Cobra Ice-Viper Officer

The Ice-Viper has been one of my favorite Cobra characters ever since he was introduced back in 1987. He was originally packaged with the Cobra W.O.L.F. vehicle since he is the driver of it.

I liked the look of the Ice-Viper that Hasbro released with the exclusive 2 pack Arctic Missions for the M.O.T.H. set because of the grey camo patterns and light blue details like the Snow Serpent Officer had that he was packaged with. This is how this custom came about and is my first custom that I used "greenstuff" for sculpting. I was happy to see that Hasbro was releasing a new version of the Ice-Viper with The Rise of Cobra movie line of figures (Collection 1, Wave 2) but when I saw pics of the new figure, I was quickly dissapointed by it and decided to go ahead and make this version based closely on the original ARAH Ice-Viper from 1987 and the version 2 Ice-Viper from the Arctic M.O.T.H. exclusive set.

I used the Arctic Snake Eyes from the 25th Anniversary line for the basis of this Ice-Viper Officer and popped Snake Eyes's head off. Then I wrapped the rest of the Snake Eyes figure in a sock (yes, sock like you put on your feet) and then stuck him in a bench vise and cranked on him until the glue holding his torso together popped appart. The sock is used for this so pieces don't go flying everywhere and also to keep the figure from getting unwanted damage from the ends of the vise. Once popped appart, there was 6 pieces total (front of upper torso, back of upper torso, hood, lower torso with legs and bottom of parka still attatched, right arm, left arm and small "washer" that goes on top of post sticking out of lower torso that holds the upper and lower torsos together and allows movement when together.) Next, to seperate the arms, I heated up a small pot of water and brought it to a boil. Then using a small pair of pliers to hold the arm piece, dipped the arm into the boiling water to heat it up and make it easier to pull appart without breaking anything. The arms do not need to be in the boiling water for very long at all though, just a quick dip for like 2-3 seconds and they should be soft enough to pull appart safely. Holding the arm with the pliers by the shoulder joint area, pull the lower section of th earm out of th eelbow joint. Then pull the hand out of the lower arm(or do this before the boiling part, might be easier) and repeat for the other arm. To remove the legs from the lower torso, first you will need to remove the bottom "skirt" part of Snake Eyes' parka by slipping a small flat-bladed screwdriver under the back side of the lower parka and lower torso, right where the belt line is and then pushing the lower "skirt" parka piece up and over the top of th elower toso. Once you have removed the lower parka piece, spread the legs appart out towards the sides (like a snow angel) and there is a small phillips screw on the inside of each leg in the thigh area. After removing the screws, you can pop the upper leg halfs appart and then take the lower leg out from the peg on one side of the upper leg (Peg can be either on the outer half or the inner half of th eupper legs, Hasbro used both methods durning the 25th run). To seperate the knee joint from the lower leg, use the same boil in water method as the arms and hold the lower leg in the pliers by the foot. Dip in the boiling water for a couple seconds, then there is a small pin that holds the knee joint in the lower leg and it is larger on one end then the other. Use something small enough that you can push the small pin through the joint by pushing the smaller end of the pin out towards the larger end. Now all of these pieces are appart and ready for painting.

Continued in tomorrows post........................................