 This week for Ninja Month, I'm reviewing the Red Ninja, so I decided to wear red. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Did you find that joke funny? No? Then you probably won't find this action figure funny either. Everybody hooded, Cobra Commander 788 here. This is the show where we review every vintage G.I. Joe toy from 1982 to 1994, and we are looking at Ninjas for the entire month of October 2020. This week, we are reviewing the Ninja Force Battle Axe Vehicle and the driver, the Red Ninja. I'll get this out of the way right up front. There is no red on the Red Ninja. Not even a little bit. There are several other colors, but not one spot of red. I don't know if that was an intentional joke or an egregious oversight. Either way, it's bad. Now this figure has become rare and expensive. Why? Maybe they were produced in smaller numbers. Maybe completists like me are driving up the demand. That's the biggest problem with being a completist. Sometimes filling a gap in the collection means paying a premium for a figure you don't like. If you find that as irritating as I do, then you're in the proper mood for this review. HCC788 presents the Battle Axe and the Red Ninjas. This is the 1993 Ninja Force Red Ninja and his vehicle, the Cobra Ninja Raider Battle Axe. This figure and vehicle set were introduced in 1993 and were available in 1993 only. This is the only version of Red Ninja in the vintage line. Post-Vintage Red Ninjas were actually red. Ninja Force was a subset of the GI Joe toy line that included both Joe and Cobra Ninjas. The first wave was introduced in 1992 with the second wave in 1993. In 1994, Ninja Force was replaced with Shadow Ninjas. Shadow Ninjas included reissues of Ninja Force figures with a color change gimmick. Fortunately, there was no Shadow Ninja's Red Ninja because even the color change gimmick wouldn't have made him red. In 1992 through 1994, GI Joe was officially Ninja Crazy. They were probably trying to coattail on the popularity of Playmate's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys and the newly introduced Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. We will look at the Battle Axe later, but I'm going to set it aside for now because I want to look at the Red Ninja first. If this figure looks familiar, it should. The entire mold for Red Ninja was reused from 1992 DICE. DICE was an original Cobra Ninja Force figure, the Bo-Staff Ninja. He was not a vehicle driver. DICE's primary color was purple. Red Ninja has a bit of blue, a bit of orange, a bit of black, but no red. There is no fathomable reason for this guy to be called a Red Ninja. Even if all the orange on this figure were red, I'm still not sure that would be enough to call him a Red Ninja. GI Joe had a Red Ninja in 1987, Jinx. In the GI Joe comic book, there were many Red Ninjas. They were renegade remnants of the Arashikage Clan. There was even a Cobra Red Ninja Slice in the Ninja Force set. This Red Ninja is not related to any of those. Let's take a look at Red Ninja's accessory. He came with an axe. The file card calls this a Red Ninja Razor-Edged Battle Axe. It is orange. It is reissued from the axe that came with DICE, which was silver. So nothing on this figure is original, including the accessory. This orange axe accessory feels a bit brittle, so I will not put it in the figure's hand, given that both the figure and the accessory are rare and expensive. I would not try to force this into the figure's hand. I would be concerned about breaking the accessory or breaking the figure's thumb. He has a Battle Axe accessory and he drives a vehicle called the Battle Axe. This decision was made by Cobra's Department of Redundancy Department. Let's take a look at Red Ninja's articulation. He has exactly the same articulation as DICE, obviously. Part of the articulation is standard for a G.I. Joe figure, but he has a special action gimmick. This is not an O-ring figure. He can turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow that allowed him to bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep that allowed him to swivel his arm all the way around. And that's where we get to the action feature. He had a special action gimmick in the torso. To twist the torso to the left and let go, it will spring back in a slicing action. The box for the Battle Axe called this action feature the Shanghai Slice. It's the same action feature that was called the Flying Dragon on DICE. The bottom half of the figure has standard articulation. He can move his legs apart, but not very far. It seems kind of limited. He can bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of Red Ninja's. And a lot of this will be a repeat because I have already reviewed DICE and the figures are exactly the same except for the colors. Starting with the figure's head, he has a blue hood and mask. The mask has a grill over the figure's mouth and jaw. This looks bizarre on DICE and it looks bizarre here too. On his chest, he has an orange vest with blue details. He has crossed blue bandoliers with some grenades and throwing stars. He has a blue collar with a blue strip down the center, and then he has blue around his arms. On DICE, some of those chest details were picked out in silver paint that is not present on Red Ninja, so we lose some paint applications. His arms are sleeveless. He has a muscular build. His skin tone is the same as DICE, which is a little darker than Caucasian. He has a black band around his right upper arm with a throwing star sculpted on it. He has a diamond shaped tattoo on his right bicep. He has forearm guards in blue with straps around his forearm and wrist, and that's about it. This is all exactly the same as DICE, including the tattoo. Why would these guys have exactly the same tattoo as DICE? And the Red Ninjas are army builders, so there would be a lot of these guys. Why would all of them have exactly the same tattoo as DICE? You may think DICE is from the same ninja clan as the Red Ninjas. Maybe that's the reason for all of them having the same tattoo, but that is not the case according to his file card. There is no in-universe relation between DICE and these Red Ninjas. They just all went to the same tattoo parlor apparently. Red Ninjas waste piece is all black. It has no detail. It has no paint. Red Ninjas upper legs are in black plastic with no additional detail. His lower legs are orange. He has tall orange boots with huge knee pads. This, again, is all copied over from DICE. Red Ninja relies on the base plastic color for a lot of its color variety. They've tried to break things up a bit by making part of the lower half of the figure black. They've had to do this because they cut some of the paint applications that were present on DICE. This isn't just a copy of DICE. This is a copy of DICE made on the cheap. Let's take a look at Red Ninja's file card. The file card is in that unfortunate hot pink color that was indicative of Ninja Force figures. There is a portrait of the Red Ninja here and a zoomed-out shot here where some of the accessories and features are listed. And I need to point out a couple of things about this artwork. The colors are different and the details are different as well. There is a red mask and the orange details are red in the artwork. So maybe they did intend this figure to have red and they changed it to orange for some reason. Even so, red is not the dominant color and I still wouldn't call this guy a red ninja. The card calls this weapon a Ninchaku-powered defense weapon, which it certainly is not. And the figure does not come with this accessory, so why is it on the card? Also in the artwork, for some reason, his hands are really small. He has like baby hands. Codename Red Ninjas, they are the Battle Axe operators. File name, Identities Unknown. If I were a Red Ninja, I would not want my identity known. Primary Military Specialty, Battle Axe Vehicle Operators. Secondary Military Specialty, Cobra Elite Ninja Masters. There's a quote here that I guess comes from a Red Ninja. It says, we spin and chop our enemies faster than frogs and blenders. That is disgusting. This paragraph says, Red Ninjas are ruthless mercenaries who work mainly for Cobra Commander. They earn top dollar in battle because they are the most feared ninja warriors since the No Can Do Ninja Dynasty terrorized China in the 15th century. No Can Do, is that supposed to be funny? Also, Ninjas are Japanese, not Chinese. When Red Ninjas enter a fight, they are in it until the bitter end or until they get paid more money to fight someone else. So they are more ninja mercenaries like the Night Creepers. G.I. Joe is the only force that has ever defeated them as they did in the famous Sushi Battle that has sweet and sour moments for both sides. I hate this file card. Red Ninjas possess advanced ninjutsu skills that are hard to find and they fight like Razortooth's sharks in a feeding frenzy. There is no way this file card was written by Larry Hama. His sense of humor is not that bad. Whoever wrote this file card is under the mistaken assumption that they are funny. Let's turn our attention to the Battle Axe. The Battle Axe was a Ninja Raider vehicle. It had a spring-powered action feature much like Ninja Force figures did. The G.I. Joe Ninja Raider vehicle from 1993 was the Pile Driver with action figure Ginsu. Yes, we will have plenty to say about this one when it is reviewed in the future. There was one Ninja Force vehicle in 1993 that was not a Ninja Raider. That was the Ninja Lightning Motorcycle. The Battle Axe and the Pile Driver don't just share a similar design and functionality. They also have the same chassis and wheels. That's the same mold just in a different color and the wheels are exactly the same. When I first got this vehicle, I wasn't sure exactly where the figure was supposed to fit on it. The box art shows the figure going in this space here behind the blade arm. There's no seat there and it doesn't really look like it's made for an action figure. There are a couple control sticks on either side of the arm, but they're pretty thick and I would not try to put those in the figure's hands. I just put the figure's hands on them. But there's no real seat. There are no foot pegs. He just fits in a space that doesn't look like it's made for a figure. Let's look at the parts and the features of the Battle Axe and let's start at the top with these orange guns. That's one piece and this piece is the most frequently missing piece on this vehicle. These guns are in the most obnoxious orange color possible, but they do have some nice details. The blueprints call these top-mounted rapid-fire double-missile guns. Those are certainly random words. The orange guns are mounted atop this central purple piece, the spinning cyclone slash mechanism. As we saw, the action figure sat in there and this purple carousel has a spring-powered spinning action. On each side of the central purple carousel, we have a sticker that has the cobra emblem and it says red ninja on there just so you don't forget whose vehicle this belongs to. The vehicle doesn't have any red on it either. Attached to this central purple carousel is the orange blade, which gives the Battle Axe its name. It has some good detail on it including a cobra emblem on the blade itself. So I can't fault it for detail. They did add some technical bits and bobs on here. So that's not bad, but the color is obnoxious. It's not quite the same orange color as the guns, but it's close. It's just slightly darker. The chassis is gray. It has some nice detail. It has some engine detail in the back. It has some significant engine detail, but no removable engine cover or anything like that. This vehicle has one feature that is the spinning blade. The rest of the vehicle is no frills. There is a Ninja Force sticker on the Battle Axe and I find this peculiar. In universe, Ninja Force is a sub-team of G.I. Joe. The G.I. Joe pile driver also has the Ninja Force label. Why in universe would both the good guys and the bad guys be labeling their vehicles as Ninja Force? There are four free-rolling wheels, two on each side. They are black and there are exposed clips on the back wheels, but not the front wheels. The underside of the vehicle is hollow, nothing to see there. Let's talk about the action feature, the swinging ax. The ax will pop up and this entire centerpiece will swing around, causing the ax to cut down anything in its path. When loaded, the ax latches on a black latch in the center. That holds the ax down and in place until it is activated. Activating the ax involves rolling the vehicle forward until the ax pops up and swings around. It's the movement of the front wheels that causes the ax to activate, so keep those front wheels moving, apparently moving pretty far. Oh, there it goes. You have to roll the vehicle forward quite a distance to activate that ax. To reload it, just swing it back around, roll the vehicle forward just a little bit and then relatch it on that latch. I'm going to attempt to mow down Dr. Meinbender with the battle ax, but I can't exactly predict when the ax is going to activate, given how far you have to roll it forward. So I'm going to manually roll the front wheels forward until it activates and hopefully that will take out Dr. Meinbender. Hopefully I don't catch my hand in the process. Let's see. Is this going to work? Still rolling. There it goes. That worked pretty well. We got some good distance on that Meinbender launch. This play pattern reminds me of Masters of the Universe. He-Man had a vehicle called the Bashasaurus. It had a smashing arm that would swing forward and hit anything in front of it. This play pattern of bashing figures together doesn't fit well with G.I. Joe. G.I. Joe figures are smaller, so they could have large vehicles and lots of accessories. They can be set up in squads and teams so kids could stage big battles. He-Man figures were built more for smashing and bashing. A G.I. Joe figure will have no problem getting hit by a spring-fired missile. If you add more force, though, the figure may break. Even if the figure doesn't break, the accessories may go flying off, never to be seen again. Looking at how the battle ax and red ninja were used in G.I. Joe media, to my knowledge they were never animated. They appeared in a live-action TV commercial, but the battle ax and the red ninja were not in the live-action segments of that commercial. Only the toys were shown. In the G.I. Joe comic book series published by Marvel Comics, they had no appearances to my knowledge. Real red ninjas had many appearances. They first appeared in issue number 21, the famous Silent Issue, as henchmen of Storm Shadow. They popped up in several issues after that. In issue number 85, they attacked Storm Shadow and Jinx. This was after Storm Shadow had switched sides and was working with G.I. Joe. In issue number 91, it's revealed that the red ninjas are remnants of the Arashikage clan, seeking revenge against Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes. In issue number 122, they fought against G.I. Joe's ninja force. I say all this to point out that red ninjas have a long tradition in G.I. Joe. Nothing on this figure even attempts to connect it to that tradition. Looking at the battle ax and the red ninja overall, I can't find much to redeem them. The figure is entirely reused from an earlier action figure. Only the colors were changed and not for the better. Even the accessory is reused. The fact that the figure has no red, despite being called the red ninja, is the least of its problems. Even if it was red, it would still be a cheap reissue of an earlier figure. I hate the file card. The file card is one unfunny joke after another. There's no way Larry Hama wrote this file card. It is insulting garbage that never should have been released. The vehicle isn't any better. Half the vehicle is reused from another vehicle, so only the top portion is original. And it really only exists for the gimmick. The blade spinning mechanism works as it should. If that's what you want in a vehicle, this one gives it to you. In my view, it fits a play pattern that's more suited to larger, chunkier action figures than 3 ¾ inch G.I. Joe. That was my review of the battle ax and the not-so-red ninjas. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you are enjoying Ninja Month, even if you don't like ninjas. You can find me on social media, on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a website, hcc788.com. I also have a Patreon. I'm not currently accepting new patrons, but the names you see scrolling on the screen have supported this channel for quite some time and they have really helped me out. So thank you to everyone who has supported the channel on Patreon. Next week, we're looking at another ninja from the 90s, but a much better one. I hope to see you then. And until then, remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe.