Tiger Snake Find, and Variant Notice

Ha!  I found several more Tiger Snakes while romping around looking for Retaliation figures at a different Toys R Us.  They  were selling for $5 a piece and I bought them all.  I'm actually happier that I found these than anything I could have found for wave 1 of the upcoming (And delayed) film.

This is a good find for me as I like the vehicle and am particularly happy to be able to assemble the Street Vipers into a small squad now.

I think I have found a variant that's gone unnoticed.

Out of the seven Tiger Snakes I now have, five of them have a matte finish, but two others have a smoother gloss finish.  In the image above, you can see the gloss finish on the rip-launcher of the top-most box.  The other four it rests on are matte-coated.  It's not easy to tell the difference in the images.

The gloss coat also covers the main body of the vehicle itself, here is the best I could do to display that below:

You can barely tell with my camera and lighting, but the one on the top is the gloss Tiger Snake.  I find the gloss significantly nicer looking than the matte finished one below it.

Rise of Cobra: Tiger Snake

Okay, Hisstank recently ran a "Second look" type of review on the Tiger snake, which kind of steals some of my thunder.  Honestly though, I was going to include this at some point in a "review" anyway (or whatever shtick it is that I am doing).  Check it out.  The pictures are going to be much better than mine.

Sometimes things get overlooked because you can only bring yourself to focus so much when you're glancing over a bunch of crap.  GI Joe: Rise of Cobra featured some toys that caused such deep and reverberating distain that many wrote off much wrote off the line as being unworthy of their time and money (although, to be fair, some always do this).  For example: Pouty-lips Snake-eyes, Oversized spring-loaded crap everywhere, and it's not like Tatum Channing made Duke any more likeable.....

I'm sure most everyone looked at the Tiger Snake with that same distain, after all, with it's rip-attack launcher it was clearly intended for kids rather than collectors or army-builders.  This is unfortunate given that it's a unique little vehicle that is sort of unique and has a plausible purpose.  Plus, it's driver, the Street Viper, is a stripped down version of the ROC Elite Viper, which is my favorite army builder of the ROC line.  Just pick up a sidearm and a few other goodies at http://www.marauderinc.com/servlet/StoreFront and you're golden.

Let me be clear, in my opinion, this toy is not really worth the $15 normal retail price.  However, I found two at TRU for $5 each which was a really great bargain.  Now that these toys are over a year old, it might be hard to find that way, but you never know.  If you find them for under $10, you might want to consider picking a few up.  If I could find a stack of 10 for $5, I would pick up all 10 just for the Street viper since it fits my idea of the "faceless" Cobra army-building I gravitate towards.

Once you possess it , it's hard to notice the potential until you take the launcher and set it aside.  By all means, annoy the cat with it's RIP ATTACK functionality a few times before doing so, if you must, but then put it away.  You probably won't want it again after five minutes of using it as the manufacturer intended.

The box comes with the vehicle, the Street Viper, the ripcord, launcher, instructions, and a pre-cut file card, which is a nice touch.  What the whole thing lacks, however, is some sort of blueprints that gives us a brief run-down of what all this means.  This entitles me to make my own:

 

In case the print in the images are too small, I'll list them out:

Overhead View:

1) Battery heatsink/Road Ploy

2) Diagnostics access panel

3) Main battery cooling system (armored)

4) Steering rack guard

5) weapon release/ammunition feed actuator hatch

6) Access hatch

7) Instrument panel

Side View

1) 40kw driveshaft mounted DC electric motor with regenerative breaking.
2) 2x 15kW driveshaft mounted electric motors with regen breaking
3) .60 cal machine gun with active cooling
4) Ammunition belt and can, 210 rounds
5) Steel reinforced canopy
6) Lithium/polymer composite body
7) Recoil limiter

Weight full:       1435lbs
Weight empty:   1200lbs
Top spd:             125mph
Accel 0-60:        4.1 sec
Accel 60-100:    8.5 sec
Range:               110 miles
Recharge time:  2.5 hours

Some of you may notice that overhead #2 looks conspicuously like a gas cap and ask why I made this an electric vehicle.  After all, a gas-powered vehicle would have made this thing much cheaper for Cobra to field and support logistically, but given the space constraints I didn't see where there was room to fit anything more than a very small single-cylinder motor in any place you would think a gas engine could have been placed.  The only really significant spaces on this small vehicle are the small areas above the drivers legs and in the wheels themselves, which to me limits this to some sort of advanced electric design, which I took the liberties of adding regenerative braking to.  Think about it, three independent motors located in the wheel housings, allowing the rotating wheels to act as a cooling mechanism.  Furthermore, electrical engines have a distinct advantage in low-rpm torque allowing for better acceleration and maintenance is more simple.  Plus, three engines provide three wheel drive that give it great traction against various road hazards.

The Tiger snake is powered by two sets of batteries: the main battery and the high discharge battery system.  The high-discharge battery is contained in the front of the vehicle behind the instrument console and above the driver's legs.  This battery engages when pushed above normal cruising speeds or when the main battery has worn down sufficiently.  The main battery is integrated into the polymer body.  It can by itself maintain a cruise speed of about 35mph before the high discharge battery is engaged, which then supplies power incrementally.  The vicious "cowcatcher" like ram at the front of the vehicle fits two purposes: It's a heat sink for the cooling system and clears road hazards out of the way.

The obvious drawbacks to an electric design is that you would have to have a way of supplying electricity wherever the Tiger snake operated, along with a few hours at a time to let each unit recharge, and the range of electrical vehicles tends to be limited.  The best environment for the Tiger snake to operate in would be an urban setting close to a depot and it's best use is as a patrol or assault vehicle.

For the weapon system I chose to make the machine gun something with a little more punch than a possible joe equivalent, the Browning M2.  At .60 cal, this gun should be sufficient to penetrate and inflict damage to lightly to medium armored and unarmored vehicles. The thickness of the barrel suggests water cooling and sighting would be provided by straight-head iron sights that flipped up out of the dashboard.


Overall, I think the Tiger snake fits well into an urban environment where there is power infrastructure.  It's size and speed make it suitable for patrol and pursuit against hostile vehicles on boulevards riddled with hazards that would prohibit full size vehicles from passing through.  It's downside is that it has only limited frontal armor, limited range, and is probably fairly expensive to field compared to say, gas powered RVs. 

The Vamp Mk 1

I'm willing to bet that most anyone who collects GI Joe and organizes their own Table of Organization features the VAMP in some way as their basic ground transport, recon, and mission vehicle for the Joe side. It may be the most ubiquitous vehicle in the Joe motor-pool from the old cartoon series, and as a toy has been re-released a number of times with a number of modifications and repaints.

Cobra also has it's own line of vehicles based off the VAMP mold called the Stinger.

Yeah, the pictures aren't great (and yes, I know the couch is ugly). but anyways, there are a lot of other reviews out there with great photos.  I'm more concerned with the information found on the blueprints:

Let me type this out:

1) OFF-ROAD TIRES ON ALLOY WHEELS

2) URETHANE FENDER FLARES

3) CONCEALED AID KIT AND TOOLBOX

4) 4-WHEEL DISK BRAKES

5) 4-WHEEL INDEPENDENT SUSPENSION

6) 4-WHEEL DRIVE

7) 4.8 LITER V12 FUEL-INJECTED TWIN-TURBO ENGINE; RANGE: 550 MILES; TOP SPEED: 140 MPH

8) REMOVABLE FIBERGLASS HOOD CANOPY

9) HOOD HOLD-DOWN PINS

10) HEAT EXTRACTORS

11) HEAVY-DUTY WINCH

12) TOW BAR

13) HALOGEN HEADLAMP WITH ELECTRIC DEFROSTER

14) MACHINE GUN: 7.63MM/COMPUTER SYNCHRONIZED

15) RAPID-INDUCTION AIRBOOST HOSES

16) CANNON VENTILATOR INTAKES

17) ROLL CAGE

18) BULLETPROOF GAS CANS

19) TOW HOOK

20) PORTABLE GEAR PACK

21) UTILITY SHOVEL

Basically, someone looks like they knew what they were doing when they built this as a high-performance off-road vehicle. It's not a huge stretch of the imagination to conclude that a vehicle like this with that sort of engine could go 140MPH on a straight-away, but for some reason it doesn't give a HP rating. It has good brakes, good suspension, and has of course, four wheel drive.

Now, taking a look at what's under the hood:

I appreciate that someone at Hasbro seems to be doing some thinking about where thing go mechanically. You may have noticed from the outside that the front seems a bit small for the V-12 listed in the blueprints, which would suggest that the VAMP might have been intended as a rear-engine'd vehicle.  This is confirmed when looking under the hood, which doesn't really look like what you would expect out of engine detail. Instead, this appears to be a very large cooling system separated from the engine in back. There are two separate coolant overflow reservoirs, possibly indicating the colling system is divided in two for redundancy (in case one gets shot out, or something).  This suggests the VAMP was designed to go full throttle, all the time.

THE MISSING INFORMATION AND STATISTICS:

Earlier, I mentioned that no HP ratings were made for this vehicle, nor are there any torque ratings (that would have at least given us the hint whether this was gas powered or diesel). This means that we'll have to make them up based in the information we have. First thing: we have to decide what sort of fuel this thing uses.

The military uses a Jet-rated fuel for much of it's combat vehicles called JP-8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-8. JP-8 can be used will a lot of diesel engines, so presumably with a diesel-powered VAMP. So, I am envisioning a diesel powered vehicle for the simple reason that it's what the military prefers. Given that diesel engines are rather flexible in what they can burn, it likely can fuel up at some base and also at civilian pumps where diesel is available.

It was difficult finding a twin-turbocharged V12 diesel engine as small as 4.8L. The closest match I could find was this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_R8_Le_Mans_Concept . The Audi was planned to have a 6liter engine that produced nearly 500HP and over 700lb-ft of torque. I'm going to go with this as a baseline for the VAMP and downsize it based on displacement, and estimate something a little more conservatively tuned for military uses: 350HP with 500lb-ft of torque.

ARMOR AND PROTECTION

I find it strange that a vehicle with a fiberglass hood and urethane fenders would so distinctly mention armored gas-tanks. Fiberglass is light, and urethane can resist the occupational hazards of off-road racing, but it's not anything that would have much effect in resisting damage from small-arms fire. I guess bulletproof gas tanks is something at least since if you're going to come under fire in a VAMP, it's best done with your rear exposed. Though sometimes plastic model toys lack clear plastic for windows for practical reasons, I don't think the VAMP MK I was intended to have a windshield. Likewise, there are no doors. The protection for the rider and driver is almost nonexistant.  With such an exposed interior, taking the time and adding the wieght to armor other parts of the vehicle wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. What does make sense is that the VAMP's defenses depend on mobility and speed instead of armor.

WEAPONS:

I saved the VAMP's armament for last because it's the most vexing thing about the vehicle. I'm glad the blueprints ignored the laserbeam likeness of the weapons on the turret and listed it as a pair of 7.63mm machine guns. I like sticking closer to reality with joeverse munitions, and while i am willing to give more lattitude to COBRA to pursue more sci-fi weaponry, I try and keep GI Joe itself within orthodox NATO supplies. As glad as I am to see the mention of a machine gun instead of some far-flung plasma weapon, this caliber actually makes no sense if we are going with the closest available NATO round.   The 7.63mm mentions I could find on-line seem to suggest something like the the 7.63x25mm pistol cartridge, which would be too ridiculously underpowered to necessitate being placed in a vehicle turret. It's much more likely something like the 7.62x51mm which itself was a follow up to the old .30cal, making it a suitable light machine gun for use against personnel, emplacements, and unarmored vehicles.   So, we're going to go with the 7.62 caliber machine guns on the VAMP.

However, the big problem with the turret is how it's supposedly operated. I'm not sure what "computer syncronized" is supposed to mean, but there is an entry about it at http://gijoe.wikia.com/wiki/V.A.M.P. :

"The computer is smart enough to choose its targets via pre-programming thus allowing the driver to concentrate on maneuvering."

From a technology standpoint, this is nonsense. Having a computer think about what it's targeting, or to be able to target something with a vehicle that lacks any complicated targeting system is too far gone into science fiction for me.   It is much more realistic that there is basic visual imaging built into the turret that feeds info into the passenger's station console.  This sounds like this would be rather crude and disorienting if you fired at something too far off to the sides.  Also, note that the air-hoses that seem to be responsible for aiming the turret would prevent 360 degree rotation and it looks like it's only capable of firing in about a 160 degree arch. This would seem to match, more or less, the usefull line of sight of the passenger.  Now, if there were some sort of helmet that provided a 360 targeting view that would be great, but there's not.  This certainly limits the use of the weapon to targets in front of the vehicle, but you might say this was a reasonable and intended compromize for a low-tech vehicle that has enough speed and agility to keep it's targets in front of itself. 

ROLE

To me the VAMP Mk I serves as a fair basic transportation and utility vehicle. In combat it's something better suited to reconnaissance, pursuit, and hit-and-run tactics than direct engagement.  If I were to change anything I would probably remove the turret and replace it with a rear-firing machine gun mounted up top, and a forward firing machine gun mounted on the hood -both operated by the passenger.  But that's just me.