Death is part of war. War without death is impossible. Death in war is cruel and unforgiving and often indiscriminate. GI Joe has had its share of deaths, and one Cobra was responsible for a lot of them. It wasn't Cobra Commander, it wasn't Destro, it was the Saw Viper. Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. Welcome to Cobra Convergence 7. This is the annual event where GI Joe fans give you special content every day in July. This is my first Cobra Convergence entry this year. When you think of the most important characters in the GI Joe universe, you probably think of Snake Eyes, Duke, and Cobra Commander. You probably do not think of the Saw Viper. After all, the Saw Viper is not really a named character. He's a trooper, like many others. One Saw Viper, though, had a greater impact on GI Joe than any other trooper. In one day, he killed more GI Joe characters than had previously died in the entire conflict. Let's meet Cobra's Merchant of Death. HCC 788 and Cobra Convergence 7 present the Saw Viper. This is the Saw Viper. Cobra's heavy machine gunner from 1990. This figure was released in 1990 and was only available in 1990. It was discontinued for 1991. This is the only vintage version of the Saw Viper. Saw SAW stands for Semi-Automatic Weapons, which is not what he uses. He's a machine gunner, which is an automatic weapon. There are other oddities about the figure and the card. The Saw Viper was designed by Dave Hassel for Hasbro. An alternate codename was the Claw Viper, with claw standing for Cobra Light Automatic Weapons. That's ironic, considering the very large machine gun the figure includes. There's a reason for this oversized machine gun, which I will cover when I talk about the accessories. In military parlance, Saw refers to a squad automatic weapon. In the US, the M249 Light Machine Gun is called a Saw. The weapon that comes with the Saw Viper could not reasonably be called Light by any standard. The Saw Viper is billed as a heavy machine gunner, and his weapon would be very heavy indeed. This could have been yet another specialized Cobra Trooper, but the Saw Viper has a special place in GI Joe lore. One Saw Viper is responsible for killing more GI Joe team members at one time than any other single Cobra. Even though the Saw Viper is supposed to be an army builder, he may be worthy of being considered an individual. Usually when we talk about the Saw Viper, we're talking about THE Saw Viper. In fact, I don't think of this figure as an army builder. The Saw Viper is an individual, and he is a legend. The most obvious GI Joe counterpart to the Saw Viper is Roadblock, the heavy machine gunner from 1984. The most recent Roadblock figure released before 1990 was the Tiger Force Version 3. That figure was discontinued after 1989, so it would not have been on the pegs at the same time as the Saw Viper. The GI Joe machine gunner that would have been available at the same time was 1989 Rock & Roll Version 2, which was still on the pegs in 1990. That version of Rock & Roll had some heavy firepower and would have been a match for the Saw Viper. I have the full card back for Saw Viper so we can see how this figure was marketed back in 1990. It has the GI Joe logo at the top and Cobra Enemy overlaid on top of that. There is a red background, which is something it started doing at the time. Red for the bad guys and blue for the good guys. The GI Joe cards in the 90s leaned into that more. His codename is Saw Viper. He's the Cobra Heavy Machine Gunner. It's on the file card that we find out what SAW stands for. We have some artwork here and this artwork is almost certainly by Hector Guerrero. I don't know that that's 100% confirmed, but it is in his style and it's during a time when Hector Guerrero was still doing artwork for GI Joe. There are some unexpected differences between the artwork and the figure. Here we have a sticker advertising the free command ring. There are these spaces for the figure and the accessories. This card has the card contents torn away, but I need to talk about some of the oddities in the card contents, and I will cover that when I talk about the accessories. If we flip the card around, we have a very standard looking GI Joe card back in the 80s style. Even though this was in the 1990s, they were still doing the cards in the 80s style with the cross sell up here showing the other figures that were available at the time. There is one flag point and the file card, which I will read later. Let's take a look at the accessories for the Saw Viper and yes, we need to look at the obvious first, this absurdly oversized machine gun. I need to disconnect the ammunition belt and carefully take this out of the figure's hand so we can take a look at it. The card contents just call this a heavy machine gun and yes, at this size it would be very heavy indeed. It is at least as tall as the figure itself. This heavy machine gun is made of black plastic. It is very highly detailed. It has a large scope on top and a for grip and a removable bipod. I'll take that off in a moment. It has a stock and it has a peg on each side, one peg on each side, and that's where you connect the ammunition belt. So you can connect the ammunition belt on either side of the stock. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that the ammunition should enter the machine gun here. Are the bullets supposed to travel up one of these two extensions to actually get into the chamber of the weapon? I don't know how that's supposed to work. The Saw Viper's machine gun is larger, considerably larger than Tunnel Rat's machine gun from 1987 and Tunnel Rat's machine gun was already large for a GI Joe machine gun. So how did this happen? In the presentation art by Dave Dorman, the Saw Viper has a much smaller weapon with a blade above the barrel, perhaps a literal saw. This is also reflected on the card art where we see a smaller weapon and a barbed blade above the barrel. I have to assume this was an early design that was changed before production. Why is the machine gun so big? The designer, Dave Hassel, accidentally submitted the wrong dimensions for the accessory to production. This machine gun is in the scale of the two up paint master. GI Joe action figures were sculpted at twice the size they would be produced. Those double sized sculpts were called two ups. This machine gun is double sized for the two up. It should be half this size. It is oversized because of a mistake. This machine gun does have a bipod in black plastic. It just clips on and can be removed pretty easily. This is a frequently missing part and honestly the machine gun looks pretty complete without it. So unless you need the machine gun to be complete, you could just leave this off and you might not even notice. There's a typo on the card contents that called this bipod a biopod. I have to question the proofreading on the card when a bipod is called a biopod and that's not the only mistake. Next let's look at the ammunition belt. The ammunition belt pegs on to the backpack that can be easily removed. Therefore it is another frequently missing part. It is made of a soft flexible plastic with bullet details on one side. The other side is blank. There's a slot on the other end of the ammunition belt that connects to one of these pegs on the machine gun. So you can peg it onto the machine gun at one end and to the backpack on the other end. Most sources list this ammunition belt as white but mine is a bit off-white so there may be some discoloration on this one. Next we get to the backpack. The backpack is in a purplish plum color which somewhat but not quite matches the colors on the action figure. It has some detail but not a lot. It's very boxy. It has a couple barrel shapes on here and it has a peg on one side of this lower extension so this must be for ammunition that feeds the big machine gun. This backpack is adequate without being exceptional. It does what it needs to do and no more. Those are all the accessories the figure comes with but according to the card contents he should have included more. The card lists two hoses that do not come with the action figure. Maybe he was supposed to come with hoses that were discontinued before production. Strange that the card wasn't updated. In the presentation art I don't see any obvious connections for hoses. This is another oddity on the card. With the accessories out of the way let's take a look at the articulation on the saw viper. He had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures well before 1990 so he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow that allowed him to bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around. This was an o-ring figure meaning the figure was held together with a rubber o-ring that looped around the inside that allowed him to move at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of the saw viper starting with the head. On his head he has a molded on non-removable helmet. It is in a plum color. I'm calling this color plum. It's a dark purple with a touch of red so it looks like plum to me. It is close to but not quite a match for the color of the backpack accessory. The helmet has a sculpted arrow on top. I guess showing which direction is front. In the artwork this arrow is black but it is unpainted on the figure. He has a bright green visor.  He has a black chin strap and a black microphone on the right side. On the chest he has a black uniform shirt with an elastic collar. Over that he's wearing a purple tactical vest. That's a true purple. It doesn't match the color on the helmet. That purple vest has some padding on the upper chest that goes over the shoulders and the upper back. On the abdomen he has these vertical sections that may be pouches but I'm not sure.  These are probably supposed to be straps. His arms feature long black sleeves with plum colored bands around the biceps. He has black elbows. His lower arms have plum colored gloves that are probably supposed to be the same color as the bands on the upper arms but that's not the same color. It's a slightly lighter color. Also there's some sculpting on the forearms that look like they're supposed to be painted. Perhaps painted black the same color as the elbows but those are unpainted. This does not match the card art which has the colors reversed. It has purple at the upper arms and these black bands that connect to black gloves with purple at the elbows. That is the opposite of what's on the figure. The presentation artwork by Dave Dorman is a bit more clear where it shows black sleeves and long purple gloves that go up over the biceps and have cutouts at the elbows. This would have worked really well on the figure if they had painted this section above the forearm black to match the elbows. That would have pretty closely matched the presentation artwork. The waist has purple trousers that match the tactical vest. He has a black belt with a bright green belt buckle that has maybe a leaf design on it. It's hard to tell and the artwork doesn't really help. I'm not sure what that design is supposed to be. In the back connected to the belt there is a black harness but that harness kind of disappears in the front where the waist piece connects to the legs and that doesn't quite look right. The legs feature purple trousers with tall plum colored leg coverings. The leg coverings have these cutouts on the lower inside upper leg and the upper inside lower leg around the knee exposing more of the purple uniform. There isn't much detail on those leg coverings. They connect to the boots and there are these bands on the front of the boots. Those are probably supposed to be straps of some kind. The colors on the saw viper are kind of weak. Cobra had moved more toward purple than blue in the late 80s, most famously with the 1987 Techno Viper. The Techno Viper's colors are great though with a lighter purple offset with a darker purple, black, and silver which really sharpened the colors and made this look like a deluxe figure. The bright green on the saw viper just isn't quite enough to liven it up. Someone at Hasbro must have really liked this plum color because in 1990 both the Night Creeper and the Rock Viper had similar colors. Let's take a look at Saw Viper's file card printed on the back of the card on which the action figure was packaged. It has his faction as Cobra. It has a portrait of the saw viper here that's a copy of the artwork on the front of the card. His codename is Saw Viper and in parenthesis semi-automatic weapons which is not what he comes with and he is the Cobra heavy machine gunner. This is a little odd. This Cobra is red but the ribs are black that's not usually how it's printed. This first paragraph says the saw viper is equipped with a gyro-stabilized cryogenically cooled mini chain gun scoped with an infrared night vision auto-ranging optical sighting system.  It's nothing for him to zone in on a flea nested in heavy brush over 800 yards away in pitch darkness and pick it off with one shot. Well fleas are annoying so I can't blame him for that. This bottom paragraph as a quote it says you definitely don't want to get pinned down by a saw viper at night. His weapon has an integral sound suppressor an effective flash inhibitor and a powerful image intensifier. With all that you won't even know you're being shot at until you hear the sonic boom of the bullet whipping past your ear. This card is written as a trooper not an individual even though I think of the saw viper as an individual. Also it's mostly about the saw viper's equipment. No wonder the machine gun is so big it needs room for the cryo coolant night vision auto-ranging optical sighting sound suppressor flash suppressor and image intensifier that doesn't even mention the cup holder and cigarette lighter. Looking at how the saw viper was used in gijo media he appeared a few times in the deke animated series but not very much. His first appearance was in the episode granny dearest. He had a few other appearances but he was barely more than a background character. The saw viper was most prominent in the comic book. The comic book series published by marvel comics was very different from the animated series in that characters would be seriously injured or die. Larry Hama the writer of the comic book has stated he thinks depicting war without death is morally bankrupt. According to a 2000 interview by Christopher Irving Larry Hama explained his approach to killing off characters. I figured that if I'd had them around a couple years and there wasn't a figure or their figures were discontinued they were open game. In after action report volume one Kirk Bozigian gijo's brand manager for Hasbro said the joe universe had gotten too large and new character introduction far too complex. I suggested to Larry that we find a way to focus on fewer characters and thus better stories. If I recall Larry breathed a sigh of relief and agreed. The deaths were totally his idea to shock the world of comics. After action report also states there is an urban legend regarding comic book character deaths with Hasbro having a policy that no gijo character could die in the comic if it had a toy on the shelves. Both Kirk and Larry confirmed this was not an official policy. In the early years there had been several side characters killed off like Quinn, Dr. Venom, and the Softmaster. The most important character to die in that early part of the series was General Flag. The Saw Vipers defining moment came in issue number 109. It was in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Truceal Abysmia before the start of the Benzene War. That conflict was gijo's analog for the First Gulf War. A group of Joes was captured by Cobra and rounded into a pit. Tomax and Zemot called Cobra Commander for instructions on what to do with the prisoners. They misinterpreted Cobra Commander's order to get rid of them to be an order to execute them. A Saw Viper stepped up to do the dirty work. He was promised two months extra pay for the job. His weapon was an M-60, not the monster machine gun that came with the figure. His first victim was Doc. After that he rained down bullets on the Joes in the pit. He was stopped when Falcon threw a knife at him. Quick kick was able to pick up the machine gun and fire back. By then it was too late for Doc, Thunder, Crankcase, and Heavy Metal.  When Cobra Commander found out about the deaths he was very angry at first. He was concerned about becoming a personal target of the Joes. The Saw Viper told the Commander to stuff it. He had killed more Joes in one day than all of Cobra had done in nine years. After that Cobra Commander was convinced to give the Saw Viper a medal and throw him a party. The Saw Viper lived it up with strippers and booze. Eventually the G.I. Joe ninjas got revenge. Snake eyes threw the dead Saw Viper's machine gun at the empty boots of the fallen Joes. There's no way the Saw Viper could kill Joes and live. That was the end of the only Saw Viper that really mattered. He had an impact on G.I. Joe that no other Cobra had in the history of the line. He alone was responsible for more casualties than anyone Cobra before or since. The story of the Saw Viper is a story of mistakes. A mistake gave him an overly large machine gun. There were mistakes on the card and mistakes in the artwork. And a mistake in order from Cobra Commander led to death for G.I. Joe. Looking at the Saw Viper overall, the figure is mediocre. Cobra had moved more toward purple than blue in the late 80s and early 90s. The Saw Viper's color scheme is nothing really noteworthy. The pops of green don't do enough to liven it up. The accessories are odd. The machine gun is absurdly oversized. The size is due to a mistake which transformed the Saw Viper from a light machine gunner to a very heavy machine gunner. The backpack is fine. It's nice to have the ammunition belt. That's a detail that's missing from too many G.I. Joe machine guns. The bipod, or biopod, is not vital. Where are those two hoses? What would they have been used for? It almost doesn't matter what the figure looks like. The Saw Viper is a legend. You can use this figure as a troop builder or as an individual character. Either way, there was one Saw Viper that changed G.I. Joe history forever. In doing so, he fulfilled the philosophy of violence in war fiction. It almost doesn't matter what the figure looks like. The Saw Viper is a legend. You can use this figure as a troop builder or as an individual character. Either way, there was one Saw Viper that changed G.I. Joe history forever. In doing so, he fulfilled the philosophy of violence in war fiction. It almost doesn't matter what the action figure looks like. The Saw Viper is a legend. You can use this figure as a troop builder or as an individual character. Either way, there was one Saw Viper that changed G.I. Joe history forever. In doing so, he fulfilled the philosophy of violence in war fiction.  It is not. Even in victory, war means loss and tragedy. As Larry Hama said, depicting war without death is morally bankrupt. For that reason, the Saw Viper may be the most important Cobra Trooper of them all. That was my review of the Saw Viper for Cobra Convergence 7. Thank you to Chad and Dave Make sure you check out the website hcc788.com for a full calendar of Cobra Convergence 7 presenters. You will get new Cobra content every day in July from all of these great G.I. Joe fan creators. Coming up this week in Cobra Convergence 7, we have Sparxter 1701, it's Chad, What's On Joe Mind, Cobra Island, a Toy Kinda Mood, Talking Joe, Go Figure, Real American Brian, Snoova's Corner Cafe, the Full Force Podcast, and the Skull Reviews. Please support all of them, and don't forget, you can participate in Cobra Convergence 7. There are instructions at hcc788.com. Catch me on social media, on Facebook and Twitter, and if you'd like to support the channel, Patreon is a great way to do it. I will see you next week for more Cobra Convergence 7 until then, remember, only Cobra is Cobra.