Sam Cobra - ' Le Bandit Articule '
According to Clayton, Sam first hit the Canadian shelves in a brown mailer type box and he was initially called "Sinister Sam Cobra". Actually called Sam Cobra on the instruction sheet that shows a Sam headed cowboy with the normal cowboy hard and soft accessories.
There is a lot of speculation about this figure. It is possible that this figure is either the first Dangerous Dan or the first Sinister Sam Cobra.... or, maybe both!
Shortly after Sheriff Goode came out in '71-72, the Canadian Marx company obviously wanted an outlaw. Now they couldn't use the US outlaw (black bodied Sam Cobra) because that was the same mold as Sheriff Goode. That would have been a 'Spy vs Spy' kind of thing....
This is what I believe may have happened - In a rush to get a new character to market, Marx (CA) stuck a cobra head on a johnny body. gave him black and silver accessories and had plain mailer boxes printed up that said either "Sinister Sam Cobra" or "Dangerous Dan". The figures went into these boxes and off they went. Now, this is wild speculation on my part. But it would be pretty simple to print up the boxes and instruction sheets and use existing parts to make the figures to fill in for a possible Christmas rush. After this, the company could go on to make a real figure called Sam Cobra.
Clayton believes that the figure was actually a blue bodied Dangerous Dan, see his article on Dangerous Dan's History.
1974
The real "Sam Cobra" was only issued in Canada around 1974 in the BOTW style box. This bilingual box carries the sub-title of "Le Bandit Articule" [The Articulated Bandit] All canadian Sams that Bruno has seen, don't have a hole under the left hand for the stiletto. This is odd to me because some of the Sheriff Goodes have the hole. So the first issue Goodes have the hole but when they went to the BOTW style they stopped making the hole for both Goode and Cobra. I'd like to know why. Was it a mold problem or a decision by Scarbourgh? If it was a decision, why continue to make the stiletto and did they change the instruction sheet?
