The Frag-Viper was originally a 1989 figure which is a bit past my time with the Real American Hero line so he’s a little outside my nostalgia sweet spot. The giant, bug-eyed metal helmet design is inherently appealing to me, so the nostalgia is not required in this case. Let’s take a look at the Frag-Viper!
Between the spine portrait and the render on the back, there is a lot of colorful and appealing artwork on this box.
The figure comes with a removeable helmet with flexible tube, a backpack, two machine guns, a flying grenade effect piece, a cesta, and a grenade tube. The cesta is the long, claw-shaped device and the figure can grip it with their hand and it is also supported by a clip that encircles the forearm. It attaches to the thicker tube that pegs onto the pack, the idea being that the tube feeds grenades into the cesta for throwing.
The tube is very flexible, but it’s thickness does sometimes affect the position of the cesta on the figure or the pack. The pack only has one peg, so it can sometimes shift askew due to the relative position of the arm and the cesta.
The effect has a curved smoke trail behind it with a peg that can attach to one of two spots on the cesta. Now, I’m no Jai alai expert, but we did have toy versions of those when we were kids and the the ball wouldn’t curve in an arc, it would shoot strait when you flicked it, so I don’t think the physics works for this effect works for me in most poses. It looks best to me with an overhead whip. I think I would have preferred just loose grenades like the original figure.
The Frag-Viper also gets two matching machine pistols with removable magazines. They fit in the holsters and hands solidly, though I do wish the wrists hinged up/down for better firing poses.
The body has some re-used parts from Ripper in the legs and the SAW Viper’s arms. The torso has a couple of overlays including some darker blue web gear that’s flexible and allows the the hinge and waist to move. The web gear and outfit is a bit more tactical feeling than the original figure which had an almost pajama feel to it with a lot of scarves tied around it. They did add one sash to harken back to that original figure a bit more.
Besides the more tactical feel to the outfit, the other big change is the zombie-cyborg feel of the portrait. He reminds me of Marvel’s Machine Man if Machine man was a horror comic. I think it’s a charmingly weird addition, but if you don’t like it, it’s easy to ignore by adding the helmet.
Paint is pretty good with a great grey base coat with some peach highlights around the eyes, lips and the lines on the face on the zombie head. The helmet seems to be cast in silver plastic, but it is still pretty shiny and they do a good job bringing out the vent details with some sort of wash and the gloss eyes stand out nicely as well.
I like that they added a darker brown accent color to the caramel color of the jumpsuit for a bit more polished look than the original. My main paint critique is that the pants are painted black around the knees and the hinge is black, but the inside of the the thighs and calves are the base color, so it looks a little weird when the knees are bent. Another smaller quibble is that the grenades have red details on them and there are visible grenades in the pack without the red detail.
The figure moves pretty well with standard G.I. Joe Classified articulation. The chest overlay is all one piece with the belt, but the waist and ab hinge still move well and the web gear stays in place well while posing. The holsters are separate from the belt, so they don’t get in the way of movement nor do the flexible mask and grenade hoses impede movement. The only downside to articulation is the ball jointed neck is pretty occluded around the barbell, so there isn’t a great range of motion there.
Overall I’m a fan of this figure. They did make a lot of design changes to the costume, but kept the main idea of that bug-headed helmet and large pack and cesta. As a guy not overly familiar with the original, this update works well for me. The Frag-Viper is a good representation of the wilder sci-fi side of this military conflict and I feel like these more colorful guys are part of what I love about the line and elevates it from just a modern military recreation.
