G.I. Joe Classified - News & Updates

Damien said:
No, I know. I was just giving you a hard time.
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Ah, heh. Well, I mean ultimately it is what it is and they've committed to this way of things.
Damien said:
But also, I really don't want that. I like that the Vipers get wildly different looks depending on what they end up specializing in.
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I do too, kinda. I guess some of them, like the Tele-Viper or SAW Viper, never felt Viperish to me. I want their whole face covered! Heh.
Damien said:
Although it's not like it's consistent.
Why are they Desert Scorpions and not Desert Vipers? Why do Ice Vipers -and- Snow Serpents both exist? There's no consistency at all in what specialization is a viper and what isn't, and that's frustrating purely from a lore-fanatic perspective.
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Oh I am with you. Consistency is a big deal for me heh. If I was in charge back in the 80s, I would have had Vipers as the troopers, but drivers would be a different type of snake. Just for instance, Pythons. So you get Motor-Pythons, Track Pythons, etc. all pilots are Sidewinders. Or something. All nautical or diving types are different eels or such.

Also with the Snow Serpent, would it have been better to have the Wolf driver be named something like Motor-Serpent?

Also they DID have Desert Vipers later didn't they? Or at least Sand Vipers.
 
Ru1977 said:
Also they DID have Desert Vipers later didn't they? Or at least Sand Vipers.
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Even weirder: they had SAND SCORPIONS.
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Once you go down the “new sculpt”/JoeVCobra/Spytroops/ValorVVenom/etc rabbit hole, the variants and characters increase significantly.

I want my goat-legged, rabbit-eared BATs in shrugs and purple bike shorts!!!
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Ru1977 said:
I do too, kinda. I guess some of them, like the Tele-Viper or SAW Viper, never felt Viperish to me. I want their whole face covered! Heh.
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To be fair... I never understood why Tele-Vipers were Vipers. SAW Vipers I kind of get, as they're like the 'heavy Viper.' But like.... the 'communications' Viper? Do Vipers have nerds? Doesn't seem right.

But yeah, I also kind of think that drivers should not be viper-trained. In fact, 'Tele-Vipers' should probably be in the same basic training program as drivers, since tech and communications is their whole thing. I should stop here, because if I sat down with this I'd probably re-write the entire military structure of Cobra to make more sense and then I wouldn't have time to go watch more of Bobby Vala embarrassing himself.
 
The name “Tele-Viper” came before basic Vipers were introduced, I always figured they were being cute and making a “television” pun.
My head-canon is that Cobra Commander loved the “Viper” part of the name because he thought it sounded rad and intimidating, and coupled that with one of his grandiose whims to make the Cobra Troopers look cooler and more badass, and basically “blinged” out the lesser-expendable Troopers with body armor and a tactical version of his own helmet for “branding” along with the Viper name. The rolled-up sleeves are because CoCo has a fitness mandate for the Vipers and he wants them to look tough.
[no real-world analogs to see here. Move along. Move along.]
The actual Tele-Vipers are salty as hell about this because they are indeed the nerds of Cobra (and also better trained and smarter in general than the rank-and-file Troopers) and liked that they had a tough-sounding, unique squad name. Now they are just another hyphenate-Viper subgroup, and the Techno-Vipers (who are actual engineers and tech bros) look down on them.
 
The 85 wave is peculiar because it includes a few that seem like characters that weren't read for 84, like the Dreadnoks, but I wonder if the Viper was meant to be 85 as well and got pushed to 86.
 
Ru1977 said:
I wonder if the Viper was meant to be 85 as well and got pushed to 86.
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Oh I’m sure they just went “hmm, ‘Viper’, eh? Let’s roll out a trooper update.”
This was the era of “v2s” being whole-cloth new characters instead of updates to originals (except Snake-Eyes, because he is Snake-Eyes). Grunt -> Footloose, Zap -> Bazooka, etc.
 
Looking at the line-up, I think it's just a simple case of the people at Hasbro not thinking long-term because they had no idea if this would last or for how long.

It's very obvious looking at the line-up that they started out being cute with snakey names for things and then realized there was no way to keep it up.

You had the Cobra Trooper, and the Cobra Stinger Driver. Then the following year it's tele-VIPERS, EELS, and snow SERPENTS. Clearly, they intended for all the different specialized troops to have different snake-related/adjacent names. Then the '85 wave gets greenlight and they're like 'fuck.....'

And we get a Viper, a Strato-Viper, and a Motor-Viper all in the same year. Seems to me they just picked their favorite snakey name and rolled with it. And I guarantee we think way more intensely about it than they ever did and ever will.
 
I'm reminded of the author's notes in my book of MOTU mini-comics where some of the authors were like,

"This stuff is stupid and for babies so I just had fun with it! I didn't even read it over after I was done. Just sent it in, who gives a shit about this crap?"
 
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