Yeah. Snow. Not a common sight in South Africa. My favourite movie as a child was Empire Strikes Back. My first Cobra vehicle was the W.O.L.F. My first Joe vehicle was the Battleforce: 2000 Pulverizer. Not much of a vehicle, but it was advertised in the 1989 promotional leaflet as cruising over SNOW. My first Joe figure? Iceberg. Honestly, I was developing severe snow envy. So much of the G.I. Joe armada of vehicles was constructed to do battle in the snow, and when I jumped onto the line, there was a fair number of cold weather specialists in both teams. It was a cruel, cruel state of affairs. My snow-envy forced me to strip all the white linen I could find and carpet the floors of the house with sheets. Mom loved that.
I was a university graduate before I ever got a chance to play in fluffy white snow drifts. I was working a winter season in the Land of Milk and Honey, sadly without my W.O.L.F. But I remedied this by purchasing a Snowcat on Ebay for Christmas '06. It was included in a vehicle lot which came in a big box, but regardless of its size, this box was delivered to my door by USPS. God bless America.
But I really do want to talk about that W.O.L.F. Winter Operations Land Fighter. And it is a fighter, more on that later. What a fantastic first Cobra vehicle. The Snowcat to my mind has a rather glaring design flaw. The tracks are large-ish for the size of the vehicle. The tires are real pretty. But how useless would these be in a snowdrift?! Pretty fucking hopeless. The W.O.L.F is a very clever Cobra answer to the Joes' snow workhorse. This badboy has tracked wheels, but thank heavens is equipped with skis in front allowing it to traverse snowfields and slopes like a snowmobile. But wait, there's more! The tracks flip up into the vehicle and it switches to jet propulsion. Holy shit. How insanely fast must this thing be able to go? It's like strapping a J.U.M.P onto Snowjob's back and giving him a snowfield to traverse. I imagine the engines must be set to a rather low thrust to avoid having the W.O.L.F take off. Like a fighter. Ha ha.
Always liked its design too. Asymmetry has an appeal for me. The crew on the one half, ordinance on the other. And there's a cannon mounted above the gunner cockpit which gives the W.O.L.F another edge over its competition. Four missiles - tick, two Ski-pedoes- tick, double cannon, W.O.L.F wins. And it has indeed. A decal on the gunner's cockpit proclaims four Snowcat kills. If every W.O.L.F has this sticker, I imagine Cobra must be doing some severe damage to Joe's cold weather force. My first issue of G.I. Joe: Special Missions was #20, where the Joes in the Snowcat join forces with the Oktober Guard (as usual) and take out three W.O.L.F's. I used to play out that issue countless times as a kid, but in my version, the W.O.L.F would win. Cobra rocks. And I had a Tiger Paw stand in for the Snowcat and that just flat out sucked.
True story about the stickers. Being all of seven years-old when I got this vehicle for Christmas '92. Too young or just too crappy-stupid to do apply them myself, I made the mistake of asking my dad to help me. Flash forward to late 2010, I realise my dad got very creative with decal application. The display on the pilot's screen was on the exterior of the missile rack, there were stickers inside the jet engines. Stuff like that. Testimony to the quality of these stickers, 18 years later, the stickers can be peeled, re-applied and look still look fantastic. Who needs reprolabels?!
To end, I'll echo a remark in a previous post. I can totally understand why kids flew the S.H.A.R.C around like a plane. I did the same with the W.O.L.F. It bears some resemblance to a Rebel Snowspeeder from the aforesaid fave kiddy movie, Empire Strikes Back, tandem cockpit, rear mounted gun... snow speciality...
No comments:
Post a Comment