COBRA Gunship

I mentioned in my Steel Crusher review that I was pretty much a media whore when it came to the Steel Crusher, but even more when it comes to the COBRA Gunship.  During Toy Fair when I saw this silver colored torpedo, I was significantly underwhelmed.  There was nothing at all redeemable about what I saw there, especially at a $25 - $30 price tag.  The pilot was pretty bad, and the vehicle was about as non-exciting as it can get.

But then a funny thing happened…    I saw the movie.

In the film, the Gunship is absolutely insane.  It cruises through the air at breakneck speed, turns on a dime, and pretty much chews up all opposition and spits it out.  It’s a sleek, bad ass transport and killing machine, and that has really affected my viewpoint.

Unfortunately, unless Hasbro releases one of these things as an Echo class vehicle, there’s no way it lives up to what it did in the film.  It was more than impressive in the theater, and the toy isn’t quite as nice.  But it does have some redeeming qualities.

Right off the bat, I’ll tell you, if you’re buying this expecting it to be as cool as the movie version, well…don’t.  Because it’s not.  It’s a silver, wingless torpedo that some how defies the laws of physics and flies around, and it’s a good deal smaller in person than the film shows, but I do still think it’s a neat aircraft.  Hell, G.I. Joe toys have been woefully underscaled ever since day 1, so this is no revelation to me, and I wouldn’t expect Hasbro to demand $40.00 for a larger sized silver rocket either.

The cockpit design and detail is pretty nice, with sculpted seats and nice little ports in the cockpit that actually hook into some of the cables from Firefly’s gear, which is a pretty neat little feature.  Just behind the cockpit there’s a door that swings open into a little compartment that serves to be the transport area that carries COBRA members to their various locations around the globe.  Unfortunately, this compartment (as well as the entire vehicle) are quite a bit smaller and more compact than the movie version of the vehicle, which looks a lot more imposing than its plastic representation.

I really love the little handles on the bottom of the vehicle as well, though I’m not entirely sure what their function is.  Whatever the function is, though, I really like this kind of interaction, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have guys hanging on underneath a subsonic vehicle that travels at ridiculous speeds.  I also really like the flip-down landing skids and the triple-dropping bomb drop system.  It’s very unique the way the three torpedos drop into a top compartment, then drops all of them out of a bottom trigger-operated hatch.

But even with all of those added features, there’s still the size issue, and that’s really what impacts this vehicle negatively.  It’s obvious in the film that this is supposed to be a large, imposing transport with a veritable arsenal of weaponry at its disposal.  The toy version looks like a somewhat compact silver torpedo with a bare bones amount of features or functions.  The wings move a bit, though not as nicely as the movie version, the chin gun is pretty small, and the size just isn’t all that impressive.

However, the design itself is very, very nice.  I love the plated armor, the funky design of the tail, and the aerodynamic nature of the ship itself is very cool looking, but the size is just somewhat uninspiring, though that’s mostly due to cost issues.

Firefly

As hit or miss the vehicle is, the figure is mostly just a miss.  I’m not sure why they shoe-horned Firefly into here, since he deserves a much better representation for his movie appearance, and the design of the figure itself is just dull.  He’s a base Firefly figure with no camouflage and a generic gray color scheme with no intricate paint applications or detail work.

One thing that is fairly cool is his gear, which gives him a pretty neat flight helmet and a very nicely detailed and sculpted flight vest with elaborate hoses that  connect into ports in the cockpit and attach to the flight helmet.  It gives him a much bulkier more “flight suit” look, which makes a huge difference, but beyond the flight equipment, the figure is bland, colorless, and boring, which doesn’t help the marketability of this set at all.

This vehicle is extremely tough for me.  There’s a lot that I like about this vehicle, but it pales in comparison to how the Gunship is portrayed in the film.  There is some neat playability here, especially for a small-sized transport vehicle, but ultimately I’m having a hard time giving a full $30.00 worth recommendation to this thing.  Perhaps if you can get it on sale, it would be worth it, but that’s a tough call to make right now.  The film made me love the Gunship concept a whole lot more, but this vehicle itself just sort of falls short in a few different areas.

Buy this vehicle at Big Bad Toy Store!

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