1994 Viper - Made in Indonesia

So, did you know there are two variants of the 1994 Viper?  Visually, there's no tell between the two.  The only real difference is the Country of Origin (COO) stamp.  Some 1994 figures were made in China.  Others were made in Indonesia.  Many of the Indonesian figures included exclusive paint masks.  But, the Viper did not.  The two figures are identical.  Aside from oddball obsessive collectors like myself, no one cares about this subtle difference between the figures.  But, for me, it gives me an excuse to look back at a figure that was hugely influential in my early collecting days and continues to be among my favorite army builders.

In 1995 and 1996, I was searching out all remnants of the Joe line at retail.  Usually, though, my limited budget restricted me to buying just one of each figure.  At some point in the summer of one of those years, I went to a different Toys R Us in the Cincinnati suburbs.  (I believe it was the Springdale Mall.  But, that was a long time ago.  My usual store was the one in Colerain.)  There, I found a 1994 Viper, Flint and Shipwreck.  I already had all three figures.  But, I loved all three and wanted to army build the Viper and Shipwreck and use Flint's weapons to outfit them.  So, I bought all three.  I was not, though, able to bring myself to open the Flint.  To this day, I have the carded figure that I purchased at that Toys R Us so long ago.  The Viper and Shipwreck, though, joined my collection and the doubles allowed me to take a small dip into army building.

I outfitted the Viper with the 1990 Ambush rifle from Flint.  I thought it looked good.  (In 2006, Hasbro agreed when they released a grey version with the Viper Pit set.)  The second Viper got a different shade of the same weapon when I appropriated the bluish version from the 1993 Muskrat.  With these weapons, the Vipers filled the role of their 1986 original.  They were Cobra's basic ground troops who were used as both cannon fodder and expert field commandos.  I would have a 1993 Crimson Guard Commander lead them.  And, with these legions, Joe was overmatched.  The newer Cobras had better, more powerful weapons.  And, they wore far better body armor than even the newer Joes I had found at retail.  Cobra gained the upper hand and my Joe team of the mid 1990's was always behind them, trying to just survive long enough to regain the advantage.

The Viper includes a red accessory tree.  The red goes well with the blue.  But, isn't a great match for the orange on the figure.  But, to a collector who had stopped buying figures in 1988, almost all of the gear on the tree was new to me.  The one piece that wasn't, a red version of Monkeywrench's spear gun, was a disappointment.  I've never liked that weapon and I wouldn't even remove it from the tree.  The Viper has two red pistols.  One is from the 1991 Toxo Viper and the other from the 1992 Spirit.  They look good with the Viper.  And, today, they are my preferred weapons with the figure.  My favorite weapon of the time, though, was the red knife that originated with the 1988 Hydro Viper.  It looks wicked and many a Viper fatally stabbed a Joe or civilian with it, leaving them to die horribly with a wound that was not fixable.  His gear is rounded out by a red figure stand, two red missiles and the requisite yellow missile launcher.  In all, the gear isn't great.  But, it works well enough and I've come to associate it with the figure.

The 1994 Viper was released just the one time.  It is not known if he would have gotten a 1995 repaint.  Though, it's likely that, had the line continued, the mold would have found an additional use.  In the comic, the early renditions of the 1994 Viper wore green suits and gold helmets.  They looked a lot like Aero Vipers.  Again, I don't know if this was artistic license from a time when the comic had more leeway.  Or, if it was an early intended color scheme for the figure.  In 2005, the club "found" the mold and painted it in Iron Grenadier colors as the Iron Anvil.  The Anvils are excellently done and showcase the quality of the 1994 Viper mold.  But, being both Iron Grenadiers and a highly painted convention release, the Anvils also have limitations.  And, despite their high quality, I find myself preferring the 1994 original.  This might be nostalgia.  But, the simplicity also has its place.  Of course, the mold had tons of life left in it.  But, Hasbro left it fallow and it is now gone...leaving just two uses and one minor variant for modern collectors to enjoy.

The Viper also has two card variants.  The Viper card only has the standard horizontal Joe logo.  It features a full sized filecard on the back.  The filecard will either have no COO (Country of Origin) info and there is a "Made in China" message below the card.  Or, the filecard will say "Printed in Hong Kong.  Figure Made in Indonesia."  From the front, the cards are identical.  In 1994, Cobras got red cards while Joes got blue.  In my experience, neither version seems overly hard to find.  I've got about an equal number of each in my collection.  This isn't the case with all figures that have both COO's.  But, for the Viper, he seems to have seen equal production in both locales.

The 1994 Battle Corps figures were released in two series.  The first series of 7 figures included this Viper.  Along with him were additional all new figures of Shipwreck, Flint, Dialtone and Metal Head.  There were also two repainted 1993 figures: the Alley Viper and Beach Head.  Of the seven figures, Shipwreck, Flint, Dialtone and the Alley Viper have paint variants as well as COO variants.  While the other three just have the COO variants.  In my experience, the Alley Viper and Beach Head have always been the much harder figures to find from this series.  I have not been able to track down a case assortment to determine if they were shortpacked or if the new figures were just carried over into later cases.  But, Alley Vipers and Beach Heads have always been hard to find.  I found just one yellow vest Beach Head at retail and never found an Alley Viper.  Even today, I can get all the Vipers I want.  But, the Alley Viper and Beach Head remain a much scarcer find.

Not too long ago, you never saw off condition 1994 figures.  Any you would find would always be pretty much mint.  Slowly, though, this began to change.  The first figure to go bad was the 1994 Alley Viper.  His light blue parts simply didn't hold up and you started to see yellow discoloration destroy otherwise nice figures.  Other figures followed.  And, now, it's not uncommon to see 1994 figures that were well cared for, but now feature discoloration and even white elbows.  

The 1994 Viper has been hit hard by discoloration.  You'll often see darkly colored figures.  These aren't variants.  They are figures that have discolored.  The Viper should be a vibrant purplish-blue color.  If you see one that's dark and seems more purple, it's discolored.  Vipers are odd in that they tend to discolor evenly across the entire figure.  For that reason, you see people trying to pass discolored figures off as mint samples.  So, be wary.  And, as there are more and more collectors coming into the hobby who have never actually seen a mint version of many figures in terms of coloring, you'll even see other collectors commenting about how a discolored figure is "cherry" when it's actually been destroyed and is worthless.

The surge in Joe pricing has affected 1993 and 1994 army builders in three different ways.  In some cases they have gotten ridiculously expensive.  In other cases, they have slid under the radar and have remained relatively inexpensive.  In the case of the Viper, though, he's the third option who is right in the middle.  He has gotten a lot more expensive.  But, he's not a $40 figure, yet.  Dealers will ask in excess of $30 for a mint and complete with filecard figure.  Left to their own devices, there's enough stock to keep the price around $25 in the open market.  But, you can still get deals on individual or lots of 1994 Vipers that are missing most or all of their accessories.  Those are starting to dry up, though.  It's still not too late to build armies of this figure.  You can't say that about many of his contemporaries.  But, he's probably one of the next two or three figures to disappear and just be overly pricey in all his forms.  (At least, until the market corrects.)