25th Anniversary Arctic HISS - A guest review by Plastica

Hi I’m Plastica a member of the forums at YoJoe.com and THIS is my Review of the Arctic HISS. First of all Please Note that I bought my Arctic HISS 4 Years after it was on the Store Shelves and not Mint in Box or Mint in Sealed Box but you wouldn’t know it since the previous owner did not apply any of the decals.

One thing I like about the Arctic HISS is that it has the Classic HISS Body Design that was immortalized way back in 1983 When the Original HISS came out.

Two other things that are obvious especially as you compare the Original HISS with the Arctic HISS is that the Arctic HISS unlike it’s predecessors has instead of a twin cannon arrangement on the turret a Missile Launcher reminiscient of another old time Cobra vehicle the Cobra Stinger.  Also the sides of the Arctic HISS has a rack hanging on one side of the rear portion below the turret and what looks like a tent of large bedroll on the other where the classic Hiss doesn’t have any gear. 

Obviously I haven’t had a chance yet to do so BUT one thing that the Arctic HISS allows is for the Hull numbers to be personalized to the owners preferences. This alone makes me glad that the tanks previous owner(s) didn’t apply the labels.

One thing that anybody who has known me for a while would know is that I pay a great deal of attention to how utilitarian a vehicle is including whether or not it has the ability to tow another vehicle. The nice thing about the Arctic HISS as well as most other HISS’s that use the same body design is that it has a tow hook.  Hasbro designers even went so far as to include a warning label about how using the weapon systems while towing a vehicle while engaging the weapons since it could make them unstable as well as to make sure to read the owners manual before towing a vehicle and not to tow something that outweighs the tank.

One obvious con that I noticed was that the blueprints were single sided where lots of times it includes instructions on the other side to show how to do any needed assembly. Due to this I had to look at pictures of other Arctic HISS Tanks to figure out how the Turret was supposed to be oriented and also how to properly mount the missiles.  Another problem I ran into when I went to try it the first time is I couldn’t figure out how to seat the driver in the cockpit so that the canopy could close all the way

Arctic HISS Driver

AH yes the Driver the all important part of any tank. Back in the day the Hiss Drivers were a generic Trooper builder, The HISS II even gave us a new driver known as a Track Viper, The HISS III introduced us to Rip-IT who was a specific Individual and now we have the Arctic HISS Driver.  One would almost think that Arctic HISS Drivers would be selected from among the ranks of the Snow Serpents especially since he comes with a fur color among his accessories but the Arctic HISS Drivers are selected from among the Ranks of the HISS Drivers.  AS is the case with most figures these days the Arctic HISS Driver is composed of parts from several different figures.  In this case they used the head of 25th Anniversary HISS Driver that came out in 2008 as a carded figure. The majority of the rest of the body minus the hands interestingly enough came from an Arctic version of the Joes resident man in black Snake-Eyes. The hands came from the 25th anniversary version of the Snow Serpent.

ACCESSORIES

Accessory wise he doesn’t have much the obvious thing is the thick fur collar that has been used a few other times with various versions of the Snow Serpents.  He also came with a set of binoculars but unless you pop his head off they don’t fit very well especially with his huge fur collar. His last accessory is a rifle. That almost looks reminiscent of an old school m-16 but I admit I’m not an expert on military rifles so it could be a different rifle.