Of Troopers and Vipers

Joepedia.

The blue helmets, the black masks, the red Cobra symbol on their chests. These are the cannon fodder...I mean Troopers of Cobra. Troopers have been around since the beginning, acting as the equivalent of redshirts and background characters in the G.I. Joe comics and cartoons. In the former, they're made up of mercenaries, criminals, and whoever else attracted to Cobra for money. Considering that Cobra was a terrorist organization, it seems odd that they'd have an organized military force, but then again, we're talking about an organization headquartered on it's own island and led by a psychotic who wears a helmet with a highly reflective face plate, so common sense does not apply here. On the plus side, Cobra did have enough foresight to give these guys some cross-training, requiring each one to be at least competent at two different things. The only really notable member of the Cobra Troopers was Scar-Face, who appeared in some of the early comics. He assisted the higher-ups in their plans and was ultimately killed when the terrorist organization attacked and destroyed the PITT, G.I. Joe's secret base.

Joepedia.

Then there's the Cobra Vipers. These guys, who looked completely different from the Troopers, appeared in the original G.I. Joe comic, along with their specialty variants, in the mid-to-late 80s. Technically, they basic Vipers are actually no different than the Troopers, aside from their uniforms. The general consensus, however, is that the former are on a slightly higher rung of the ladder than the latter. The idea being that when someone first enlists in Cobra, they start out as lowly Troopers and are eventually upped to either Viper or one of the specialty units, like Tele-Viper or Alley Viper, depending on your skills or lack thereof. It does make sense if you think about it. Like I said before, Cobra's pool of recruits are mercenaries, criminals, and dregs of society; not all of them are going to walk in trained in communications or vehicle operation, or anything. So, you start them out blue uniformed cannon fodder while you assess their usefulness and then train them accordingly. If they don't excel at something, then you can just train them to be a regular Viper or keep them in the blue and use them to soak up the incoming Joe fire that would otherwise have killed your better soldiers.

BurningAstronaut.

I'm not really sure why, but I like the Vipers. They look cool, for one, and I like the whole specialty classes that exist, Tele and Alley Vipers just being two of the many available. You can check out the rest of them at My Useless Knowledge. I think another reason for my affinity is that I owned at least two of them when I was a kid - the aforementioned Tele-Viper and a SAW Viper. I may have also had a Techno-Viper who, while having a bad ass sounding name, was basically a mechanic and to a lesser extent, a combat engineer. One of my cousins had an Alley Viper, which was one of the most bad ass action figures I had ever seen as a kid.