#16: G.I. Joe - Zombie Viper

G.I. Joe has a long history of weirdness, so while a zombie seems to be veering a bit more into horror movie territory, I don't think it seems too out of place. After all, the zombies from the Return of the Living Dead series were the result of military experiments. So it's almost logical that Cobra would end up trying to make its own zombie army. Ever since I saw pictures of the Zombie Viper months ago, I knew it was a must buy. It has recently started showing up in stores, but not yet in my area. So I got impatient and found one on Ebay for a decent price. 

I have to say, this is one of my favorite G.I. Joe figures in recent memory, at least partly because it's so out there. It's a great sculpt, with ragged clothes and bits of flesh missing. The right foot isn't sculpted flat, so it can be posed in more of a shuffling stance appropriate of a zombie. It's got all the typical G.I. Joe articulation, including the swivel/hinge wrists. So yes, the Zombie Viper can do the Thriller dance. The Zombie Viper's skin is a dull grey, with some bright blue bits (from the Compound Z) that I wish were a little more subtly edged. 

Naturally, the Zombie Viper includes accessories. The most striking are the alternate hands/forearms which depict the hands mutating into freaky tentacles. A couple of the fingers even have those pads that squid have at the end of their longest tentacles. This is entering some freaky, Resident Evil style zombie mutation here. Other than the swivel where they attach to the arm, these aren't articulated, not that they need to be. 

The other accessories are a bottle of Compound Z that's attached by a hose to the removable helmet. The bottle plugs into the back of the zombie's suit, and there are four spots for it to plug in. There are only three spots for the hose to plug in on the helmet, so if there had been an intended fourth bottle to be included I'm not sure where it would have attached. As it is, we only get one bottle. If one was able to get three of these figures, it would probably be pretty cool to attach all the bottles on one figure. Certainly a small army of these guys would be cool to have, and with the accessories, there could be some nice variation.

A quick shot of the Zombie Viper in its natural habitat, the cemetery.