 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review And if you've been following me on Facebook, you know, this is the video that was two weeks in the making I had some rather annoying camera problems But I managed to coax this camera to life one more time to hopefully get one more video out of it before I have To replace it you may also notice that my usual background has been replaced with festive holiday stuff That's because the space where I normally shoot these videos has been taken over by Christmas speaking of which This is the last video. I will be shooting before Christmas. So happy holidays and Merry Christmas to all of you out there Also, remember, I will be giving away a vintage GI Joe toy when this channel hits 100 subscribers And we are really close. In fact, we may hit 100 subscribers over Christmas And if that happens watch for my 100 subscriber announcement video some time after Christmas But you're not watching this to hear about my personal problems or about announcements You're here to see a review of Storm Shadow. This is the Cobra Ninja Storm Shadow first introduced in 1984 Also sold in 1985 and 1986. He was discontinued in 1987 and in 1988 We got a second version of Storm Shadow Storm Shadow version 2 is a pretty nice update on the original But we're here to look at the original version of Snake Eyes So let's take a close look at this action figure when Storm Shadow was first introduced. He was very unique Of course, he is obviously a ninja and that fits in with the whole ninja craze in the early 80s Typified by the movie Enter the Ninja from 1981 the 80s really was a ninja crazy decade And so Storm Shadow he really fit right in and he was the first ninja Introduced into the GI Joe toyline. It was a simpler time back then it was a time when all characters were not ninjas So Storm Shadow was kind of special. Let's take a look at Storm Shadow's accessories And my goodness he came with a lot of accessories Starting with these two samurai swords. He had a long sword and a short sword This long sword is a katana sword as you can see it's molded all in black plastic There's no silver on the blade or anything like that Has some detail on the handle good-looking sword and not bad for the early 80s the shorter sword was the wakazashi sword and this sword for the samurai was mostly a Ceremonial sword but was also used for close quarters fighting now. You might wonder why a ninja has Samurai swords, but I'll talk about that a little bit later The short sword is just like the long sword only shorter Storm Shadow had a set of nunchaku as they are listed on the contents of the card that he came on It's been a long time since I've taken a Japanese language course But I think the you at the end of the word would be unvoiced In the West these are known as nun chucks These nun chucks have a chain or rope that connects these two handles And it's essentially a flail weapon and on the toy here it's curved so it will fit Nicely in the hole in the backpack like that And I'm gonna take a closer look at the backpack here in a minute turning storm shadow around We have one of his most difficult accessories to collect his long bow at least it's listed as a long bow on the contents of the card and this Seems to get lost very frequently and it has this very thin plastic bow string Which breaks extremely easily as it has on mine a traditional Japanese long bow is called a yumi and This is definitely not a real Japanese long bow. This is actually not long at all. It's pretty short A yumi is very long indeed, and it's an asymmetrical bow It's really kind of cool-looking, but it looks absolutely nothing like this There's a recess hole in the handle here which fits in this peg in the backpack So he can carry his bow on his backpack I really like when they give us ways to store the weapons, so I'm very happy with that feature Now let's look at the backpack itself and this backpack is awesome I said in my review of Firefly that Firefly's backpack may be my favorite vintage backpack Well, this may be my second favorite this thing is Great for one thing it stores all of the weapons. It has these claps here on this side So you can kind of pull those apart and it opens up and you have some sculpted detail of arrows for his bow Close that up and as I said you can store all the weapons. I already demonstrated how you can store the bow on here Let's just put the bow on there so you can see how that works The hole fits in the peg and then the bow itself kind of weaves between these two posts There's a slot here at the top for the nunchucks They fit neatly in there and the long bow fits in this sheath here And it slides all the way through and the short sword fits in the bottom one and there you go The backpack holds all of Storm Shadow's weapons Let's take a look at the articulation on Storm Shadow and he had the typical articulation of GI Joe action figures from 1984 Which means he could move his head left and right like that He could move his arm up at the shoulder about so far. He could swivel it all the way around He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move at the elbow about 90 degrees He had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around The figure was held together with a rubber o-ring that looped around the center and that allowed him to move at the torso a little bit He could move his legs apart about so far He could bend at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees Let's look at the sculpt design and color of Storm Shadow and the first thing you notice is he is very white And this white plastic tends to turn yellow over time It's really hard to find a purely white Storm Shadow as he would have been in 1984 most Storm Shadows have taken on some kind of a yellow tint to him and This particular Storm Shadow well this because of the camera quality everything seems to turn out a little bit more yellow on this Camera anyway, this is a fairly white version of Storm Shadow But even this is not purely white. There are some signs of yellowing on this Storm Shadow nonetheless, this is the whitest Storm Shadow that I've owned I've had several and Most of them have been a lot more yellow than this one There are some home remedies you can try to whiten these yellowed action figures But I've never had very much success with those so I can't really vouch for them Also, I've heard that even though those home remedies will make the plastic white again Eventually the yellowing comes back and it comes back even worse than before Storm Shadow has a mask face It's the typical mask that you associate with ninjas and the mask is white There's some nice sculpted detail on the folding of the cloth and that looks pretty nice on his chest He has a very bright Cobra symbol and this very striking black sash that kind of looks like it's leather With a very sharp silver buckle on it that strap continues to his back And that looks pretty good and since the back kind of goes across ways like this I kind of like to display the backpack Kind of at the same angle like it's slung over his shoulder He has a sculpted silver dagger and a couple of shuriken also known as throwing stars He has a black belt which looks like it ties on the side like this and it kind of looks like a The black belt that you would get with a karate uniform In fact this entire uniform I think is inspired by a karate gi Or those white uniforms that you get like when you go and take karate lessons at the Y I do want to talk about the appropriateness of this white coloring for a ninja But I want to look at the rest of the action figure first He has short sleeves kind of t-shirt style and on both forearms He has this white wrapping and as we learned in the comic book The wrapping on his right arm covers a tattoo that symbolizes his ninja clan The hexagram tattoo was featured on his second version since his right forearm was bare And it's a little bit scraped off on this But that is the symbol of the Arashikage ninja clan of which storm shadow is a part Storm Shadow has plain white legs as you can see there's no real Detail on there other than the folds of the cloth He doesn't have any sculpted on weapons on his legs He's wearing traditional Japanese tabi which are Japanese socks And they are normally worn with some kind of shoes, but it doesn't look like he's wearing shoes Looks like he's walking around in his socks something to note about storm shadows feet He has unique left and right feet, which is atypical for gi joe action figures normally action figures like stalker here Have one foot. That's just copied for both He his left and right foot are exactly the same So you could like switch these around and you know It wouldn't look like his shoes were on the wrong feet or something Because both of these feet are the same not so a storm shadow He has uniquely sculpted left and right feet So watch out for that if you're gonna get a storm shadow I did get one one time that had two left feet Also, if you're swapping parts around make sure you put the feet back on the right side Otherwise that looks really awkward. Let's take a look at storm shadows file card And this file card was printed on the back of the card on which the figure was packaged You can see some of the front of the card there. Oh and a price sticker from kmart. It was 296 and On the file card it says cobra ninja codename storm shadow And it has a portrait here and this is possibly my favorite of all the card art for gi joe action figures I think that looks really great. It has his faction as cobra It says his primary military specialty is assassin and secondary military specialty is intelligence and his birthplace is classified This section says storm shadow can trace his family history through 30 generations of assassins He can scale sheer walls with bare hands and feet move with blinding speed and endure unspeakable hardship and pain Qualified expert longbow samurai sword throwing star nunchuck sticks eighth degree black belt and five martial arts There's a quote at the bottom here, but it doesn't say who it's quoting It says the great ninja assassin clans disappeared a hundred years ago if they were wiped out Nobody took the credit for it and if they are still around who are they working for underline? One thing you notice about this file card is it doesn't really say very much about storm shadow himself It talks about his abilities and it talks about ninjas in general But it doesn't give you very much of storm shadows background and the comic book We learned that storm shadow is a vietnam veteran who served with stalker and snake eyes and he is part of the same ninja clan as Snake eyes in fact the ninja clan is named Arashikage and Arashikage is the Japanese word for Storm shadow additionally storm shadows sought revenge against Zartan because Zartan killed the hard master who was the leader of the Arashikage clan storm shadow is extremely important in the Gijo universe and like snake eyes storm shadows story ties together a lot of characters from Gijo and Cobra So what do I think of storm shadow overall first of all? Why is he a ninja wearing white ninjas accomplish their missions through? Concealment and subterfuge and white doesn't seem like a very good color to do that But in the Gijo comic book he was portrayed more as a bodyguard for Cobra commander than as an assassin So I think the white would fit that role better and even if the white is completely impractical for storm shadows role in 1984 on the toy shelves this white uniform really stood out I mean most Gijo action figures were in military colors and here comes this white action figure that says hello By me so you can't really think of the white uniform in practical terms You have to think of it as just looking really awesome the black and silver details provide a nice contrast to the white And that red cobra symbol just pops on it. I just think he looks great another popular question is why samurai swords? He's a ninja after all and ninjas often fought against samurai. So why does he have a samurai weapon? Well the so-called ninja toe or ninja sword is not really a traditional weapon It's a modern invention and so a traditional ninja back in feudal Japan would not have had that weapon available to him most likely he would have become an expert in the Weapons that were available at the time So certainly a ninja would become an expert with samurai swords if you think about it 1984 was a great year for Cobra. Maybe the best year for Cobra You got some iconic Cobra characters all in one year Of course, there was Storm Shadow the first Cobra ninja who looked awesome But also you got Zartan the Baroness firefly copperhead scrap iron wild weasel What a great year if you collected Cobra 1984 was your year. That was my review of the 1984 Cobra ninja Storm Shadow and his file card I hope you enjoyed this review and if you're thinking of getting a Storm Shadow action figure I hope you found this review informative if you like this review Make sure you give it a thumbs up on YouTube and make sure you subscribe to my channel because I've got a lot of great New GI Joe action figure and vehicle reviews coming up You do not want to miss them and make sure you like the Facebook page you get a lot of updates there You don't get anywhere else. Thanks for watching and Merry Christmas everyone Skipping in the cover Introducing you roadblocks and spirit Cobra commander got away GI Joe skyhawk Joe and Cobra figures and Cobra claw sold separately from Hasbro