In today's review, yo said Alpine really lucked out by being released in 1985 and therefore getting to feature prominently in the cartoon. But in some alternate world, that didn't happen.
Ages ago, we told you how 1984's Deep Six had his head changed before going into production. The notes on the design sheet said he should have a "removeable dome" [sic] and the "old Alpine Trooper head."
Wait, the what?
Working back from that reference, we find this design for an Alpine Trooper, one that couldn't have been our Alpine, because it was old enough to have already been rejected by the time Deep Six's design got changed in 1983:
It's interesting, though, that the hat he's wearing has the same kind of padding on it that Alpine would eventually get. And a pair of goggles (though they're not over his eyes)!
But more interesting: look at the body. Ignore the colors, ignore the rope, and think about the physical realities of that design. Padded vest over an unbuttoned collared shirt, harness on the hips, gun on one leg, pitons on the other, elbow and knee pads, a pouch on the chest, grenades... does all of that feel familiar? If you can't quite place it, imagine it in blue and red - that body is the original 1984 Scrap-Iron!
So this character pitch, the unnamed Alpine Trooper, didn't get approved to move forward on its own, but its head and body separately contributed to two 1984 figures. Like we've said before: Hasbro had already paid for the work, and by gum, they were gonna find a way to use it! Suddenly, some of the stranger bits of Scrap-Iron's design make more sense, once you know he was designed to climb mountains, not fire rockets; they just took that existing body, put Ron Rudat's Scrap-Iron head design on it, and sent it out the door.
So if the Alpine Trooper had been made, not only would two characters have ended up much different than we eventually knew them, Alpine wouldn't have come out at the right time to be a prominent character on the cartoon, and Bazooka would have been left friendless. What a swing!
