As the chilly, autumnal nights draw in, as the leaves turn orange and fall to the ground to be crunched underfoot, and as Fanta cans across the land replace their traditional livery with that of the most phantasmic, we are back with yet another fiendish review in celebration of the spookiest season with… err… Deathcobra?
Okay, so it’s not actually a Halloween-themed toy, but it’s got “Death” in the name. That’s pretty spooky, right?
The badass named Deathcobra gets his very first official toy as part of the Haslab Transformers Liokaiser set that you had to put up money to back 4 years ago. Okay, it was a year and a half, but it feels like 4 years ago, and you get the drift. “It’s been a while,” as Staind used to sing. But seriously, how cool is the name “Deathcobra”? How has that guy not been a bigger deal? How did he not fight Daniel LaRusso in that Karate Kid tv series? (Cobra Kai is glorious and you should go watch it)
He might not have made many appearances, but he does get a review on this very blog.
Strike first. Strike hard, and scroll down for the rest of the article.
Crashing through the sky comes a fearful cry: Death Cobraaa! Death Cobraaaaaaaa! Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. But whom exactly is this Deathcobra jabroni? Well, this green and yellow geezer appeared in one single episode of the Japan-only Transformers Victory cartoon, where he was supposed to replace Hellbat on the team (or “Ellbat,” as he is now known—not sure why it’s Spanish?).
Hijinks ensue, and Hellbat accidentally unalives (isn’t that what the YouTube kids say?) him by shooting wildly at him from behind a rock as Deathcobra, the elite Decepticon warrior, stands there in the open just shooting at said rock. Nobody ever said the Decepticons were the sharpest tools in the cybershed. Anyway, as these things often go, because of the mysterious nature of the character and his very little screen time, he caught on. Now, in 2026, he gets his first official action figure as easily the best Haslab Transformers stretch goal so far. If this guy hadn’t made it to production, I would have rioted.
Deathcobra’s vehicle mode is a helicopter that seems very similar to the one you blow up from a snowy rooftop in Metal Gear Solid. “A Hind D? Colonel, what’s a Russian gunship doing here?”
There’s no mix of other-era design elements because he’s never really appeared in any. Barring one cameo in IDW’s comics, he is pretty much locked to Victory, so his design is exclusively based on that. The helicopter might not be a painstakingly accurate take on the real-world vehicle—it has vibes of someone who has been ejector-seated into the air and has a massive gap in the side (it feels like Breastcobra should have been able to go in there to fill it out, really). But none of this really matters because of how chunky and fun it is. It doesn’t feel like a fiddly, fragile, collector-focused toy; it’s more like an old-school toy from a forgotten time. Just pure fun, muchacho.
You have your spinning rotor, and you get a little gun that can swivel underneath the front of the helicopter. You can also peg “Breastcobra” to the underside of the tail, but that’s it. Does it need to do more? No, not really. It’s kind of like a Red Hot Chili Peppers song: sure, it’s fun and perfectly serviceable at what it does, but does it need to be anything deeper, or more of an experience? No. It’s just fine being a dancing, naked old skeleton.
Transformation to robot mode is dead easy and will take you about 20 seconds on a slow day. You straighten the legs, flip the cockpit, and pull the arms out. That gets you most of the way there. You might expect more from a Haslab, but for me, that’s so much of this toy’s charm. It’s not purely trying to be a super-elaborate and complex collectible—it wants you to play with it. It is just fun.
There are heel spurs that flip out to help him stay stood up, as he is a bit back-heavy, but a consequence of the back kibble is that you can also use the helicopter tail as a built-in stand to prop him up. It does really stick out though, and gives him the appearance of having been skewered like a vegetarian cocktail sausage.
Once you are finished with all that, you are left with a fantastic-looking robot. Seriously—look at this guy? He looks like Serpentor had a baby with a Zaku. Modern Transformers generally have great headsculpts, but this is some next-level chicanery (I just wanted to use that word, even if it doesn’t make sense). It’s got all the right junk in all the right places. He has giant yellow Gary Lineker ears, but it’s the red picking out the cobra eyes that really sets it off. There’s a Visionaries helmet quality to it that sings to me and reminds me I still need to source those new Super7 Visionaries figures from somewhere. Sigh.
What I really love are the proportions, though. Sure, his appearance matches up with what you see on screen in that one episode of Victory, but the super-chunky and rounded proportions are soooooo Dreamwave. It’s like Pat Lee has escaped the Comics Phantom Zone and Starscream’s ghosted his way into plastic form. Now, you know I love Dreamwave, and I know you probably don’t, so this is manna from Arkanium heaven to me. The shapes and proportions just hit those pudgy green Michelin Man Dreamwave notes in a way few Transformers toys ever manage to capture, even the ones explicitly based on DW designs. I might be completely mad, but this is exactly what I want: not hyper-articulation or extreme accuracy, but limbs that look like they’ve been inflated by a football pump.
That said, it would be wrong to say he is lacking for articulation. A toy doesn’t have to be super dynamic to move well, and the articulation he does have works well for his boxy music body. More than this (heh), he even has wrist swivels for those folks who are obsessed with them.You aren’t going to be able to get Figuarts level pretzel limb posing out of him, but you aren’t supposed. By chance, the tail helps act as a surrogate stand so you can get more out of him than you probably ought to be able to. He can at least….sweep the leg.
If you were hoping for accessories then this guy actually has slightly more than most of the other members of the team. Deathcobra comes with his trusted animal pal, “Cobrabreast.” Sure, it sounds like one of those movies your uncle hid in that locked drawer you weren’t allowed to peek in when you were a kid, but that is his name. Other than being a bra, it can unplug and is reminiscent of the purple skate ramp from Siege, Slitherfang. It does also turn into a gun, which is kind of cool, but detached from Deathcobra it leaves his chest looking bare and empty, not unlike someone has built a small miniature golf course upon it.
There is also a small black gun, but that is mainly for the helicopter, and his rotors can detach and plug in anywhere else you want if you wish to give him a “spinning shield” (as some folks more determined than me to make it a thing would call it). Whereas I’d just say they look like giant hairdresser scissors, so perhaps they should have called him “Toni” and the Cobrabreast “Guy.”
The point of this toy is simply that it’s cool it exists. It’s a bonus, and whilst it might not be packed with features, it does more than we have any right to expect it to. Hasbro could have just given us the main six guys and we’d have been happy. But they went to breastfinity and beyond to give us something genuinely quite wicked, and cut a raft of third-party companies off at the knees in the process. We live in a time where every Transformers character, no matter how obscure, has a chance of getting a new toy. This time, it was Deathcobra’s ticket that was called, and by great Weezer’s ghost did he deliver.
But wait! There’s slightly more!
As he is part of a combiner team, he can turn into the left arm of Liokaiser. The hand is built-in and is specifically sculpted as the left hand, so you can’t really swap sides. He does make a great arm, though—way better than I expected. I doubt many people are going to have it in this configuration, but it’s still amazing that he can do it.
Let’s face it, the majority of us are going to stick with the traditional Liokaiser setup. Fortunately, Hasbro’s designers thought of that and included one extra mode to give him something to do when the others are smashed together as a giant man: he turns into a shoulder cannon. He is mostly in helicopter mode, and you can decorate him with all of the little animal partners for extra firepower, but you simply peg him on top. For extra stability, there are slots in Guyhawk’s wings that he can also peg into. It… looks like a giant man holding a helicopter, but it’s better than nothing.
Am I going to review the other six members that make up Liokaiser? Absolutely no chance. But here are a couple of photos of it, because it is absolutely rad (as in cool, not Rad the Action Master or that kid from Transformers Armada).
He is not lean, but he is a green fighting machine!
My final words on the whole set would be that it is hands down the best Haslab so far. How can you look at that toy and not be wowed? If you didn’t back it then you have plenty of time to develop a time machine and go back to rectify that.