The Crimson Guards (80s Pulp)

File name : Top Secret
Primary military specialty : Undercover espionnage
Secondary military specialty : Accounting, Law

More Cobra baddies today, as we move on to my childhood's favourites (ok, they still are my favourites), the Crimson Guards, the elite shock troops of the Cobra legions.

They are usually depicted as Cobra Commander bodyguards, and also act as deep-cover or sleeper agents, conducting operations in civilian guises. It makes me laugh that they are also lawyers (obviously the elite bad guys are lawyers), a fact I had to share with my my wife Laurie (who's a Lawyer).

They have a really smart uniform, for the military uniform buffs, complete with shoulder straps and silver cords. While the action figures had a black helmet with a silver visor, I went with the cartoon and card art with the silver helmet and dark visor, which I find looks much better.

Completely clad in red, they were somewhat of a challenge to paint but I'm really happy how they came out. I went with a gloss finish on their visors and it came out great!  The silver Cobra symbol on their chest are actually custom made decals from Company B. It was a bit of a pain to slide such tiny transfers, especially since the torsos of the figures are not totally flat, but after a lot of swearing I managed to do a good job of it! It really adds to the figures.

I believe it shows that I really like them, as they are some of my favourite work I've done recently, even though the red highlights are a little lost in the pictures.

The figures themselves are really great, too. They also have a lot less straps than their blue brothers (yeah)!