 ACC, what's happening? Painted plastic. Are you ready for our video? Yeah, I guess so, but what's with the winter clothes? Why do we have to wear this stuff? I'm reviewing a snow vehicle. We're doing winter in the summer. Yeah, I mean, I get that, but I'm about to have a heat stroke. It fits with the theme. Trust me, it'll be great. Okay, but you want me to talk about my custom vehicle, right? It's not a winter vehicle. It isn't? No, the shock and awe isn't a winter vehicle. How about you review the ice snake and wear all winter time clothes, and I'll review the shock and awe and wear summer time clothes. Alright, so long as it fits with the theme of the vehicle, that means you have to wear comfortable summer clothes for the whole video. No problem. And you have to wear all winter clothes for your video. Right. Oh, wait. Hello, everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. This is the show where we review every vintage GI Joe toy from 1982 to 1994. This week, we have a guest. Painted Plastic is a YouTube channel creating custom GI Joe vehicles and figures. Brandon made a custom vehicle for me. He turned the Desert Fox into the Arctic Fox. It's a beautiful work of art. If he can turn a desert vehicle into a snow vehicle, I can't wait to see what he can turn a snow vehicle into. Hey everybody, Brandon here from Painted Plastic. If you're not familiar with my channel, I build paint and customize plastic models. But from time to time, I also build custom GI Joe vehicles. Just like the one we're going to look at today. Painted Plastic will be back later in this video to show off the custom vehicle he made from the Cobra Ice Snake. Before we get started, I need to give a code name to a patron. Matt Rubin added his support on Patreon. And at his level, he gets a special code name in a video. Let's see. Rubin makes me think of a sandwich, which makes me think of the Earl of sandwich. But in GI Joe, we don't have Earls. We have Dukes. Matt Rubin, your code name is the Duke of Sandwich. Thank you for your support and for your delicious sandwiches. This week we are reviewing the Ice Snake. It's a Cobra snow vehicle from the 90s. I thought it would be a good vehicle to take everyone's mind off the summer heat. As I read more about the Ice Snake, I was surprised to learn it shares a lot of parts with another vehicle. The 1990s was an era of cost cutting and corner cutting. Despite that, there are some surprisingly good vehicles from that era. Is the Ice Snake one of them? Let's find out. HCC788 presents the Ice Snake, and painted plastic presents the Shock and Awe. This is the 1993 Cobra Ice Snake. This vehicle was introduced in 1993, and was available in 1993 only. It was discontinued for 1994. In the 80s, GI Joe figures and vehicles were typically available for two years. In the 90s, they were turned over more quickly. Most were only on the shelves for one year. This vehicle did not include an action figure. This vehicle is called the Ice Snake. Ice and snakes do not go together. Snakes are cold-blooded, and the winter they go into a state called brumination. They remain dormant in the colder months until warmer weather returns. I know it's supposed to sound like a fierce codename, but if you put a snake in the ice, you have a snake in its most vulnerable state. The Ice Snake seems like a cut-down version of the 1991 Cobra Ice Sabre. The Ice Sabre was a larger snow vehicle with front skis and a top cannon that would fire four missiles. It looks like they cut the Ice Sabre in half, gave it half the features, and called it a new vehicle. However, the colors on the Ice Snake are undeniably better. GI Joe has always had more snow vehicles than Cobra. GI Joe's first snow vehicle was the 1983 Polar Battle Bear. Cobra didn't get a dedicated snow vehicle until the 1987 Wolf. GI Joe didn't get a new snow vehicle in 1993. In 1994, they got the Blockbuster. That was their last snow vehicle in the vintage era. The Ice Snake surprised me. There was something I didn't know about the vehicle until I started preparing for this review. Many of the parts on the Ice Snake are shared with the 1993 GI Joe Mud Buster. The roll cage, the missile launcher, the missiles and the grapple, and the wheels are all the same on both vehicles. They're even the same color. They also shared the same mold for the rear axle piece, but those are not the same color. At least they changed the color for that part. These wheels aren't even unique to these vehicles. They were originally used on the 1990 GI Joe Hammer. I'm tempted to criticize the Ice Snake for borrowing parts from the Mud Buster or vice versa. It seems like typical 1990s cost cutting, but that kind of thing was not unheard of in the 80s. In fact, sometimes in the 80s, there was even greater cost cutting. For instance, the way the vamp mold was used many times throughout the 1980s. Sometimes they would change the color or put a few new parts on, but it was the same vehicle. They sold you the same vehicle over and over. Who should drive the Ice Snake since it did not come with the figure? Well, the drivers on the box art look like alley vipers, I think. That doesn't make any sense. For me, the figure that first comes to mind is the 1991 Snow Serpent Version 2. But that figure was no longer available in 1993, and the colors don't go very well with the vehicle. However, there was a Snow Serpent in 1993. Snow Serpent Version 3 from the Arctic Commandos Mail Away set. Version 3 of the Snow Serpent used the same mold as Version 2, but with updated colors. And I think these colors go much better with the Ice Snake. Let's look at the box for the Ice Snake. My Ice Snake came in a Canadian box. This box is bilingual. It has both English and French text. The toys that were released in Canada were basically the same as the toys that were released in the US. But on GI Joe vehicles, American flags were replaced with Canadian flags. And stickers that said United States were replaced with stickers that said Canada. And the boxes were bilingual. For example, this Canadian-released 1982 Ram motorcycle had a Canadian flag sticker, where US-released vehicles had an American flag sticker. Cobra vehicles, however, did not have national flags, so the only difference between a US release and a Canadian release was the box. Looking at the front of the box, we have a decent image here of the Ice Snake. The artwork is not bad. It has the laser-lined background in red, denoting an enemy vehicle. This is in Battlecore, which in 1993 was the primary line for GI Joe. This vehicle was worth three flag points. These were proofs of purchase that you could use to send away for mail-away offers. This is a Canadian-style flag point in the US that would be an American flag. It has the same artwork on the bottom and side and top of the box. On the back of the box, there is a photograph of the vehicle. This is probably a prototype, but it's pretty close to the production toy. I don't see very many obvious differences. The biggest difference I see is on this roll cage, on those spikes, there is more detail than is seen on the production vehicle. Those are simplified. There's also a difference in the molding at the point where the roll cage connects to the body of the vehicle. So yes, this is a photo of a prototype, not the final production product. I did an unboxing and assembly video for this Ice Snake, so if you want to see how this vehicle is put together, check out that video. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Ice Snake, and let's first look at the overall color. It is primarily white and blue. That's fine for a snow vehicle. It's a bit plain, but there are only so many colors you can use for snow camouflage. The 1987 Cobra Wolf changed things up a bit by using a very light gray rather than straight white, and I think that worked out well. It does bring out the details a bit. I'm just glad the Ice Snake doesn't have the orange pieces of the Ice Saber. If you want to see a snow vehicle done right, take a look at the Arctic Fox, the custom vehicle made by painted plastic. Now that is winter camouflage. The Ice Snake can't hold a candle to it. In the front we have a pair of skis. They are dark blue. This means this is exclusively a snow vehicle. It's unsuited for any other environment, and that's okay. There are plenty of other vehicles like that too. Just be aware this thing will only operate in the snow because it has skis in the front. There is decent detail on those skis, but of course they are all the same color, that dark blue. Between the skis we have a pair of blue missiles, and they slot in right under the vehicle. Technically this is supposed to be storage for these missiles, but the box art shows missiles firing from this position, and that's fine. I guess you can use it that way too. These missiles are different. It gives you two different types of missiles for some reason, but they will also fit in the mounted spring-loaded missile launcher, which we will look at later. These are the missiles for the Ice Snake, and these are the missiles for the Mud Buster. As far as I can tell, they are identical, right down to the color. They are interchangeable. The body of the vehicle is molded in white. It has some armor detail, which I think looks pretty good. It has a molded-in Cobra emblem on the front hood, and I think this is nice. It's nice to see the extra effort of a molded-in Cobra emblem rather than just a sticker. Speaking of stickers, all the stickers have this shiny reflective backing, which is not good for camouflage, but I do think it looks kind of cool. It's just a nice bonus, and I do like shiny objects. Just in front of the cab, there's a reflective sticker that has the words Ice Snake in red letters, and the letters have little icicles hanging down from them. This looks like the font that was used on the slushy machines at 7-Eleven. On both sides of the vehicle, there are these stickers with designs that look like frozen Cobra emblem inside an orange snowflake. I hope they weren't trying to make this the official Cobra Winter Operations emblem, because that kind of looks ridiculous. Let's get to this roll cage, because the roll cage has sort of an action feature gimmick. Running inside the vehicle and underneath is this rubber band, and that adds tension to this roll cage, so if you pop the roll cage out a bit, it will spring forward. It's supposed to work along with these spikes to be kind of a trap for any enemy troops standing in front of the vehicle. Kind of like this. I'll get you, Spider-Man! Baaah! I guess that's one way to do it, but if the enemy troop is standing directly in front of the vehicle like that, I don't know why you wouldn't just run them over. The roll cage itself is in dark blue plastic. It has a grate at the top. It's hinged at two points in the front, and it connects at two points in the back, and it does have those spikes. It's nicely detailed, but there is no insulation for the driver and the passenger, so it's going to get very cold in this winter vehicle. Looking at the cockpit, there are two seats, and they are nicely detailed. There's even a bit of texture on the floorboard. There is a control yoke on the left side. That's the American side. And there's a gear shift and some molded-in instruments on the center console. This is a nice cockpit. This is a lot more detailed than we've come to expect in 90s vehicles. To put a figure in the vehicle, just bend his legs at the waist and slide him into that driver's seat. He should sit pretty well down in there, and you can kind of put his hands on the control sticks. They kind of fit, but it would not be a good idea to force them. And since it's a two-seater, he can have his 1991 counterpart, a riding shotgun, and the canopy will close very easily, and there's plenty of room for both of them in there. In the back, there are two wheels. They roll independently. They are not quite black. I would call these a dark gray. As we saw, these same wheels were used on the 1990 Hammer and the 1993 Mudbuster. They're pretty simple wheels. There are no hubcap coverings that will cover up the clip at the center, and that's a bit distracting. That's definitely not my favorite thing. I would prefer that those clips be covered up. The underside of the vehicle is not totally hollow, but it also doesn't have a lot of detail. You can see the rubber band that operates the roll cage, and there's a little bit of detail on the back axle piece. It's difficult to see in there, but there is some engine detail. It's kind of hidden behind other pieces, and it's the same color as the body, so it's easy to miss, but it is a nice bit of detail. Next, we have the missile launcher. It's mounted on a post at the center rear of the vehicle. It will rotate 360 degrees, and it will elevate and lower. Not the best elevation on that. It has a couple grips on the back of the missile launcher, so you can place a figure on the back of the vehicle and pretend he is manning that missile launcher. The details on the missile launcher are pretty good. It has what looks like a side-mounted gun, or maybe that's a scope of some kind. The button to fire the missile is here on the top. There is a hose detail near the barrel. This is a good-looking missile launcher. It looks so good they used it twice. The exact same missile launcher is on the mud buster. I have in the missile launcher the grapple. The grapple has some wings on it with some holes in it, and tied to the grapple and the missile launcher is a length of black twine. The twine is included with the vehicle. I have it wrapped around the grapple because that thing can get in the way. I'm going to unwind it now, though, so we can demonstrate how to use the spring-loaded missile launcher with the grapple hook. To fire the grapple, you just press this button on top of the missile launcher, and because it is tethered, it won't get away from you, so let's fire. This is an OK feature. I guess it's impossible to lose this thing as long as the string is tied to it, but there's no way to reel it in. It would be nice if there was a winch where you could pull this thing back in and wind up this line, but it just doesn't have that, and this black line does tend to get in the way. There's more. The Ice Snake came with two blue missiles that also work with the missile launcher. The missiles work exactly the same as the grapple. You just press it in until it clicks, and then it's ready to fire. Now that we've got some missiles in our missile launcher, let's take out our favorite target, Dr. Meinbender, and see if we can knock him down. Fire! That was a great shot, but we still have one missile left, so I'm afraid, Dr. Meinbender, you're just gonna have to stand up and take another shot. No, no, please, I've taken enough punishment. You shot me so many times. No. Dr. Meinbender, that doesn't sound like your voice at all. I think you're an imposter. Imposter, Dr. Meinbender. No, I'm not an imposter. Dr. Meinbender, I'm the real Dr. Meinbender. Don't shoot, don't shoot. I'm with Cobra. It's too late. You're a Joe's spy, Dr. Meinbender. I don't know about you, but for me, that was very satisfying. We finish our look at the parts and the features of the Ice Snake by looking at the rear of the vehicle. There are a couple platforms with foot pegs, so you can peg a couple extra figures on there. And there is a tow hitch, which is surprising for such a late vehicle. What can you tow with the Ice Snake? What I like to tow is the 1982 Cobra Asp because it has a similar blue color to what's on the Ice Snake, but it doesn't quite work. With these stabilizer feet up, it doesn't quite have the clearance to connect to that tow hitch. Now, you can move these feet on the Asp the other direction, but then the Ice Snake sets just a little too low to effectively connect to that tow hitch. Now, I turned to painted plastic so he could show us his custom vehicle. All right, everybody. So here's my custom vehicle, the Chaconol. It was built on the Ice Snake chassis. And the way this came about, last year I did a custom vehicle for HCC called the Arctic Fox. It was a reimagine of the Desert Fox, and I wanted to have skis right on the front to make it a winter vehicle. So I picked up the Ice Snake because it had nice big skis that would work well with the Desert Fox. So the rest of it basically just set in a box for, I don't know, six months, I can't remember, but it just set in a box forever. And one day I was looking at it, and this was a vehicle. By 1994, I was out of GI Joe, so I wasn't familiar with this vehicle. I sort of vaguely remember seeing it in stores, but I never had one, and didn't know anybody that had one, anything like that. So when I got it to do the custom, I didn't have really any memory of it, but I thought it was a cool little vehicle. I liked the shape of it, the way it swoops back like this. And I wanted to do something with it. So like I said, this was sitting in a box for six months or something. And finally, I was looking at it one day, and the roll cage really kind of grabbed me. And I said, man, it's very dune buggy with the roll cage and the swooping body lines. It felt like a dune buggy to me. So sort of drawing on that with the awe striker, the GI Joe awe striker, it's a dune buggy kind of thing. I said, I'm going to turn this into a Cobra sort of awe striker. And that's where the name shock and awe came from. It's kind of a nod to the awe striker. But yeah, so I decided I wanted to do that. Like I mentioned before, I had taken the front skis off. So I had the rear wheels. I didn't have anything up front. And so basically all I did was I fabricated. I don't know if you can even see this, but I fabricated a sort of front axle and used wheels off of the Desert Fox from the custom that I did first. Because when I put the front skis on, I had extra wheels. So I grabbed those and they became the front wheels on the shock and awe. I also from the Desert Fox used the missiles and I used the gun, right? That's the Desert Fox gun. The way I did that was I just took some regular old, and I've got a little paint chipping off, but took some regular old just polystyrene sheet and made a little stand for the missile, right? And that slots right on, just like a dumbbell slot. Took the orange missiles, painted them red. And same here, I just basically stuck the gun on where it had the big rocket launcher thing and I just stuck the gun on from the Desert Fox. So yeah, that's kind of how it came to be. And then I decided I wanted to do headlights, because all the dune buggies have big eyeball headlights, right? And those are just some little extra bits and it was in a Star Wars kit if I remember right and just grabbed them out, put them together and yeah, it kind of turned into a headlight. So yeah, but that's basically the, and then the paint job. You know, for the paint job, one of my all-time favorite Cobra vehicles is the Night Raven. It's a beautiful plane. The color scheme is perfect. So I really wanted to lean on that theme, the Night Raven sort of styling. So that's the black, and the underbelly is this gray color so I used that for the accent colors. And then of course red because what goes better with black than red? So yeah, that's sort of how that came to be. Ordered some stickers from Toy Hacks. That's a repro sticker company and yeah, and I believe these were, if I remember right, they were for the HIST tank for the, jeez, what year was it? I can't remember. It was for one of the later HIST tanks. And the reason I picked those they were the right size. They had a nice Cobra emblem. They had some headlights, little danger markings, right, that kind of thing. But yep, that's how it came to be. It's basically the leftover parts from another custom. It was the leftover ice snake and leftover bits from the Desert Fox. So I sort of put them all together and made a new vehicle, the Cobra shock and all. Also made a custom driver for the shock and all. This is Sidewinder. And he's pretty straightforward. The body is Stalker version 4? I want to say Stalker version 4. It's the one at HCC just reviewed last week. If you saw his review last week, same body, right, Stalker body. The arms are Dr. Meinbender. You can see the little, maybe you can see, the little emblems there. Right, that's Dr. Meinbender arm. I just painted everything black. And a monkey wrench head. And same thing, I just painted the hair black. I painted the sunglasses silver. Monkey wrench head. If it'll focus. So yeah, custom driver for the shock and all. And I did them in the same kind of colors, of course, because, you know, like I said, there's the red and black and gray. You just can't beat it. At least for my money, you can't beat it. So yeah, custom driver, custom file card, shock and all driver. You can read that if you like. You don't have to, but yeah. So that's my, that's my custom vehicle. And like I said, it was a lot of fun to do. Plus the, the Ice Snake just has such a cool shape. Right, such a cool swooping body line and the grill and the cage. And yeah, just a really neat vehicle. So it sort of lent itself for, for the style, dune, dune buggy. So yeah, back to you HCC. Thank you for being on the show. Everyone, please remember to check out Painted Plastics YouTube channel. Looking at how the Ice Snake was used in G.I. Joe Media, it wasn't used very much. It appeared very briefly in a live action TV commercial and it had no animated appearances. As for the comic book published by Marvel Comics, I went through all of the issues from this time period and I did not see the Ice Snake. If it was used in the comic book at all, I missed it. Looking at the Ice Snake overall, this vehicle is not bad. It's not great. It's just not bad. It looks like a cut down version of the Ice Saber. He even has a similar name. The Ice Saber was a much more substantial vehicle. It has a fair number of features for a vehicle its size. It has two seats, whereas other vehicles of similar size had only one seat. The flip open canopy is not the best bonus feature. The grapple hook and the line is a fun idea, but that line tends to get in the way. It would really benefit from having some kind of mechanism to reel that line back in. It's just a bit underwhelming, but it does serve a purpose. It could be used as a scout vehicle and it could complement the 1987 Cobra Wolf. The colors are appropriate for a snow vehicle. The colors are better than the Ice Saber because it doesn't have that obnoxious orange. How would I rate this vehicle? One shrug. The shock and awe, on the other hand, is gorgeous. Since it isn't a snow vehicle, it has wheels instead of skis and that automatically makes it more versatile. The black and red fit with classic Cobra vehicles like the Fang Helicopter and the His Tank. It doesn't have the nuisance of the spring-loaded missile launcher with the grapple line. The shock and awe starts with a so-so vehicle and becomes something special. It's an amazing custom and if you'd like to see more like it, make sure you check out Painted Plastics YouTube channel. That was my review of the Ice Snake. I hope you enjoyed it and thank you again to Painted Plastic for helping out with this video. Thanks also to the Duke of Sandwich. Now I'm hungry. I will be taking next week off. There won't be a new review video next Sunday but I am working on some other stuff so you will get some new videos very soon. Now if you'll excuse me, I've been wearing a heavy winter coat in the summer heat all day and I need to pass out from heat exhaustion. Thank you for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, I'm making more like it so please give this video a thumbs up on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, hit the notification bell so you don't miss any future videos and share this video with your friends. 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. If you want to know if I've already reviewed a vintage GI Joe item, that's a good place to check. Special thanks to all my supporters on Patreon, including the names you see on the screen now. Support on Patreon helps keep this show going. So if you like this show and you'd like to support this show in that way, please consider checking out Patreon. You can get some special rewards, including early access to reviews and you can find out how to decode the secret messages you see in these videos. Thank you for joining me on this adventure of collecting vintage GI Joe toys. I'll see you next time and until then remember, only GI Joe is GI Joe. That's it, I'm not doing another take. It really is hot in all this. Now we're doing this again. Now we're doing this again. Alright, stop.