The next Impel Trading Cards post is on its way (I promise – just some more patience). I’ve been having some very busy weeks with birthday parties for my daughters, a family reunion, meetings with realtors for selling our house and work of course 🙂
I’ve bought a new tablet, complete with keyboard (about a month ago) that I planned on using specifically for European Joe’s, but unfortunately, the WordPress app doesn’t work on it. I can’t refresh the stats, posts or pages. I’ve contacted WP support, but so far no solution has been found. If any of you happen to know of a good Android app for writing and publishing WP posts on a self-hosted site, let me know. For now, I’ll have to use my old laptop (but it’s a 17″ HP Elitebook that weighs half a tonne or around that, so not very laptop-ish nor is it practical to take with you for writing on the go).
That’s it for now, see you soon when we take on the Impel Trading Card #36… and believe me, you’d want to take that 🙂
Spring may be in the air, but this week we focus on Cobra’s version of the Winter Soldier. The Impel Trading Card #35 is the Snow Serpent.
The Snow Vipers appear to be a branch of the Cobra Eels. I guess snow is frozen water, so you could argue this is a logical next step for some of the Eels that like to have their asses frozen off.
I personally don’t like the cold, maybe that’s why I don’t have a fondness or any recollection of seeing the Snow Serpents in action. I’m guessing they were introduced in the ARAH comics issue #2 since this takes place in the Arctic. They probably appear in the Special Missions #2, Word of Honor as well when the Joes disable the poison gas left in a glacier stranded WWII bomber in Greenland. But that’s just me guessing, I really need to do more research before writing these posts 🙂
The Action Figure has had 10 iterations released. The one on the Impel Trading Card is sporting the v1 style of 1985 (later reprised in the v7-10). I must say that this is a great look for a cold weather operative. Fur details, ski mask, snow shoes. Grey, white and blue colour scheme. It’s working for me. The 2nd version of the figure, however, was released in the colourful early 90’s and had a lot of yellow. Yellow snow jokes aside, the Joes also had a Tiger Force Blizzard figure that was even brighter yellow. The later figures went back to a more normal colouring and used lots of white, grey and blue again.
As with the comics, I don’t recall seeing the Snow Serpents in the cartoons anywhere. They are probably featured in some episodes, so if you know, let me know and then at least I’ll be halfway through the battle 🙂
Next time we stay close to home with a character we all love to hate with European roots. Stay tuned!
This week we have Captain Grid-Iron’s former classmate featuring the blog post. What better way to introduce this fan favourite (please ignore the sarcasm), than the following video (bad quality, I know, but hey, so is the character).
Ladies and Gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Impel Trading Card #34, Metal-Head.
What’s there to say about this character? I’m not a huge fan of him. Mainly because when I think of Metal-Head, the only memory that springs to mind, is that awful DIC cartoon. Although I have to say that he does remind me of someone else. Take a look at the guy and tell me you don’t see the resemblance with Commander William T. Riker of the Federation Starship Enterprise.
I mean, look at them! Even the uniform is practically a copy. Granted, Commander Riker is less of a nutcase. But still, I think Larry had been watching a little too much of TNG when he cooked up Metal-Head.
There have been 4 versions of the figure released, starting with the original one in 1990. The last one was released as part of the 2015 International G.I.Joe Convention, organised in Springfield, IL. The exclusive Tiger Force versus Destro´s Iron Grenadiers box set from the Official G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club also collected Sgt. Stalker, Dial-Tone, Big Brawler, Wreckage, Recondo, Edwin “Lifeline” Steen, General Mayhem, Undertow Officer, three Iron Anvils and three Undertow. Personally, I like Destro having his own little army. After all, he does have the need for some personal security and with the customers he supplies, I know I would feel safer having a personal army to defend myself in case they are not happy with a product or in case they want to try and steal some new prototype.
In the ARAH comic books, Metal-Head first appeared working for Cobra but spying for Destro. I don´t recall him being in a lot of stories, so not much more to tell. I´ll have to reread them again.
I won´t go into the cartoons here since I´d like to remove the memory of Metal-Head in the cartoons.
Next time, it´s time for some chill (sadly G.I.Joe is no longer on Netflix – at least not over here).
I guess I could start this post off with a bad joke like “How many Tele-Vipers does Cobra Commander need to make his troops retreat? “. Nowadays he’d use 140 characters, but I covered that in last week’s post ?
This time around, we will discuss the Impel Trading Card #33, the Cobra Tele-Viper (or Televiper?), Cobra´s force of Radio Communication Officers.
The Joe team have 2 Communication Specialists, Breaker and Dial-Tone. Cobra has like hundreds of Televipers to transmit messages on all frequencies. Of course, Cobra Commander has been known for hijacking the various TV channels all over the world and divulge on his current plan or ask for ransom demands. I guess he would need an army of technicians and hackers to get this done.
For what the toys are concerned, 9 iterations of the Televiper have been released. Of these 9, 2 were Python Patrol editions. The original 1985 version is still the coolest if you ask me. Just look at that Cobra belt buckle and tell me you´re not impressed. I dare you! I´m not much of an army builder, I´m more of a gotta catch them all collector, but I must admit that I don´t have a lot of Televipers in my collection.
I´m sure the Tele-Vipers are present in the cartoons, I just can´t remember them being there. They are not the most memorable foes, to be honest. They are what they are, technicians working behind the scenes and making sure that every single one of Cobra Commander´s rants gets onto the air for everyone to enjoy. I do remember seeing them in one of my favourite episodes. It´s an episode I have on VHS (in Dutch) and I believe the English title is In the Presence of my Enemy. Slip-Stream (my all time favourite pilot, who the F is Ace anyway?) crashes onto an abandoned Cobra research facility with a female Strato-Viper and they encounter several traps and they have to work together in order for them to escape. Anyway, in the beginning of the episode, the Tele-Vipers send out a message to one of Cobra´s satellites and Slip-Stream intercepts it.
All in all, not the most memorable Cobra out there, but they are important none the less. Without them, nobody would know about Cobra Commander´s mad schemes and plans to conquer the world. Not until Twitter was available that is 🙂
Next time, we go out with a BANG when we discuss a hockey analyst?! Who comes up with these? Oh, right, Larry Hama (who is a GOD!). Have you seen the Kickstarter campaign for the Larry Hama Action Figure? Too late to enter now, but I´ll post about it when I have the figure in hand 🙂 (Admit it, you´re jealous!)
Until next time. Happy Collecting and YoJoe!
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