 Hello everybody, HoodedCobraCommander788 here, and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe action figure toy review. And the last few videos that I've done have all been vehicles, so I wanted to get back to doing the actual single action figures. And so today I'm going to do the 1982 Cobra Soldier. Now this was not known as the Cobra Soldier on the packaging and the file card, he was simply called Cobra the Enemy. But these were the Cobra Soldiers, this was the rank and file of the Cobra organization. And I really liked this figure because for one thing I think he looks really nice in the blue, but these were really the guys that the GI Joe team faced up against. Of course Cobra Commander was in charge, but when it came to doing battle, it was these guys who actually faced GI Joe, and these were the guys that GI Joe had to defeat on a daily basis, so these were I think the real backbone behind Cobra. The Cobra Soldier, also sometimes known as the Cobra Trooper, came with one accessory, a black Draganov Sniper Rifle. Now this version that I have is actually a dark gray, so this may not be an original rifle, I'll have to check on that. And as you can see I have it sticky tacked into his hand because this copy of the Cobra Soldier has a little bit of a stress mark on the inside of his palm and I don't want to stress the plastic anymore by taking the gun in and out. So for the purpose of this review, his weapon is going to just stay in his hand. It may be kind of difficult to see because the contrast is not great, but the Cobra Soldier had a red Cobra symbol on his chest. This 1982 version had the typical 1982 action figure articulation. He could turn his head from side to side, his shoulder would turn all the way around, he could move his arm at the elbow up and down, he was held together with a rubber O-ring that would allow his torso to move a little bit, his legs at the hip could move about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee. Now all of the 1982 versions of G.I. Joe action figures were re-released in 1983 with swivel arm battle grip, which added a point of articulation here at the bicep that would allow the arms to swivel. Now I do not have an example of the 1983 swivel arm Cobra Soldier, but I do have this. This would have been identical to the 1983 Cobra Soldier, but as you can see there is no symbol on his chest. This is probably a Viper glider pilot. The reason I say that is that the Viper glider pilot was identical to the Cobra Soldier except that he had a silver Cobra symbol on his chest and the silver paint actually wore off much easier than the red paint. So often you run across these with no symbol at all on his chest and that's the only way you'd really know that this was once a Viper pilot. But he does have the swivel arm battle grip, so I can demonstrate that to you. This articulation at the bicep that allows his arms to swing in and out like this, which allows him to hold his weapons with a two-handed grip. So that was a nice new feature that was released in 1983. Now we have to compare the Cobra Soldier to the Cobra Officer, which also was released in 1982. They are very similar and people sometimes have a hard time telling them apart. This is the 1982 swivel arm version of the Cobra Officer. As you can see he had a silver Cobra symbol, which on this is worn off somewhat but is partially still there and I'm actually happy to have one that has any of the silver symbol still there. A lot of times you'll run across these Cobra officers with the symbol completely worn off as the Viper pilot was. It may be difficult to see on camera, but the coloring of the blue is slightly different as well. The Cobra Officer is a darker blue and the Cobra Soldier really is just a slight shade lighter, but they are so similar that at a glance you might not be able to tell the difference between the two. Of course, other differences. The Cobra Officer had this more elaborate webbing and the Cobra Soldier had knee pads whereas the Cobra Officer did not. They both had knives sculpted onto their thigh, but the knives were different. The waist piece looks about the same, so they did share that in common, and although the head looks the same at first glance, the Cobra Officer has this kind of V-shape sculpted on, apparently to indicate that he is an officer. One thing that I have always been curious about is why some Cobras have the red symbol and others have the silver symbol. Now if it were just these two characters, you would say that the silver symbol indicates an officer whereas the red symbol indicates a non-commissioned officer or just a rank and file soldier. But the other Cobra character issued in 1982 was Cobra Commander. He was a male away offer in 1982, but in 1983 he was re-released, again with the swivel arm battle grip, like that, and as you can see he has the red Cobra symbol. And he is clearly an officer and is the commander of Cobra, so he outranks both of these guys. In addition, other Cobra Command officers like the Baroness here had the red Cobra symbol and she would easily outrank the Cobra soldier or the Cobra officer. And of course the Viper pilot had the silver symbol, which would suggest he is an officer and certainly he's more specialized than the Cobra soldier, but it's really not clear whether that actually means he's an officer or not. Let's take a look at the sculpt of the Cobra soldier. He has one of my favorite features, the knee pads, which are sculpted onto the shin here, which to me I just really like this feature. As a kid I always thought it was like a bonus feature to have knee pads, so I always liked the characters with knee pads. He has this webbing here that looks like it should be maybe straps for a backpack, but of course the figure did not come with a backpack. He's got a belt with some pockets. He's got this really strange looking loop thing, and I'm not sure exactly what that's supposed to be. On the updated version of course, in the swivel arm version it was moved from the side around to the front, and honestly I'm still not clear on what that's supposed to be. He had these two bullet-like things and this mystery gun that's attached to his strap, and it's not really clear what that is. I don't have the original card, the full card art for the Cobra soldier. On the file card you can see that it looks like basically a tube with a gun handle. Here's another view of it on the Fang helicopter art, and also it still looks like a tube with a gun handle. Now I'm not generally a fan of science fiction weapons with the G.I. Joe action figures, with a few exceptions, so I'm going to choose to believe that this is not a laser gun. What I think it is is a flare gun, and I think these projectiles may be intended to go with it, so that would make these flares. I guess it could be some kind of a grenade launcher, but I think it looks more like a flare gun. And so that's my hypothesis, it's a flare gun and these are the flares that go with it so he can fire off a signal. He had gloves that matched the color of his sleeve, and that's another difference between him and the Cobra officer who had black gloves. On the back his straps kind of went diagonally like that, that's an interesting choice. He had a couple of pockets on the back, and on his butt it has Hasbro's copyright information. It's got black boots with these interesting little notches here, I don't know what those are but it's a nice detail, I like it. Of course we can't forget the mask, which was typical of the Cobra soldiers and a lot of other Cobras also had this kind of over the nose mask, and he really was intended to be the nameless, faceless enemy. Let's take a look at the file card. On the file card it simply says Cobra, codenamed the enemy, that's not really a codename but whatever. Now these file cards came on the card that the figure was on when you purchased it in the store. It was on the back of the card and you were encouraged to cut it out, you can see some of the original artwork from the front of the card here, and it had some nice artwork here, and some information about the character. His primary, well his file name is unknown, of course, this is not an individual, this is one of many, and you were expected to army build these, meaning buy multiples and pretend that they are different people. Since you were expected to army build, there really maybe isn't enough of these Cobra soldiers to go around for everyone who wants to increase the size of their Cobra army. For that reason there have been some replicas made of the Cobra soldier, and perhaps in another video I will do a comparison between a replica Cobra soldier and the original. His primary military specialty is infantry, secondary military specialty is sabotage, his birthplace, various countries of course, Cobra recruits worldwide, his grade is E4 or equivalent, I don't think that's really relevant in the Cobra organization, they would have their own sort of pay grade and ranking separate from the US armed forces. In this section it says one of the nameless faceless legions of Cobra command, and I kind of disagree with that, I think that the term Cobra command should be reserved for the commanding officers like Cobra commander and the Baroness here. It says each Cobra is highly skilled in the use of explosives, all NATO and Warsaw packed small arms, sabotage and the martial arts, qualified expert Scorpion VZ-OR-61 machine pistol, Draganov SVD sniper rifle, UZI submachine gun and M16, and of course this Draganov sniper rifle is what he came with here, and there are some really good theories about why this really is a good weapon for this particular character to have. Down here in this quote it says, Cobra's swear absolute loyalty to their fanatical leader Cobra commander, their goal to conquer the world for their own evil purpose. So of course they are bad guys, they're actually kind of generic bad guys. I really liked the Cobra soldier and I liked Cobra in general as an enemy for G.I. Joe. Since it was an army going up against G.I. Joe which is a more specialized team, it really was a very formidable enemy for G.I. Joe, because they wouldn't go up against just one Cobra soldier, they would go up against an entire legion. Well that is my review of the 1982 straight arm Cobra soldier, I hope you enjoyed it and watch for more videos in the near future.