Ok, at the con, I got this guy...



Now, I've had a lot of Cobra troopers go through my hands over the years and have memories of them on the shelf and on the playground as a kid. I have never seen a Cobra chest Logo on a Blueshirt that crisp and bright. EVER. It also seems a tad larger than what Hasbro made, a lighter shade of red, and placed slightly higher on the chest than the factory made trooper.

Here's yojoe.com's entry for comparison...



Now, I first thought that maybe it was one of those repro chest pieces that Black Major was putting out a few years ago, but then I realized that the figure has been uniformly faded, except for the forearms, which seem a tad brighter. So, I thought maybe someone got ahold of a figure that had a chest emblem completely worn off and they have their own method of putting a crisp tampo on the figure.

Anyone else have any theories?

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Is it possible the whole thing is a Black Major/Red Laser/Someone repro?

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Every Repro figure I've seen has the elbow rivets reversed. That is, the rounded part is on the outside, while Hasbro produced figs have the rounded part on the inside.

I would say that someone just stuck vintage arms on a repro figure, but the upper arms are discolored uniformly with the rest of the figure in a manner routinely seen on vintage trooper/officers.

Its a real head scratcher.

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Could the torso be from the Cobra Infantry Foces 6-Pack?

http://www.yojoe.com/action/04/infantrytrooper1.shtml

OB

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If it is, it would have had to have had the logo removed and this new one put on. The 2004 Infantry Troops had a unique way of applying the chest logo. The red was printed, then black trim was printed on top of the red to give the logo its details.

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It's possible that the logo was double-stamped with astonishing precision. I've had a couple of figures like this over the years, but usually there's just the tiniest mis-alignment, so you can tell.

After reading your post, I took the figure and looked at the chest logo under my magnifying glass.

I think you nailed it. Upon inspection, the logo does appear to be slightly "off" with it more apparent on the figure's right side. The "ribbed" part of the cobra logo looks almost blurred, and it's because of the double stamp being out of alignment!

Wow... Never saw this before...

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