So I was in Walmart last night, and the toy section was the expected disaster overall, but ON THE FLOOR, no less, was a lone carded Techno-Viper. And upon inspecting the G.I. Joe display, there were no other Techno-Vipers. Into the cart he went, and then I went to buy food.
I'm more impressed than I expected to be, and I rather liked the look of this figure even from the pictures. In my opinion, this is one of the smoothest, most accurate transitions from original version to current version that I've yet seen. The purple is definitely muted from the original, but it's also still definitely purple. All of the various uniform details are present and accounted for, which meant a whole lot of new parts. I also like the fact that they gave him gold eyes, something the original's ART had, but the figure didn't.
I can only say two less-than-favorable things about this figure. The separate "vest" or whatever you want to call it, is a little long. This has two unfortunate effects. It makes him look just a little "sloppy", like he needs to tuck his shirt in, and it mostly obscures a very cool belt he's wearing, that is designed entirely in the style of the Techno-Viper, but has a very cool red Cobra emblem on it.
The other less-than-favorable thing is that the large silver Cobra emblem on his chest is slightly tilted. But this is probably just this figure, I tend to "army-build" the Techno-Viper a bit, and I certainly wasn't going to pass him up, as he was the only one there, and was otherwise problem-free.
Nice work, Hasbro. Now, when can I expect Sci-Fi and Lifeline?
