The packaging. Oh, god, the packaging. I ragged on it pretty good last time, so let’s just say it looks rushed and amateurish and leave it at that. The bubble shows off the figure very nicely and the insert has the figure’s name on it and shows a picture of the included parachute in action. Flip the card over and you’ve got a couple shots of the figure as well as three others in the line. There’s a pointless little blurb on the Cobtra Trooper and a couple points emphasizing that working parachute again. Let’s rip this guy open and see what we’ve got.

The obvious first impression is that this isn’t a traditional Cobra Trooper, but that’s fine, since this is a movie product. He comes sculpted with grey fatigues, a removable helmet, and removable webgear with a functional holster for his sidearm. The removable helmet is a very nice touch and it stays on surprisingly well. The removable webgear is now pretty standard fare for GI Joes, but in this case it allows you to swap it out and turn him into a paratrooper, which we’ll get to later. The sculpting on the webgear is exceptional. You can see all the texturing in the belts, the sculpted grenades, the clasps and pouches. Its very nice work.  The headsculpt consists of a mask and visor that looks a tad like paintball gear and covers every bit of the trooper’s face. I kind of like it. Its rather sinister.

Its on the coloring of the figure, where things break down for me a bit. The grey fatigues that comprise most of the figure’s body look great, but they really don’t feel like Cobra to me. The blue helmet and webgear help a bit, but I would have preferred blue fatigues, blue helmet, and black webgear. He has a nice Cobra emblem tampo on his helmet and his chest, but you can’t really see the one on his chest when he’s wearing the webgear. All of my issues with the coloring on the figure come from my personal conceptions on what a Cobra Trooper should look like. If I toss that aside, I think the colors on the figure work great for a military trooper.

The Cobra Troopers articulation is the same as what we saw with Cobra Commander. He has a ball jointed neck. His arms feature ball jointed shoulders, ball jointed elbows, and swivel wrists. His legs are ball jointed at the hips and hinged at the knees. Lastly, he can swivel just under his abdomin. Again, considering how upset collectors are over the cuts in articulation, this guy still has plenty of poseability. Sure, what’s missing sucks, but it is what it is.

You get some solid accessories with this figure. His weapons include a tiny little automatic pistol, which fits snugly into his holster. You also get a rather unusual looking assault rifle with some kind of canister coming off the stock. And then there’s the parachute. To work the parachute you swap out his webgear and clip the nylon cords onto the top straps of the webgear. It looks and works pretty great. I am particuarly impressed with the quality of the parachute. The material and cords are nice and heavy duty and the Cobra emblem printed on it is really cool. And yes, it works pretty well. I chucked him up into the air and it opened just fine.

Kudos, Hasbro. You were indeed able to win me over with this figure. I still would have preferred a more conventional Cobra paintjob, but what’s here works fine. Its a good design, a good sculpt, solid weapons, and the ability to convert him to a paratrooper is a really nice bonus. I’m not going to go army building this guy like I have in the past with the Vipers and the Crimson Guards, but I could see myself picking up one more just to display him as both regular trooper and paratrooper. He’s a solid figure and I’m really glad I picked him up.