2016 Desert Viper - Red Laser Army

In 1997, Hasbro produced their first Repaint Era (1997 - 2010) Viper update.  The figure was the harbinger of many Vipers to come.  Between 1997 and 2006, Hasbro released no less than 12 repaints of the highly popular mold.  In those releases, Hasbro managed to make a green Viper that (kind of) worked for forest and jungle environments.  Beyond that, though, the rest of the figures were almost entirely amalgamations of typical Cobra colors.  Lost in the sea of banality that were the two toned Hasbro repaints was the fact that the Vipers were never offered in any environmentally themed color schemes.  The 2006 Viper Pit was the perfect (and last!) chance for Hasbro to finally get Vipers into standard colors that could support Cobra's more specialized troopers.  But, they failed to deliver.  About a decade later, though, some new Vipers finally appeared.  Made by Red Laser Army, these figures filled some nice gaps in the Joe line but have also fallen into incredible obscurity.

Red Laser launched with some pretty standard color schemes.  Most of the Vipers were meant to mimic some classic Cobra paint schemes.  The figures were heavy on hues of grey, red, black and some blue.  Among the releases, though, was a straight up desert repaint of the Viper.  Clad in tan with a brown vest, this figure was a simplistic repaint that gave Cobra some effective desert fighters.  In the vintage Joe line, Cobra just the Desert Scorpion figures.  While a great figure, it's a highly specialized mold from a year that makes him a tough figure to acquire in multiples.  In 2009 or so, the first factory custom Cobra Troopers appeared.  Among the first flavors to appear were some desert Troopers.  These finally gave Cobra a force to battle against the multitude of desert colored Joe figures.

The addition of the Viper to the Cobra desert ranks offered not only another option for a desert enemy but a nice bridge between the early Cobra Trooper and the Desert Scorpion figure from 1991.  I've long felt that the backbone of Cobra's army (be in the Trooper or the Viper mold) would have environmentally themed uniforms so they could be effectively deployed in habitats around the world.  Desert Scorpions would still be the specialists who dominated the operations in that theatre.  But, they would be supported by standard Vipers wearing appropriate colors.  Not everyone shares this view, of course.  So, your mileage on the themed Vipers may vary.  But, if you're going to get a dozen color schemes on a mold, at least a couple should cover some of the major environments in which armies tend to operate.  

In 2022 or so, the Black Major introduced a new factory custom Viper mold.  Quickly, this was repainted into dozens of color schemes.  Some were standard Cobra colors.  Some were amazingly different.  And, some are just oddball.  But, now, there are finally Vipers for all seasons.  The Black Major figures, though, do not feature the removable helmet.  Among his repaints are some desert themed figures.  They are different from this Red Laser Army figure.  But, they scratch the itch that any new collector may have for desert themed army builders.  And, as of 2025, they are more readily available and easier to find.

The quality on  this figure is high.  The plastic is good.  The joints are tight.  And, the paint masks are as crisp as any vintage Hasbro figure.  The thumbs, though, are somewhat rigid.  And, the large handles of the Viper rifle make posing the figure with the weapon in his hands a tricky proposition.  I felt that the thumbs would snap when I slipped the stock behind the figure's forearm.  But, 8 years later, they are still intact.  The helmets are also an incredibly tight fit to the figure's head.  So much so that I can barely remove some of them that I've put on.  But, the tightness allows the helmeted figure to appear to be a vintage style Viper head.  It's very difficult to tell that the helmet is removable until you look closely.

The other thing that Red Laser Army brought back to the Viper was the 1986 style paint masks.  Starting in 2002, the retail repaints of the Viper mold skimped on paint masks.  And, that lack of detailing greatly hindered some figures that could have been really nice figures.  The most noticeable impact of the paint masks, though, is that they make this figure appear more in line with vintage Joes.  One of the features of various Joe eras is that they have unique looks in terms of the paint used and the manner in which masks are applied.  This desert Viper is able to bridge some of these eras because the classic paint application hearkens back to the vintage timeline.

One unique aspect of the first wave of Red Laser Army Vipers is that racial variants exist.  They are not just heads, since the figures have bare arms.  So, even helmeted, you can have diversity in your Viper ranks.  You will see two versions in the photos below.  This is another homage to Hasbro's diversity attempts of the early 2000's in the army building sets of that time.  Sadly, the skin tone variants were phased out for later RLA Viper repaints.  But, this desert figure (and some of his contemporary Viper paint jobs) has at least two skin/hair color variants.

These Vipers included three accessories.  The unique release is the removable helmet.  Hasbro never made this accessory.  So, it is all new and only available on the Red Laser Army releases.  The figure then includes a black facsimile of the classic 1986 Viper backpack.  The hallmark, of course, is the return of the 1986 Viper rifle.  This was missing from every Hasbro release after the 1989 Python Patrol Viper included a black version.  The RLA rifle is grey.  But, it's a darker grey than the vintage Hasbro releases.  It's also made of a more rigid plastic that has a distinct feel and sound when it's handled.  All of the RLA vipers included the same rifle. It's return, though, helped spark interest in these figures as the missing original gun was one of collector's biggest gripes about the 2000's era Hasbro Viper releases.

There are quite a few paint jobs of the Red Laser Army Viper figures.  Aside from the army builders that started it all, there were some private runs of figures that are fairly hard to find as well as the mold's inclusion in the "full" set of RLA figures.  There's more than a dozen repaints of the RLA figures that are available.  Some are very similar to others.  And, some of the obscure paint references didn't translate all that well to the Viper sculpt.  But, there are also some gems.  I find the desert to be my personal favorite.  But, as I was living in the desert at the time, the usefulness of the figure to me was likely greater than it was for most other collectors.  

Pricing on these figures is tough.  All the early Red Laser Army Viper repaints sit unsold in the $40 range.  So, their value is well below that.  If you can find some left to the open market, they're about $20 figures.  Which, frankly, seems low for such high quality releases that had so little permeation into the collector community.  But, the dark ages of factory customs that occurred between 2012 and 2017 is filled with some obscure, but high quality figure releases that are all but forgotten by the collecting world.  Many, though, are definitely worth tracking down.  You just have to spend a little bit of time trying to find them.