1993 saw the introduction of one of the ugliest, meanest-looking, nastiest enemy trooper figures ever created for the G.I.Joe line -- the HEADHUNTER STORMTROOPER.

Although officially listed as a Cobra, there's a little more history involved here than that. In 1992, Hasbro introduced the special team known as DRUG ELIMINATION FORCE into the world of G.I.Joe. It was a very well-intentioned idea, to present a special team of drug-fighting G.I.Joes, and provide drug prevention tips on the back of the package. The toys even bore the logo of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

However, Hasbro was reluctant to have G.I.Joe's best known enemy, Cobra, become involved with drug-pushing. It was one thing to present Cobra as a ruthless army of potential world-conquerors. But drug pushing was -- and is -- a very real and very severe problem throughout the country. To that end, Hasbro created a new enemy, the HEADHUNTERS, run by the vicious HeadMan. In both the comics and the animated series, admittedly for reasons of their own in both cases, Cobra actually teamed up with the G.I.Joe Team to defeat the HeadMan and his HeadHunters.

A second year of D.E.F. was in the works. But the first year, unfortunately, hadn't fared very well. I personally never blamed the concept. I blamed the gimmick. The D.E.F. figures came with a large weapon with a so-called "Battle-Flash" feature. Basically, the weapon was molded from transparent plastic, and when you pressed a button, it fired its missile and lit up. That was it. It was, essentially, a missile-firing night light. For this, the price of the figures was raised a fair bit.

The second year of D.E.F. would not have included the gimmick, but the bottom line was, however valuable D.E.F.'s message was, the stores didn't want any more D.E.F. The only place the second year of figures appeared on actual D.E.F. packaging was in Australia. But with the figures already well in production, Hasbro didn't want to scrap the figures. So they repacked them as a fourth assortment of the basic Battle Corps line in 1993, and reassigned the HeadHunters from that year over to Cobra as "Urban Crime" specialists, with some modifications to their file cards to remove any mention of drugs.

The three HeadHunter types included Gristle, a new character who would've been HeadMan's right hand thug, a recolored version of the basic HeadHunters, and the new HEADHUNTER STORMTROOPERS, the elite HeadHunter troopers.

Now, whether you want to associate these guys with Cobra, or whether you want to, on your own, carry on with Drug Elimination Force and keep these guys as non-Cobra-affiliated HeadHunters, what you've got in either case is one seriously nasty-and-mean soldier here.

The head looks like a high-tech skull. Not like Cobra's Range-Vipers. This is more stylized and sort of futuristic in appearance. The helmet is relatively small and looks rather tight-fitting. The lower face is the skull-like part, painted in metallic gold. There are orange goggles over the eyes, really the only significant color on a figure that is outfitted mostly in very dark grey and gloss black with a small amount of metallic gold trim.

The uniform is the really scary part. Significant parts of the front, back, and arms are not only designed to look like they're armored -- they're spiked! I'm sure it's all well within toy safety standards, but they are fairly sharp little things, and in scale, it's not something that anyone would want to run into in a hand-to-hand combat situation. The rest of the uniform looks to be well-constructed and well padded.

And certainly the HeadHunter Stormtrooper is well armed! Molded to the figure is a knife on the chest, a pistol holster on one leg, and what look like small grenades on the other. His separate accessories include two rifles, a knife, and a large orange-colored spring-action missile launcher, which came with two missiles.

The HeadHunter Stormtrooper's file card makes specific reference to the uniform, stating that trying to tackle one of them is like trying to wrestle a porcupine! The file card also states that they're as violent and nasty as they appear -- which is considerable -- and that they have the rather odd dichotomy of being highly trained and disciplined, but also notoriously short tempered and quick to anger. They also tend to be rather slow. I thought that helmet looked like it was an awfully tight fit.

Still, the HEADHUNTER STORMTROOPER is a very impressive figure, and is one that is generally very well-regarded in the collectors' community, whether you want him assigned to Cobra or the HeadHunters. Personally, I say we put a bunch of them up against a mess of Alley-Vipers and see who wins the urban wars. But if you want a figure that has the distinct image of absolute nastiness, well, that's the HEADHUNTER STORMTROOPER