1989 Frag Viper - Around The Web

Frag Vipers are odd ducks.  The bug eyed head and jumpsuit make for an interesting combo.  And, the figure's primary color is a rare brown.  His gear, though, is spectacular.  And, in a lot of ways, the figure works.  It's not perfect and you really only need a couple of them.  But this figure shows that even some of Hasbro's wackiest designs could work from time to time.  Here's the best of him from around the web.

Frag Viper Profile

Frag Viper at Nekoman's Viper Pit

Frag Viper by golden_cobra_79

Letal - Brazilian Frag Viper Repaint

Frag Viper by hawaiian_deployment

Brazilian Force Electronica Figures

Frag Viper by yihad77

Frag Viper by 83north

Rarities - Forca Electronica Figures - Brazilian Exclusives

Estrela produced around 150 unique figures for its Comandos Em Acao line.  Those range from completely new characters and figure combinations to straight up matches of American released figures.  The Forca Electronica subset of figures featured one brand new character in Letal, a repaint of a European exclusive Tiger Force Outback as Forasteiro as well as minor Brazilian repaints the HEAT Viper, Muskrat, Repeater and the Toxo Viper.

The Forca Electronica set featured 6 initial members:

Letal:

This neon green Frag Viper repaint is the most famous member of the set.  His striking appearance and general rarity have lead him to become very popular among collectors.  His golden weapons only add to the figure's mystique.  Letal is the most expensive, but also most often found member of the set.  His popularity makes him available, but his pricing remains consistently high.

Retaguarda:

This darker version of Repeater is one of the rarer members of the Forca Electronica series.  He was not publicly shown until the early 2000's.  Even today, the figure is very hard to find and you will pay a premium for him.  The darker colors are a cool take on the mold, though.  And, they bring something new to the Repeater character.

Forasteiro:

Really, this is the oddest figure of the bunch.  Forasteiro is slightly brighter version of the European exclusive Tiger Force Outback figure.  How this paint mask ended up in Brazil is a mystery.  But, it means that the most common appearance of the Outback mold is a paint application that was never released in the U.S.  We all know Outback's tend to be brittle.  The easier to snap Brazilian plastic exacerbates this and finding mint Forasteiro's is not easy.  Again, you pay a premium for an unbroken figure with no paint wear.

Estilhaco:

Estilhaco is a straight and slight repaint of the 1989 HEAT Viper figure.  The purple is a bit brighter.  He's the cheapest of the 6 figures in the set, mostly due to the fact that he was fairly common in the 1990's and he only has slight differences from a very common and rather unpopular American figure.

Explorador:

This slightly brighter green Muskrat exclusive is fairly elusive.  While he doesn't really offer anything you don't get in either the highly common American or Funskool versions of the figures, he's still different enough to drive you mad.  The fact that he's fairly rare props up the price, too.

Maligno:

This brighter purple Toxo Viper repaint is the bright end of the spectrum for this mold.  The American figure is a base purple color.  The Funskool version is a few shades darker than the American.  Maligno is a few shades brighter than the American.  He also features the golden weapons that increase his eye catching properties.  Again, Maligno isn't easy to find and high quality, complete versions fetch decent prices.

The Forca Electronica figures have gotten expensive.  While both Letal and Estilhaco were relatively easy to find in the late 1990's and early 2000's, the other figures were, basically, impossible to find and a few of them had never been seen until the early 2000's.  Today, all of the figures in the subset go for a premium.  They are extremely well done repaints and the rarity has lead collectors to appreciate them more than many, more interesting Brazilian subsets.

Estrela released a 2nd series of the Forca Electronica with 2 figures: General Ataque (a Scoop repaint) and Annihilator.  These two figures were released later, and on their own.  They are MUCH easier to find than the first series and are nowhere near as expensive.

Collectors long ignored the Brazilian figures that were similar to their American counterparts.  The last decade, though, has seen this trend reverse.  Subsets like Forca Electronica show that even the slight repaints can be interesting and have merit.  Unfortunately, so many have discovered this that the figure are not nearly as cheap as they used to be.

1989 Frag Viper

In 1989, I was out of buying Joe toys. As I had been out since the beginning of 1988, even my younger brothers' interest in the Joe line had pretty much ended. A figure or two showed up at various points that year, but it was more of a one off rather than any effort on their part to actually collect the line. In the summer of 1989, though, I went with my parents to visit some of their friends in Vermont. These people had children who were about one year younger than each of the three boys in my family. So, the ages matched up well. While there, though, I found that they were very much into the 1989 Joe figures. They had a large selection of new characters I had never before seen. I spent many of the bored hours I was there rummaging through their boxes and baskets of toys to find all the G.I. Joe figures and accessories I could. Not having cardbacks or catalogs as reference material, I managed to put the figures together as best I could. In the end, the figures that stick out to me were the Annihiltor and the HEAT Viper. Those two were found with most of their gear, so their impression upon me was much more memorable. However, they had two other Cobras that I recall: the Alley Viper and the subject of this profile: the 1989 Frag Viper.

The Frag Viper is odd. He's odd in that he's cast in a base brown color with light blue highlights. He's odd in that he includes a Jai Alai basket that is used to toss grenades. And, finally, he is odd because he has a bug inspired helmet that is such a bizarre design that it stands out even among Cobra as being extraordinarily creepy. But, all that does not add up to a bad figure. The general sculpting and proportions of the body are well done. The figure is muscular, but not so much as to be noticeable. But, the greater bulk helps to offset the large head and keeps the figure in a general scale that works quite well. His jumpsuit is well detailed and the brown coloring actually works with the light blue that is used as the primary accent color. In all, he's an oddball that's put together in a way that works as a toy.

But, as I never owned a Frag Viper as a child, seeing him as a toy was always difficult. In my early collecting years, I focused heavily on lots of figures from 1989 through 1991. Those were the years that were new to me so I spent a great deal of time tracking them down. Through these purchases, the first few Frag Vipers entered my collection. At the time, I thought they were a decent addition to my Cobra Urban Assault forces. While Annihilators flew into the center of a location and fought their way out, Alley Vipers surrounded the location on the ground and fought their way in. The Frag Vipers were teamed with HEAT Vipers and Range Vipers as the specialized units that were called in when something slowed down one of the teams. They carried heavier ordinance and would be used to pry open an artery that was blocked during the attack. This was great in theory. But, the practicality was that why would Alley Vipers (who had their own grenades) need to call in a grenade specialist? At least the HEAT Vipers made sense in case the Alleys ran into a tank. But, in very short order, the Frag Viper simply fell out of favor.

The figure's color certainly didn't help. I have long held brown to the sole domain of Major Bludd within the Cobra hierarchy. (Few Cobras in the vintage line used this color.) And, Bludd was always a loner. He had no need for troops. (Even the Convention Skull Squad Troopers, which are pretty good figures, simply don't really work for me with Bludd.) So, having a Cobra in brown didn't really match. Plus, the Annihilators and Alley Vipers were complementary orange and the HEAT Viper's yellow wasn't too far from that. The brown Frag Viper simply didn't fit with those figures that formed the core of my armies. The brown does look decent when posed on a classic HISS. But, that's a small use for a figure like this. Even the Frag Viper's overall quality wasn't enough to save him from obscurity and the figure has languished at the bottom of my collection ever since.

Upon closer inspection, though, this figure is very well done. The metal rivets on the helmet combined with the stitch like look of the jumpsuit fasteners give the figure a bit of a "Frankenstein's Monster" vibe. Had the figure been decked out with black accents in lieu of baby blue and had the stitching been white, this figure would have had quite a monstrous appearance. Little changes like this can go a long way towards making a good figure great. But, 1989 was when Hasbro was in the dead center of what I call the "Yeah, but" phase of the line. The first few years all had nearly perfect figures with a few less than stellar ones thrown in. By 1988 and 1989, though, that changed. Pretty much every figure was good with one "yeah, but" detail. For the Alley Viper, it was the bright orange. For Recoil, it was the baby blue weapons. For Downtown, it was the red highlights. Pretty much every figure had some little detail that was big enough to keep that figure from eclipsing the classics from the line's first few years. (In time, Hasbro moved out of the "Yeah, but" phase and into the "If only" phase where figures needed much more work than one small detail.) For the Frag Viper, the blue highlights are the "yeah, but" item. They aren't terrible and certainly don't destroy the figure. But, were they black, or silver or even olive drab, they would have made a world of difference and this figure might be more popular today.

The Frag Viper's accessories really help to make the figure special, though. 1989 was a great year for weapon and equipment complements and the Frag Viper is right up there with the best of the figures from that year. The cesta for throwing grenades is well detailed and unique, even if the practicality is suspect. The figure's small machine gun is perfect as a secondary weapon and is small enough that it can be used with the figure even when he is fully loaded down with his pack and launcher. The figure includes 2 hoses: one the standard black plastic hose of vintage Joes. But, the other is a unique, flexible, thick, detailed hose to connect the launcher to the backpack. It is a great way to enhance the figure. The real greatness of the accessory complement is the backpack, though. This pack is detailed with tons of small grenades (the filecard indicates the number is 50.) that feed into the cesta for manual launch. If that weren't enough, there are pegs on the top of the pack to hold either 2 of the loose grenades that are also included with the figure, or three grenades if you choose to not attach the hose from the figure's head to the pack. The whole complement screams that this is a grenade launching specialist and is on part with gear from the contemporary Alley Viper or Annihilator in terms of design and functionality.

The Frag Viper mold was used just this one time in the U.S. Around 1992 or 1993, though, it was sent to Brazil. There, Estrela used the mold to produce the collector favorite Letal figure. Letal used the entire Frag Viper mold, but in a bright, lime green. The figure is relatively hard to find and tends to sell for substantial sums of money. At that point, most collectors assumed the mold was dead. Hasbro all but confirmed that most of the Brazilian molds were gone. Some of Letal's contemporaries, like the Toxo-Viper, had shown up in India. But, there was no real trail to track. Then, out of the blue, in 2006, Master Collector found the mold and used it in their Operation Flaming Moth series. The figure was colored in a darker green and was meant to be both a Letal homage and upgrade to the original Frag Viper. That was the last use of the mold. It would have been nice to see this figure in a more traditional Cobra color. But, those are the desires unfulfilled that keep collectors around.

During the army building craze, the Frag Vipers were mostly ignored by collectors. While Alley Vipers rose to prices of $20+ and Night Vipers were breaking $30 for mint, complete with filecard versions, Frag Vipers stayed under $10. While collectors would get a few of them, they were so specialized and oddball that very few collectors would seek them out, even as other army builders from their time rose in price precipitously. Today, the figure is relatively unchanged in price. Mint and complete with filecard versions tend to sell in the $9 - $11 range. Sacrificing the grenades or the unique hose, though, tends to drop the price quickly. You can also get them cheaper in lots of less popular army builders. So, there are options: all of which are fairly palatable. Personally, though, despite the relative availability of the figure, I've found that I have few of them in my collection. They just aren't a figure that's really high on my list to track down. They are a great scene filler and do bring a lot to an army. But, after acquiring three or four, the returns of each subsequent figure diminish. So, I find myself with few Frag Vipers. That doesn't take away from the fact that this is a decent figure. It just shows that even quality can have limits when the figure's speciality is too obscure.

Letal (Brazilian Exclusive)

For the most part, Estrela toys in Brazil produced G.I. Joe figures (or Commandos em Acao) that were very similar to their American counterparts. Usually, there were slight color differences that could be attributed to the disparity in construction materials used by the different companies. Every now and then, though, Estrela produced a figure on their own that was either radically different in appearance or combined different original molds. The first of these figures was the infamous Cobra De-Aco. An interesting figure that utilized a silver Snake Eyes v1 head with a Flash v1 body that had yellow pads. As time progressed, though, Estrela came up with a variety of more interesting variations. Perhaps Hasbro loosened their grip on the license, or Estrela just decided to take advantage of some new ideas. Whatever it was, Estrela was able to offer some remarkable exclusive figures that have become highly sought after by American collectors.

If you are a long time patron of the site, you may have noticed the several other Brazilian exclusive Cobra figures that I've profiled. Continuing in this tradition is the figure you see here: Letal. Letal is simply a neon repaint of a 1989 Frag Viper who was released in Brazil as part of the Forca Electronica. He continued the tradition of the somewhat more offbeat Cobras that were exclusive to Brazil. Like many of his counterparts, Letal is visually distinct and is easily recognizable by anyone who is even slightly familiar with non-U.S. Joe releases. He is certainly not in the vein of more realistic Cobra named villains from the American line's heyday, but he is a cool figure, nonetheless. As such, he has found a role in my collection.

Who is Letal? In my collection, he is a known bio and eco terrorist based out of South America. He got is start in the early to mid '90's in some pollution related schemes that got Cobra's attention. While never contacted by Cobra, he was thought of as a possible operative if they ever needed someone in South America. During these early years, though, he encountered the former Joe Airtight. They two became acquainted when Airtight was leading an international team of experts to clean up some radioactive sites in South America. Letal was interested in stealing some of the radioactive material that was still on the site. Not realizing Airtight's background, Letal attempted his heist, only to be defeated. While he escaped, several of his co-horts were killed. He then disappeared to regroup for a few years. However, in the late '90's Letal resurfaced with a new focus on nerve toxins, biological warfare, and battlefield chemicals. This was enough of a resume for Cobra to make its overtures. That the character portrayed by the Flying Scorpion figure was now into his South American campaign only made Letal a more attractive operative. Letal joined Cobra and was quickly placed in charge of their research facilities hidden throughout remote areas of the South American rain forests and mountains. Here, he helps teams of Toxo-Vipers develop biological weapons that are capable of being delivered via live hosts, or more traditional methods.

As research is his primary forte, Letal is not a combatant. If there is the danger of a military unit finding Letal's position, Cobra employs a freelance operative to protect him. This person is responsible for Letal's safety. If he can keep the research facility intact, then that is just all the better. However, while Letal is considered part of the Cobra hierarchy, his work is segregated to the point where he has only research assistants as his direct underlings. This is why it is only freelance bodyguards who are assigned to him. While Cobra has an interest in Letal's activities, that interest is not so great as to risk one of their own, combat soldiers or field generals. The Flying Scorpion character is very shrewd and maintains control of the South American operations. While Letal is not lost to the fact that he only rates hired protection, he also knows that he will have nothing without the massive funding (and research specimens) that Cobra provides. While not a symbiotic relationship, it is provides a level of mutual distrust that keeps both sides honest. However, should Letal's facilities produce something of importance to the greater Cobra cause, his position within the organization would quickly rise.

As you can see, I've got a fairly elaborate background story for this character. That being said, though, Letal will most likely remain a "situational" figure. He will rarely be used except in very specific situations. I have, though, come up with a story line that will elevate Letal from his now lowly status. However, that story involves Airtight and Letal's transformation beyond his current incarnation and his reappearance (with his countenance no longer fully hidden) as Corrosao. That is correct. I plan for this guy to be Letal V1 while the Brazilian Corrosao figure (an Eco Warriors repaint of the Dee Jay figure that was released in Brazil as a Cobra) will be Letal V2. Both of the figures lend themselves to the same specialty and having two distinct South American bio-terror experts working for Cobra just seems a little too convenient for my tastes. (Of course, I have to acquire a Corrosao figure first. If you can help me out, let me know.)

Sure, the Letal figure is neon green. However, so is the '93 Firefly and I like and use that figure. In this case, though, the neon green is more of a functional color than anything else. A character who deals with chemicals and biological elements would have to be used to catastrophes where contaminants would escape from whatever their container of choice may be. In situations like this, having brightly colored clothing would better allow rescuers to find someone. As such, I don't have a problem with the figure's color. In function, the Frag Viper mold (which is highly under appreciated in the U.S.) works great as a bio hazard suit. The trappings convey the idea and the excellently done helmet allow for explanations that this character has build in recycling gear to protect him from his experiments. When I add a Toxo-Viper V1 backpack and hose to plug into the helmet, the effect is complete. (On another note, the Funskool Toxo-Viper pack is almost a perfect match for Letal. The colors are extremely close and work well. I'd take advantage of that figure's current availability if you want to ever outfit a Letal figure in this manner.) The figure then looks like a Cobra version of Airtight. While this isn't quite the manner in which I use Letal, it is enough of a match that anyone who saw the figure would know his purpose.

Like many of the later edition Brazilian figures, Letal isn't too tough to find. He is one of the few Brazilian figures you can find both loose and MOC for affordable prices. One thing to remember about Letal, though, is that he was featured in the 30th Anniversary Trading Card Set. As such, many collectors knew about him early on and some old school dealers will still try to sell Letal figures for prices that were normal 5 to 7 years ago for Brazilian exclusive figures. As more Brazilian Joe fans have come online, figures like this guy have become easier to find. As such, prices on them have fallen. While Letal will cost you a bit more than a typical American figure, I've seen him loose mint and complete sell for under $15. For a foreign exclusive figure of this quality, you really can't beat that. If you should have occasion to add a Letal figure to your collection, I would highly recommend it. He may not be as usable a figure as some other Brazilian exclusive Cobras, but he is a figure that I think you will enjoy.

I'm set for Letal figures. However, I am interested in a Marfim, Corrosao, Albatroz, or Marujo. If you have any of those figures available, email me.