CLASSIFICATION: KITBASH
BASE FIGURES: FLIP-N-TRAP WEB-CATCHER SPIDEY (SPIDER-MAN: SNEAK ATTACK), LIQUID SNAKE (METAL GEAR SOLID)
MATERIALS USED: SCRAP PLASTIC, SCULPEY MODELING COMPOUND, ACRYLIC PAINTS
MEDIA APPEARANCE: "THE COBRA STRIKES," G.I. JOE (AS COBRA COMMANDER); "ONLY HUMAN," THE TRANSFORMERS (AS SNAKE)

"Bid farewell to those big, strong bodies, Autobots!  You're going down the tubes!"

Preamble: The Transformers cartoon had a lot of elements in common with the G.I. Joe  cartoon, some more obvious than others.  Both shows were based on Hasbro toy lines, and both were produced by the same animation studio, sharing some of the same writers, voice actors, and animators.  Occasionally, the two series would make indirect references to each other, but one of these crossover episodes is particularly significant.  "Only Human," from the third season of Transformers, takes place in the not-so-distant future of 2006.  It features a silver-masked, sibilant-spoken villain named "Snake," whose former organization had developed artificial people called synthoids.  Does any of this sound familiar yet?  At the end of the show, Snake throws his fists up into the air and triumphantly proclaims, "COBRA!"  Or, at least, he begins to before he breaks up into a coughing fit.

I'm actually not much of a G.I. Joe fan; most of my knowledge of the show concerns how it relates to Transformers.  I am very fond of Cobra Commander, however, so I was quite delighted when he was written into this episode.  (He was never actually identified as Cobra Commander in dialogue, but there were so many clues as to his true identity that I'm pretty much taking it as a given.  Feel free to disagree.)

Construction: First, I drew up a model for Snake to use as reference.  Like pretty much all the humans from the episode, Snake's get-up is based on recognizable, contemporary clothing (your stereotypical "mystery man" trenchcoat and fedora hat, in this case) but with a futuristic twist (the episode took place 20 years into the future when it was written).  There are a few things about Snake's design that are worth noting.  The first is that he doesn't just have a metal face plate; his entire head and neck are apparently covered in metal armor as well.   Also, traces of Cobra Commander's original blue uniform are visible underneath the coat (his pant legs as well as his sleeves in a few scenes).  Finally, somebody on alt.toys.transformers once pointed out that he appears to be wearing Serpentor's gauntlets.  Upon comparison, they're not an exact match (Serpentor's gloves were dark green, where Snake's are black) but it's close enough that the idea still has merit.

I started with a Spider-Man figure, since he already had a featureless face, and he was lanky enough that he wouldn't look too bulky when I put a coat on him.  The only problem here was that Snake wears pirate boots, so I chopped off Spidey's legs just below the knee and replaced them with the boots from my Metal Gear Solid Liquid Snake toy (yes, I recognize the irony here), adding some boot cuffs with Sculpey.  I also used Sculpey to reshape the face a bit.  By an incredible stroke of good fortune, Delta Star was busy developing a custom chroming laboratory when I started this project, and one of the parts I sent off to him for his twisted experiments was Snake's psychic severed head.   (Unfortunately, the chroming lab idea was a bust, but he still chromed Snake's head for me.  Delta's a cool guy, that way.)

The trenchcoat (which I got off some wrestling figure) gave me a bit of trouble as I pondered the best way to create the stripes around his shoulders and sleeves.  I didn't want to bake the coat in the oven, obviously, so Sculpey was out of the question.  Since I had to trim off some material from the bottom of the coat to make it shorter, I decided to use the leftover scraps to make the stripes.  (They're all painstakingly hand-sewn, along with the new shoulder pads and belt straps.)  I did make the elbow pads out of Sculpey, though, gluing them to the coat after I baked them separately.  The scarf is a folded-over piece of the robe from an Anakin Skywalker figure, which I attached to the toy with screws to secure it in place.

I had to start painting the figure before final assembly could begin.  His outfit ended up looking pretty similar to Cobra Commander's uniform, and I even went so far as to put some black straps on his legs and a Cobra sigil on his chest (yeah, I know nobody will ever see these, but I know they're there).  I also painted the coat, separately, putting it on the figure after they were both dry.  After that, it was time to slip the belt on and start gluing accessories in place, which included the belt buckle (completely scratchbuilt), the coat buttons (Sculpey) and of course the hat (which came from another wrestling figure).

Comments:  A couple of people have said that I should be using G.I. Joe figures as the basis for my human characters from Transformers.  While I can understand the appeal, I don't exactly have a huge collection of G.I. Joe toys laying around, which is probably just as well since I don't really like working at such a small scale if I can help it.