Techno Viper (30th Anniversary)

by KansasBrawler

The Techno-Viper has a pretty thankless job. He’s supposed to fortify and maintain Cobra positions. It’s really important to do, but while Cobra has devoted two different types of troopers to do almost every job, it’s been up to the lone Techno-Viper corps to keep the Terrordromes running and maintain the Cobra vehicles. I never had a Techno-Viper growing up, but I always thought the figure always looked pretty cool, mostly because of his tools. The 30th Anniversary finally gave the Techno-Viper a chance to shine and while there are a couple missteps here and there, he’s still a really successful update of a classic Cobra specialist.

The Techno-Viper gets a lot of new parts since the look is unique so everything but his torso and upper legs are brand new and he really looks sharp. (Full disclosure: YoJoe says that the lower arms are shared with the PoC Jungle Viper but I’m counting them as new pieces because they had to create a brand new piece to replace the attachment points for the Jungle Viper’s camo.) The head sculpt is a nicely done homage to the original look. They took the ideas that were on the card art and really stepped it up and made it come alive. There was a pretty good amount of detailing on the original 1987 Techno-Viper’s face, but the design team really turned the dial up to eleven on this one. The facemask is nice and angular and looks almost exactly like the original card art. The 1987 Techno-Viper bore a really good resemblance to the art for the time, but due to limitations of the time, the details were just a little soft. Here, the head really looks like it stepped off the page. The arms have the funky padding and tubing that the 1987 Techno-Viper did, but since this is a modern-era figure, they also have a little more bulk to them, which is really nice. This looks a lot more like a padded coverall than a military uniform and it looks really sharp like that. His legs also have the unique boots that the first Techno-Viper had. They look really cool and tech-y and I appreciate that Hasbro went to the trouble to make new ones considering the Viper boots probably would have approximated the original boots closely enough. Unfortunately, I do have to criticize Hasbro a bit for his torso piece. While I understand that it was cheaper to make the Techno-Viper’s fancy chest with a vest as opposed to a new torso piece, it’s really way too bulky. His torso articulation is almost non-existent and it doesn’t even clasp together properly anyway. They really dropped the ball on this, in my opinion. The look is relatively faithful to the original, though he does lose the tube that attaches to his upper chest, but the poor execution really hurts him overall. Also,where the original had a hose, there’s an odd small divot instead. The samples I saw at retail all had paint troubles there, however, when I was looking at YoJoe and GeneralsJoes to see how common the phenomenon was, YoJoe’s was almost clean and GeneralsJoes’ did have a bit of a defect, but it wasn’t nearly as visible as mine. The vest also obscures a really nice Cobra belt. They even went as far as giving the Cobra sigil a really sharp paint job, but you can’t see it because the thick vest rides over it.

I’m really torn on the paintjob for this version of the Techno-Viper. The paint detailing is great but I just find myself missing the slightly brighter color palate he had back in 1987. The muted purple is pretty nice, but its shade is pretty close to the purple used for the heavier padding. The 1987’s colors were a lot more distinct. Honestly, I’ve done a few double takes while reviewing this guy because at just a quick glance, his purple looks all the same. I would have liked to have seen the 1987 fuchsia and purple just from the standpoint that it’s far more distinctive. The detailing is spot on and the paint apps are sharp, especially around the eyes. The paint did a great job at bringing out the additional detail in his helmet and even gives him gold eyes, something the 1987 was clearly missing. Again, the Hasbro folks got really close on his paint job, but the execution was just a little off for my tastes. It’s still a very sharp looking figure, but again, there’s an element of what might have been in terms of getting a paint job
even closer to the original.

While I feel there were some slight missteps on the sculpting and painting, the Hasbro team really knocked it out of the park when it came to his accessories. Like a lot of figures from 1987, the Techno-Viper was really defined by his accessories. With three impressive tools, a backpack that held them all, a silver rifle and a hose to connect the tools or rifle to the backpack, the figure looks pretty naked without his gear. For the 30th Anniversary Techno-Viper the Hasbro team did a great job replicating this equipment. He gets his original three tools, a hammer, a wrench and a claw; plus his silver rifle and a small silver pistol for his belt holster. I’m still not sure whether I think the rifle is actually a weapon or some sort of advanced welding system, but either way it looks really cool. The hose plugs in to all three tools and the rifle quite well. What I really like, however, is the redesigned backpack. The 1987 Techno-Viper could wear it on his back, but for the 30th Anniversary Hasbro also molded a handle onto the top of
the backpack so he can carry it by hand. I really like how it looks that way and I think the hose runs better over to the rifle when he’s carrying it in his other hand than it does when it’s on his back. They really gave a lot of attention to his accessories and they came out great. I also love the one accessory that the Techno-Viper didn’t have back in the day, his neon-green road cone. I don’t know why Hasbro decided to make a caution cone, but I just can’t help but smile when I look at it. I wish Techno-Vipers had been more plentiful in my area. I would have gotten at least one more just so I could put a couple of cones together. I didn’t realize how fun they were and by the time I realized how great that accessory was, I couldn’t find the Techno-Viper on the pegs anymore. They’re actually designed to fit together with each other and that’s really cool. I imagine they’d also look pretty neat in a diorama setting, with a group of Techno-Vipers working on something in a Cobra facility and having set up the cones to restrict access.

This update of the Techno-Viper is really good. It’s just unfortunate that a couple minor errors in the decision-making process hurt his overall look a bit. While my criticisms do feel a bit like nitpicks even to me, I think there are enough nitpicks that it takes what had the potential of being an excellent figure down to only really good. A bit more contrast in the purples would have solved a lot of my concerns, but I don’t know how Hasbro could fix the problems with his vest. It does showcase the one inherent problem with the system Hasbro uses for their figures now. If the vest doesn’t work right, it really throws the whole figure off. While there wouldn’t be a lot of room for reuse of a standard Techno-Viper torso, I think it would have done the job better than the removable vest did. Even though the figure itself had a few problems, the accessories are amazing, and really help redeem some of the weaknesses he wound up having.