard black rubber hose. A lot of figures came with these, and usually they fit pretty well. This may only be a problem with my example. The connector on your Frag Viper may fit fine. Next we have the grenades. There are three of them, two of which connect to pegs on the backpack. There is that third peg on the backpack, so you can connect the third grenade to it. It's a little thicker, but you can squeeze it on there. But if you do that, you don't have a peg to connect the hose to the helmet. These grenades are very tiny and would be very easy to lose. They are in black plastic. They have a peg on the bottom, so you can peg them onto the backpack. The grenades have a hash pattern, like the old World War II pineapple Mark II grenades. But they're rounded more like the modern M67 grenades. These would be fragmentation grenades designed to disperse fragmentation pieces when they explode. A problem I have with these grenades is they have a safety lever. This would make sense with a hand thrown grenade. The grenade's delay timer doesn't start until a safety lever is released. But these grenades are meant to be thrown with the SESTA. I don't know if the grenade even touches the thrower's hand. How would a safety lever be held down? Is there a pin to be pulled? When does a safety lever release? Does it release when it leaves the base of the basket? Or when it's actually thrown from the tip of the SESTA? I would be a little worried if the timer is ticking when the grenade is still in the basket. If you're going to treat these grenades like Jayali balls, you want them to be as round as possible. These grenades have protrusions that would interfere with aim or worse get a primed grenade stuck in the throwing device. The file card has something to say about the advantages of this method of throwing grenades, so let's withhold judgment until we read it. There are a few times when Hasbro gave us grenade accessories. Not very often. Some examples include from 1990 Captain Gridiron who had football shaped grenades. Also from 1991, Big Ben had a pouch that carried two tiny black grenades. I can't say I'm the biggest fan of these grenade accessories. They are always very tiny and very easy to lose. Fortunately, they usually gave the figure some way to carry the grenades either by pegging them on the figure or giving them an accessory that would carry them. Frag Viper's final accessory is his backpack. That's all the card contents call it, just a backpack. But it is so much more than that. It is black, it is boxy, it has some pockets on the sides. It has the peg for the connector to the SESTA also on the side. On the top it has the peg for the connector to the helmet and of course the two pegs for the grenades. Inside the backpack we have even more grenades sculpted in. We have a little window and we can see lots of tiny grenades sculpted into the backpack. I think this backpack serves as a big magazine feeding grenades to the launcher. Again, I'm skeptical about whether that would really work but at least they're trying. With the accessories out of the way, let's take a look at the articulation on Frag Viper. He had the articulation that was standard for figures by 1989. 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 move 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. The figure 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 sculpted design and color of Frag Viper starting with his head and on his head he has a silver non-removable helmet with big black angry bug eye goggles. He has numerous technical details all around the helmet including some black paint applications on the sides and on the sides he seems to have some silver knobs that look like they are painted on, not the base silver plastic color. On the chin of the face mask of the helmet he has a long peg for the connection to the backpack. Without that connector attached he looks a bit like a mosquito. In fact if you attach the connector to the chin he looks even more like a mosquito. Was this the inspiration for his look? Cobra has a mosquito man. It's no more ridiculous than a bird man or a crocodile man. There's no question this helmet is special. There's just a ton of really interesting technical details all the way around. Why does the Frag Viper need this helmet to throw grenades? It kind of looks like a gas mask so maybe he sometimes throws gas grenades. Moving on to the chest he has a pretty plain uniform, probably a jumpsuit, and a burnt orange, kind of a caramel color. He has some unpainted clasps down the front. He has a blue sash that runs from his left shoulder down under his right arm and that detail continues around the back. It is pinched at the center with a silver clasp and it has a silver cobra symbol on it and it has a blue pouch under the right arm. This sash could be a simple blue band but if you look closely at it it's sculpted with some ridges and to me it almost looks like a bundle of wires. The chest looks bulkier than an average action figure. You can see some muscles bulging through the uniform. On his arms he has sleeves that are the same color as the rest of the uniform. He has black gloves that are cut at an angle. He has a blue band around his right forearm and another blue band around his left bicep. On the waist piece there is no belt but on the chest you can see there are a couple smaller blue bands that attach to that sash with some silver clasps and the blue bands continue down across the waist piece both in the front and the back and on the left hip there is a blue pouch. That diagonal band that cuts across the waist piece on the front and the back continue down to a blue pistol holster on the left leg with a black pistol in it and there is a vertical blue band on the right hip that continues down to a pouch on the right leg. The legs are in that same base uniform color and of course we have that blue pistol holster on the left leg with the black pistol. We have some bands that go around the left leg just above the knee. Then we have the blue pouch on the right leg and then we have some bands that go around the right leg just above the knee. We finish up with some pretty standard black boots and we have an unpainted knife on the left ankle and an unpainted band that goes around the left shin. They painted all the other bands and straps and sashes on this figure. Why not finish the job and paint these details on the left lower leg? You know these black boots are pretty plain but after all the strangeness on the rest of the figure it's nice to have some normalcy with the boots. I don't know what to make of this figure. The more I look at it the stranger it looks to me. It's kind of a plain figure but it has an insectoid helmet. It also is covered with a network of blue bands that run at odd angles all over the figure. After staring at them they still look like bundles of wires to me. That doesn't make sense for them to be wires but I can't escape that impression. I don't know if these oddities make it a good figure but I am mesmerized by it. Here's Frag Viper's file card. It has his faction as Cobra. There's a portrait of the Frag Viper and that portrait is missing the hose connector to the helmet. His code name is Frag Viper hyphenated. He is a Cobra grenade thrower. This top paragraph says an integral part of the Cobra Viper fire team. The Frag Viper can cost high explosive fragmentation grenades with all the range and accuracy of an M79 or M203 RPGL. There's an asterisk RPGL stands for rocket propelled grenade launcher. But without the noise from the muzzle blast. The secret lies in the manual hurling basket based on the SESTA used in the Basque Sport of Jialai. The Frag Viper's SESTA is equipped with an automatic feed and variable time fuser with a cable link to the helmet's automatic range finder. The first paragraph explains all the accessories and I appreciate that. The file card is trying to make sense of all this. The alleged advantage of this method of hurling grenades is low noise and no muzzle blast. The second paragraph has a quote. It says a GI Joe armed with an M203 40mm grenade launcher can manage a firing rate of 5 rounds per minute and as soon as he pops the first round everybody and his uncle knows where he is. A Frag Viper with a 50 round magazine and automatic feeder can deliver 15 rounds per minute and you'll never have any idea where they're coming from. The second paragraph sells the advantage over the M203. They're making the best possible case for this strange way of throwing grenades. I don't quite buy it for a few reasons. First, I think the automatic feed is a bit of a fantasy. I'll have to suspend disbelief to accept that. Also, the grenades aren't round like a Jialai ball. This will interfere with the throw and the accuracy and could even lead to them getting jammed in the SESTA. Below noise. These are hand grenades. You can throw them by hand and get the same effect. Maybe you wouldn't have the range, but at longer ranges other weapons would probably be more effective anyway. And the rapid fire? The file card compares the SESTA to the M203. Let's accept for the moment that everything it says is true. May I then remind you of a certain GI Joe guy called Hardball. He had this wicked multi-shot grenade launcher that would be able to fire with every bit the range, speed and accuracy of the Frag Viper's throwing arm. Multi-shot grenade launchers have been around for ages and they do almost everything the Frag Viper's thrower is touted as doing. The Frag Viper may still have the noise advantage, but in a firefight with rounds going off in all directions, I don't think the Frag Viper's quiet grenade thrower will make that much difference. Looking at how Frag Viper was used in GI Joe media, the Frag Viper had almost nothing to do in the GI Joe animated series. He appeared once in the Deke series in Operation Dragonfire Day 1 and that's about it. The Frag Viper's made a few appearances in the comic books published by Marvel Comics, but I wouldn't call them major players there either. Frag Viper was on the cover of issue number 130, not using his grenade thrower. In the interior pages, he has two submachine guns. The Frag Viper was in issues number 121 and 122, guarding the Silent Castle. There isn't much media on these guys. The databases I searched didn't even list them. I had to find their comic book appearances from memory and that's never a good thing. My memory is not that good. The Frag Viper did appear in the 1991 NES GI Joe game on level three dash two. At least I guess these guys are supposed to be Frag Vipers. They are the wrong color and they seem to be throwing boomerangs. Maybe they misinterpreted what those hook things were supposed to be. Looking at the Frag Viper overall, I'd say it's a middle tier figure. There's just so much about this figure that puzzles me. The figure is kind of plain. The details are sparse, but the details it has are intriguing. He has a mosquito helmet, I don't know why. The figure is covered in a network of blue sashes and belts. He has an abundance of accessories, which are strange, but they also have kind of a logic to them. In its strangeness, the figure kind of makes sense. Even though the whole thing seems like it's from another planet, it does have kind of an alien logic to it. I understand how the grenade thrower is supposed to work. I understand how the backpack is supposed to work. I understand how everything's connected with cables. I get it. I don't entirely believe it, but I get it. I have a couple problems with the accessories. First of all, the grenades are too small, very easy to lose, and the hose connector between the helmet and the backpack does not fit well at all. I'll admit, this one throws me for a loop. It's too weird for me to love it, but it's just weird enough for me to be intrigued by it. I can't imagine adding this guy to my Cobra roster, but I can understand why other kids would. I'm kind of an old foggy. I want my Cobra's wearing blue and carrying traditional firearms. That was my review of the Frag Viper, I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope Jaren accepts this as the beginning of my making up for the lost tank. Thank you for opening my eyes to the Frag Viper, Jaren. I enjoyed looking at this figure. Next week is my first scheduled week off this year, so no new review next week, but I may try to come up with something just so you don't forget about me. After that, we're going to do another Patron's Choice review. Thank you, MestaChinique, for the thumbnail review. It was awesome. And thank you for watching, and thank you to everyone who has helped make the channel what it is. This channel belongs to all of us, but I'll still be making the videos. That's my part. I'll see you in two weeks, and until then, remember only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe. Who's a bad dog? Who's a naughty dog? Who ate the tank, Mila? Who's a bad dog?