Professor Rottclaw & Cobra Deinonychus

Are you ready to be shocked and alarmed? This is not only an entirely new character with an entirely new niche/gimmick, Hasbro has also written a full and complete filecard for him! Crispin Killgore grew up a child of privilege, his family's vast wealth granting him every luxury imaginable, but no money could provide this young boy's greatest wish - a real-life dinosaur of his very own. His obsession with all things prehistoric drove him to studies combining cutting edge genetic research with paleontology. As his methods began pushing ethical boundaries he was expelled for unscrupulous conduct and rumored looting of dig sites. Ostracized from any reputable university, he sought out Cobra and Dr. Mindbender as the only organization with the adequate facilities and capital to realize his experiments - reviving the Cobra Deinonychus from extinction. Professor Rottclaw now serves as pack leader of Cobra's Paleo-Viper forces pairing the troopers with his creations which they attempt to wrangle and direct against the enemies of Cobra with mixed results. Granted, that was only posted on Instagram, which is like one step above putting it on Friendster in terms of anyone being able to find/see it, but the fact that it exists at all is a goddamn win in our column! We've been needling them about the lack of bios for four years, and the design team has finally done something right! So congrats to you, team: we make fun of you when you do bad, so we'll praise you when you do good. Wow, a spoiled brat from a rich South African family becomes a supervillain-class problem for the entire planet just to sate his aspy special interest? What a wild fantasy world the designers have created here! Judging by the skintone, he's no Afrikaner, though, unless he's really been hitting the tanning beds! The stark white mohawk is matched by painted designs on his forehead and under his eyes, and he's sculpted with a grumpy frown. This set technically counts as an army-builder, thanks to the second head. The set includes a helmet, with a metal plate covering the mouth and nose, a horizontal viewfinder visor with four different lenses in it, and a head wrap that ends in a point on top. It honestly feels like nothing so much as a Night Creeper redesign that got rejected for not being '80s enough, and has now just been assigned to this figure as a way to at least use the sculpt someone had worked hard on. Anyway, this isn't necessarily something meant for Rottclaw himself to wear: he's the leader of the Paleo-Vipers, and presumably the faceless head represents their standard wear. The uniform below the neck is interesting. He's got regular shoes, sturdy pants, then a heavy belt with tactical armor in the front and rising up on the sides, as well as two leather flaps hanging down thighs to knee level. We call them leather because they've got a more organic design than the rest - those huge scales say he's wearing dino skin! His chest armor leaves a little gap so we can see his abs, and while it's sculpted to look like metal or carbon fiber or whatever, he does have a ruff of feathers around his neck, and the shoulder armor looks like it could have come from the same "modern samurai" armorer as Budo's gear (though here it's attached to the arm, rather than to the chest). To help this wild new character integrate with GI Joe proper, he's wearing traditional Cobra colors: muted blues with red accents. They could have given him any colors at all, since there's no previous incarnation they need to stay true to, but blue and red lets you know immediately who he's siding with. The dinosaur skirt is nearly white, adding a strong flash of contrast while still tying back in with his hair, and there are accents in a dark grey to keep any of the other colors from getting overwhelming. The ruddy skintone isn't what you think of when you think "rich guy from Johannesburg," but it does go with the clothing colors nicely. Professor Rottclaw's weapons include a chunky, snub-nosed pistol that fits in a holster on the left side of his belt, a whip that can be held in two loops on the right, and a single large claw that's strapped to the bracer he wears on his right arm. That's silver, so it looks like metal rather than bone. That's removable, if you take the hand off, which is nice: as long as we're army-building, we can pretend that Rottclaw goes bareheaded and wears the claw, while the standard Paleo-Vipers get a helmet and no fancy sign of station like that. The stats on the packaging are [a new symbol that's presumably "Genetics"] 3, Light Weapons 1, Animal Handling 3, and Science 4. And we say again: no fair adding or changing symbols when you don't have a website we can get them from to accurately update our list. In 1993, as GI Joe was on its way out the door, Hasbro repainted the 1988 Desert Fox 6WD vehicle as the Toys "Я" Us-exclusive "Dino-Hunter," with the text on the back of the box talking about how dinos had recently been uncovered from the bowels of Cobra Island. Obviously that was just their attempt to cash in on the popularity of Jurassic Park (Kenner had the JP license, but you'll recall that they'd become a subsidiary of Hasbro two years prior), but it does mean that merging GI Joe and dinosaurs is not some idea that was pulled out of nowhere. The dino in this set is a deinonychus, which really underscores how much of a dinosaur nerd Professor Rottclaw is: see, while that is the scientifically accurate name, what normal people would know this as is a "velociraptor." Yes, thanks to Michael Crichton conflating the two based on a fringe theory at the time. But dinosaurs are Rottclaw's special interest, so of course he'd insist on the proper name! This is more like a real deinonychus than a Jurassic Park version: remember, real velociraptors were about the size of a goose or turkey, and would have filled the same ecological niche as coyotes, while the ones in the movie were man-sized murder machines who hunted for sport; a real deinonychus was somewhere in between those two, coming up (as it does in this figure's case) to about hte height of a grown man's hip. It's mostly grey, with black feathers on his shoulders and tail, black claws, tan hands and feet, and red on the face and throat. There's a Cobra logo on its left hip - presumably tattooed there, unless there's some really precise genetic engineering going on! On first reading, I thought the set was saying the dino was the "Paleo-Viper" - you know, like Cobra had just given them a cute codename. That idea was supported by the fact that this isn't just a wild raptor running about on its own, it has special armor to wear! There's a thick metal collar, with a handle so its human assignee can keep control of it, and it has a two-piece helmet to make it even more fearsome and dangerous: the upper half has a hooked fin with a serrated front edge rising up of fthe nose, while the lower half has spikes that stick off the jaw and chin. Both halves have sharp metal teeth, because regular teeth weren't scary enough. The jaw armor wants to slip out of place way too easily, becaue the wedge shape of the jaw can slide farther into the armor than intended. All that is removable, though, leaving us with a fairly plain specimen. Other than the Cobra logo, of course. Part of the feathers on the neck are done as a separate ring held on by the head - you have to remove the neck to get the collar on or off, so you can decide if you want those extra feathers there while it's wearing the collar or not. It fits fine either way. Articulation is good. Hasbro doesn't often resort to "solid lump of plastic" for its Classified pets, and the nameless Cobra Deinonychus is no exception. The tail is bendy, and joins the body with a balljoint. There are joints for the hips, knees, ankles, and toes, the shoulders, elbows, and wrists, and of course the neck, head, and jaw. What's really great, though, is the one joint specific to this release: "deinonychus" literally means "terrible claw" in Ancient Greek, for that giant toenail made so famous by Alan Grant threatening a child with one. In order to keep the claw from wearing down, deinonychuses would walk or run with the toe held up, to keep the claw from scraping against the ground, then flex it down like a cat when it was time to attack. To show this, the big toe on each foot is individually articulated, able to swivel up or down as you like. Cool! The pairing of "GI Joe" and "dinosaurs" may not be as unprecedented as it first seemed, but this set is a lot better than their last attempt. Professor Rottclaw and the Paleo-Vipers are both interesting new additions to the lore, and the dinosaur has play features not even official Jurassic Park raptors have ever gotten. The dino helmet is a little loose, but not terribly so, and you can get this right off the shelf at the store instead of having to order online. What's not to like? -- 07/17/26 If he's a professor, does that mean he has tenure? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.