Spy Troops Wave 4 (Wave 7.75) - Desert CLAWS
The Desert COBRA CLAW, back in Wave 2 gets my dubious distinction of being one of the worst figures produced for the JvC line to date. His short, stocky mold and obnoxiously bland colors always left a sour taste in my mouth, and combine that with a non-O-ring mold, and the figure pretty much blows. For some bizarre reason I bought two of them, which is two more than I really needed…just goes to show the army building bug affects even the crappiest of figures.
The CLAW figure in general kind of stung a little bit, because the mold was so nicely done, but the figure has always looked pretty bad with huge arms and tiny little legs. When the O-ring version came out in Wave 4 it made a big difference, even though the figure still looks a little out of whack, it’s heads and shoulders above what it used to be.
So in that way, this figure is an improvement. His proportions end up better by default with the O-ring construction, and for some reason the colors on this new one don’t quite bother me so much. The off white uniform hue does fit in with a desert environment and his red padding w/ brown straps all make sense. But still, there just isn’t enough contrast to be interesting. Perhaps if he were a tanner color rather than an almost-white, it would make a difference, but as it is, the figure doesn’t provide much of an impact.
Living in Vermont, I also don’t have much access to a sandy, desert-like environment (even the one I attempted to create for Retaliation looked more like snow than sand… :/ ) so I have little use for desert-themed figures. Regardless of that, I still love the Sand Viper, and still feel very ho-hum about this guy. The pack is a tempting one to stock up on, but I’ve already got 5 Sand Vipers from Wave 6, and I don’t anticipate wanting a whole lot more of this figure, so I’ll probably stick with one or two. Still, getting both figures in a single pack isn’t a bad deal, and you probably want to consider picking up a pack or few.
