Desert Scorpion & SKRP10N-25

Pinchy-pinchy! Nobody volunteers to be a Scorpion. It is a punishment give to under-motivated Cobra Vipers who refuse to follow orders. In order to survive, they quickly learn to mimic the attack patterns of the colossal venomous SKRP10N-25s with which they live. Otherwise, they risk being stung, eaten alive, rent limb from limb, or crushed in the massive claws of the genetically-engineered creatures in their charge. You might think the two eventually develop a rapport of sorts, but Dr. Mindbender's genesplicing prioritizes savage ferocity in SKRP10N-25s over obedience to their handlers. Weirdly, that marketing text is found nowhere but Amazon's product listing - not Walmart, not Target, not even Hasbro Pulse. But while the first two sentences are just copied (more or less) from the original 1991 figure's filecard, everything else is new; and while we could see Amazon just copying old text to fill up space, it seems less likely they'd make up the stuff about Dr. Mindbender all on their own without permission. So is this official, or not? The original figure had a mask that seemed perfectly designed to allow them to function efficiently in desert conditions: the thick red goggles would prevent damage both from the sun and from any sand blowing around, while the part covering the nose and mouth would probably act as an air filter, allowing them to breathe. You could even make an argument that the grooves running vertically over the scalp were designed to make moving beneath the dunes easier. The Generation 3 Desert Scorpion changed the brigade from being a punishment detail to one that specifically exploited Middle Eastern recruits to fill its ranks. This version homages that by giving us something new: the mask can be removed from the toy's head, allowing us to sap in a different faceplate that humanizes him. The face has a dense beard and certainly makes him look like he comes from the region. While it wouldn't make sense for all the Desert Scorpions to look identical, you can still armybuild them by leaving most masked, and having the barefaced one as a squad commander or something. The sculpt is an update of the old costume, not just an up-size. Instead of a plain yellow shirt, there are now ribbed panels on the sides, and his boots now match the mask more than they do the helmet. In addition to the softgoods drape covering the back of the neck, he now has a full softgoods cape with a built-in scarf, to better bundle up against sandstorms. The proportions of the body do feel slightly off, though: like, the hips seem narrower than they should be, and the torso feels stretched vertically. That may just be a visual effect of the cape bulking him up right at the top, due to its sewn-in infinity scarf. The pads on his thighs are PVC pieces that simply slip onto the toy, so be careful not to knock them out of place when you're playing with him. Like the vintage figure, he's got a strap slung over his shoulder that has two red grenades attached in easy grabbing distance, though this time that's molded as part of the pad he wears on his chest. Overall, this figure is darker than the one from all those decades ago. His colorscheme remains yellow, black, and brown, but the pants are fully black instead of having yellow trunks, and the panels on the ribs keep the torso from being entirely yellow all the way around. This is all offset by the light tan of the shawl, which gives the dark something to contrast against. Putting metallic elements on his boots help, as well. His skintone on the bare arms (and the new face) is more tanned than before, since pale pink skin didn't make any sense for soldiers who were running around in the desert. The Desert Scorpion's stats are Foot Soldier 1, Light Weapons 1, Animal Handling 1, and Desert Combat 2 - all pretty fitting. He's armed with the same SMG and grapnel launcher as the Alley-Vipers, and has a pair of knives that can sheathe on his leg and the back of his belt. We get a set of Wolverine claws for each hand, updates of the "digger devices" the '90s toy had that allowed him to tunnel through sand more easily, as well as a billhook that's probably intended to help him corral the giant scorpions. That and his fancy backpack actually get some paint apps, which is nice, but the pack doesn't work very well with the cape: there's no hole in the cloth, so clearly it's meant to be worn inside the cloak (which would make sense, since you wouldn't want electronics exposed to sand if you could help it), but there's an articulated arm with a camera on the tip, and a wire that runs from the pack to plug into the opposite side of the helmet, and neither of those are useable if they're beneath the cape. Heck, the wire is barely useable as-is, because most of the stock photos show it sticking straight up in the air like an antenna. Presumably the idea is that the camera enhances vision in poor conditions, and its output is fed through the wire directly into the goggles - which is a smart design inclusion - but you pretty much have to twist the cape around to the side if you want the figure to use any of those features. The vintage toy came with a solid rubber scorpion pet; the G3 release updated that to be a robot merely shaped like a scorpion; Classified is back to being organic, though the name "SKRP10N-25" certainly sounds like it should apply to a machine, doesn't it? Do you think that stands for anything? "Synthetic Karyotype-Regeneration Protocol 10, Number 25"? The 25 would seem to be an identifying number (SKRP10N-22, SKRP10N-23, SKRP10N-24, etc.), but the bio we found suggests they're all 25s, no matter how many there are. The scorpion is huge, and sculpted in a realistic manner. Now, don't misunderstand us: this isn't a museum replica piece, by any means, but neither is it some kind of mechanical creation. It has a rough exoskeleton, overlapping plates of chiton armor, lots of intimidating spikes, etc. There are large white fangs around the mouth, and the overall body colors are black, brown, and tan - a decent match to its keeper's uniform. Outshining all the previous scorpions, this one gets a bunch of articulation: every leg has a balljoint where it joins the body and a swivel/hinge in the middle for the "knee," balljoints between each segment of the tail, plus balljoints for the arms, the claws, and even the "thumb" part of the pincers. The Desert Scorpion wasn't one of the famous Cobras back in the day, coming a bit too late in the line for that - they appear in 13 episodes during the unpopular DiC seasons, adding up to a grand total of four minutes of screen time, and even that was a lot of background scene-filling. At first I thought this was the last pre-planned Cobra we needed, but that was a Sand Scorpion, not a Desert Scorpion. (Bonus fun fact: the Valor vs. Venom Sand Scorpion was, in fact, not on the Classified website from the start: the site went live in late June, but the Sand Scorpion was only added a week or two later. Mmm, factual!) There are a few issues here, but this is overall a pretty great figure, and the giant scorpion adds a whole bunch of value. I picked the set up when Target was having a sale, which made the purchase even better. -- 01/30/26 What do you think "SKRP10N" means? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.