 When you think of GI Joe what comes to mind? If you said ninja action figures with limited articulation and color change plastic, well you're not wrong. The military toy line that took its name from American infantry soldiers ended up being primarily about ninjas and space aliens. 1994 was the final year of the toy line that began in 1982. A lot happened in those years. Military toys became less popular. Children's television was dominated by ninja turtles and power rangers. GI Joe struggled to find its place in the toy landscape of the 90s. Ninjas were popular. Fortunately for GI Joe they already had some ninjas in the lineup. In 1992 Hasbro started the Ninja Force subseries, but they weren't quite ninja enough. So in 1994 they took ninjas to the next level with shadow ninjas. How did this attempt to ninja-fi GI Joe turn out? Let's take a look. Here it's time for another vintage GI Joe toy review. Last week we started a new sub team when we reviewed Night Force Outback. This week we're doing the same thing, starting a new sub team within GI Joe. This time we're looking at shadow ninjas. Shadow ninjas however are not night force. If these figures were on a scale from 1 to 10 with night force outback being a 10 shadow ninjas would be negative 36. Instead of having cool night colors shadow ninjas had Inviso power. Yeah we're gonna look at that. This figure was the last version of Snake Eyes in the vintage era. Snake Eyes was one of the most popular characters in the line and he had many great action figures. Not every version of Snake Eyes was great though. When I reviewed Ninja Force Snake Eyes I said it wasn't the worst Snake Eyes figure. Well today we're going to look at the worst. HCC788 presents Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes. Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes from 1994. This figure was only available in 1994 because the vintage GI Joe toy line was discontinued after the 1994 series. Shadow Ninjas were introduced in 1994 the final year of the line. They were all reissues of previous Ninja Force figures. Ninja Force was a subset of the main GI Joe toy line that ran for two years 1992 and 1993. Each of the Ninja Force figures had a special action feature. The Ninja Force Snake Eyes figure was released in 1993. The difference between Ninja Force and Shadow Ninjas was the Inviso power. Shadow Ninja figures could turn invisible upon contact with warm water. We'll test that later. Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes is the sixth version of Snake Eyes. The first version of Snake Eyes was released in 1982 in the very first series of the real American hero line. It's nice to have Snake Eyes as bookends for the line. But Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes is not how the character should have gone out. There are six versions of Snake Eyes but there are seven figures lined up here. That's because the first version of Snake Eyes was reissued in 1983 with new articulation. The 1983 swivel arm version is counted as version 1.5. The first version of Snake Eyes wasn't a Ninja. He was a Commando. The first real Ninja in GI Joe was Storm Shadow, the Cobra Ninja. After Storm Shadow was introduced, Snake Eyes was given a Ninja backstory. The stories of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are interconnected. Both served as American soldiers in Vietnam along with another GI Joe team member, Stalker. There's one fact that's not mentioned anywhere on the file card. Snake Eyes does not speak. According to the comic book series, Snake Eyes' vocal cords were damaged in a helicopter crash. His face was also disfigured. He always wears a mask. I have a full card back for Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes so let's take a look at it and see how the figure was marketed. We have the GI Joe logo here along the side. We have the Shadow Ninjas logo here which is just modified from the Ninja Force logo. We have Snake Eyes, Covert Mission Specialist, Spring Action, Bassami Bash, Secret Inviso Power, Color Change Body Armor which we will test later. Then we have the artwork and this card art isn't actually specific to Snake Eyes. It features Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow and this art was used for all Shadow Ninjas figures. This is generic Shadow Ninjas artwork and this isn't original artwork for Shadow Ninjas either. This is recycled artwork from Ninja Force. Here's the Ninja Force artwork next to the Shadow Ninjas card and as you can see they changed the colors a little bit but they basically just copied the Ninja Force artwork onto the Shadow Ninjas card. This is what we are reduced to. GI Joe, the brand that had package art that was the envy of the industry, declined to the point that they used copy and paste generic cards. On the back of the card we have extra large portraits of other Shadow Ninjas figures. We have instructions, we have our one flag point. You had to use it fast because 1994 was the end of the line. Then we had the file card. We will look at that later. Let's take a look at the accessories that came with Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes. The accessories came on a plastic tree like this. This was a plague of the 90s. Instead of giving kids unique accessories with figures, Hasbro just stamped out a bunch of generic accessories attached to plastic trees that the kids would have to cut out themselves. These accessories are not original. This is the same accessories tree that was packaged with Ninja Force Snake Eyes but with different colored plastic. However I have noticed one alteration they made. I'll show you that later. The plastic for Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes accessories is translucent. Even for Ninja Force Snake Eyes none of these accessories were original. They all originated with earlier figures. These accessories were made with as little effort as possible. On my Snake Eyes figure the space on his right hand is far too narrow for him to hold any of his accessories. It will break the thumb. He can only hold his accessories in his left hand. Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes came with Nunchuck's translucent. These were originally issued with the Ninja Force character called Nunchuck. Of course these black Nunchucks are curved but when first pulled off the tree these are straight. This plastic is not very flexible. It feels like it will break if I bend it. He had a long sword with a straight blade. He had a short sword with a straight blade. He also had a knife, a small knife with a curved blade. He had two claws and these claws actually are slightly altered from the one that came with Ninja Force Snake Eyes. This accessory originated with version 2 of Storm Shadow. He came with a claw that would clip on his wrist. Ninja Force Snake Eyes also came with this claw but the sculpting on his wrist was really thick. It doesn't clip on very well. If you want to put it on you have to put it way down here over his hand. Apparently they recognize this was a problem for Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes so they changed the clip to a little pistol grip. So now the claw goes in his hand like that. He does come with two of them but I cannot get the other one into his right hand. And finally he came with a figure stand. The one accessory out of all of these that I like. What's missing from these accessories is Snake Eyes' signature Uzi submachine gun. Earlier versions of Snake Eyes came with this weapon and Snake Eyes just doesn't seem complete without it. Later versions focused on silent weapons. His origins as a commando were forgotten. Let's take a look at the articulation on Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes and this is where things start to get a little rough. This is not an O-Ring figure so it doesn't have normal O-Ring articulation. It has an action feature that's advertised as the Basami Bash. This is the same as the Ninja Force Snake Eyes. For the Basami Bash you just squeeze his legs together and that causes his arms to move. Yeah that's great isn't it? You can have a ninja dance party. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. The head only swivels. It does not move up and down. You can swing the arm up at the shoulder and you can get some movement of the arm at the shoulder. It does ratchet. Since there's no O-Ring there is no articulation at the waist. He can swing his leg forward and back and he can bend his knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes. This entire body is the same as version 5 of Snake Eyes. The only difference is the plastic color and the plastic type. This plastic is sensitive to warm water. On his head he has a gray hockey style mask. It looks like it's cloth in the back and it looks like an armor faceplate in the front. He has white eyes. That's the only paint application on the head. The rest is unpainted. The plastic does have kind of a translucent quality to it. The entire torso and indeed all of the figure is made with that gray translucent plastic. On his torso he has a vest covering his chest. Looks like an armored vest. He has a ridge pattern around his midsection. Those details continue around to the back. He has a purple sash over his right shoulder and this purple is a little bit hard to see. It looks like it's worn a bit but this is purple paint over the translucent plastic. He has plastic charges on his purple sash and he has these round golf ball looking objects which are smoke grenades. We know what these objects are because they are labeled on the Ninja Force Snake Eyes file card. Not on the Shadow Ninjas file card though. He has an unpainted rope that goes over his left shoulder and across his chest and back and on that rope on his chest. He has two silver grenades and some unpainted smoke bombs. Around his waist he has an unpainted belt with some indistinguishable details. Right in the front he has an unpainted kind of triangular shaped buckle or pad that goes over his crotch. On his right arm he has unpainted flares strapped to his upper arm. Not on his left arm. He has some pretty wicked looking elbow pads and gloves. Of course unpainted but these do look pretty good. This is probably the best part of the figure. He has white elbow swivels and universal joints at the shoulders. They probably couldn't use the color change plastic for the joints so they had to use a plastic that would match the Inviso power color. This draws undue attention to the joints and detracts from the overall look of the figure. His legs again are made in that gray translucent plastic. He has an unpainted pistol on his right thigh. He has a silver knife on his left thigh. He's wearing tall boots in that gray plastic. Without much detail there's nothing painted on them but he does have big pointy knee pads. As with ninja force snake eyes the arms on this figure attach almost midway up his torso. It looks like his shoulders are down at his rib cage. This is to accommodate the action feature and I do not approve. Okay let's test the Inviso power gimmick. According to the instructions we are supposed to dip into warm water to activate Inviso power. This is a bowl of warm water so let's give it a try and see if it works. And there goes snake eyes into the warm water. Doesn't say exactly how long it's supposed to take but I am already noticing a change. His back is turning white and let's see. Yeah the front is starting to turn white as well making sure that he gets good and all the way in there in that warm water. He gets immersed and let's see. Some parts don't seem to be changing very much. Like the bottom half of the figure and his back seem to be changing pretty well but his head, his head doesn't seem to be changing at all. He seems to have changed about as much as he's going to so let's take him out and see what happens. Well there's snake eyes with his Inviso power. The figure is much lighter than it was almost white especially in the back. It's not quite as light in the front. Some parts don't seem to have changed color very much. I can't help but notice though he is not invisible. Also I noticed it looks like the purple detail is no longer there. I hope that comes back when we deactivate the Inviso power. The card says dip into ice water to bring back standard color. I have a bowl of ice water here. So let's dip snake eyes into the ice water and see if he goes back to normal. This water is quite cold and I didn't notice look the purple did come back. That's awesome. I actually really like that. The purple is part of the color change gimmick. That's any trick. I have to admit that's not too bad. Here's snake eyes just a few minutes out of coming out of the ice water and yeah most of his color is back. It does look like he is turning back to his original standard color and the purple detail is even brighter than before so I guess that is also linked to the the color change when you put it in ice water. That purple comes out as well. I'm not a big fan of these color change features but at least this does more or less work as advertised. Calling it Inviso power is overselling it a bit. It doesn't make the figure invisible. It just changes a gray figure to a white figure. Let's take a look at Shadow Ninjas snake eyes file card and in 1994 gone are our standard file cards. The file cards are shrunk down to trading card size. This is what we're reduced to. G.I. Joe the toy line that revolutionized the industry by printing detailed biographies of the characters on the packaging has shrunk the file cards down to a trading card and what did they do with all the extra space they saved by shrinking the file card extra large portraits of Shadow Ninjas figures and instructions in extra large letters. We really needed that. This file card says this is number 37 in series 1994. I don't think numbering figures like this is useful. It's not like you have to buy the figures in any particular order. So what's the point? The file card is in this garish color and the font is really tiny. This is very difficult to read. The bio and specialty information is basically the same as the Ninja Force file card. So I'm gonna skip that part. There's a quote here apparently from snake eyes. Of course snake eyes could not say this because snake eyes can't speak but he could write it. It says like most of my past now my body can be cloaked in secrecy. Okay a couple things about this quote. First of all a lot is known about his past. The comic book spent a lot of time delving into his history. We know more about snake eyes' past than probably any other G.I. Joe character. Also now my body can be cloaked in secrecy. Does this mean he's a never-nude? There's a single paragraph. It says snake eyes excelled in long-range recon patrols and high-risk covert missions in Southeast Asia. His success was based on his ability to use everything from trees to fog when making himself virtually invisible even to skilled cobra ninjas. Now possessing Inviso power he can completely cloak himself and actually be invisible to his enemies no he can't. Now nothing can stop the ultimate covert mission specialist. This paragraph is basically just an advertisement for the figure's gimmick. Snake eyes made many appearances in G.I. Joe media. He was one of the most popular figures ever. Since this is the last snake eyes figure in the vintage line I'm gonna focus on snake eyes' last media appearances in the vintage era. How did he go out? The last two animated vintage era appearances for snake eyes listed on halfbattle.com appear to be a clip shows. The last real episode appearance was in Shadow of a Doubt. It's a geek episode. Like all geek episodes the quality is not up to the standards of the earlier Sunbow series. The episode focused on Storm Shadow. He pretended to defect to Cobra so he could discover the location of Cobra's secret base. Snake eyes didn't have much to do in that episode. He was wearing his version 4 uniform from 1991. In the comic book series snake eyes appeared in the last issue before it was canceled by Marvel Comics issue number 155. The issue is titled A Letter from Snake Eyes. In that issue Sean the adopted son of snake eyes' war buddy Wade Collins wants to enlist in the army. Wade is reluctant to sign the early enlistment papers for him and Sean doesn't understand why. Wade suggests he write a letter to snake eyes. Snake Eyes writes back and gives Sean a very honest, frank, and unvarnished view of military life. For me this is one of the most important issues in the comic book series. This isn't just a letter from Snake Eyes to Sean. This is a letter from Larry Hama to the readers. There is a danger in promoting something like GI Joe. It is a war toy for children. The danger is that you will give children the impression that war is fun. The good guys always win. Bullets never hit anyone. Pilots always bail out at the last second. I always give Larry Hama credit for bringing an honesty and intelligence to GI Joe and he earns it in this issue. A letter from Snake Eyes reminds us of the truth. Of course we can all have fun playing with these toys and reading the adventures of the characters but in reality war is not fun. Bullets do hit people. Your friends die and even if you survive it changes you. Snake Eyes doesn't say Sean shouldn't join the army. He just wants Sean to understand what he's getting into. He needs to understand the reality of it. Larry wanted his readers to understand that reality too. He said it directly to them and he used the voice of a normally voiceless character to do it. It is brilliant. It is thoughtful. It is smart. It was a fitting end to the series and a fitting final appearance of Snake Eyes in the vintage era. That comic is top tier. This figure is bottom tier. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Looking at Shadow Ninja Snake Eyes overall bottom tier. This figure is awful. It's a reissue so it automatically has a strike against it. It's not impossible for a reissue figure to be great as we saw last week but usually the copy is not as good as the original. I didn't like the accessories the first time around. Making them translucent doesn't really help. I'm not a big fan of action features especially when they limit the articulation. On this figure they added the color change plastic so it's a double gimmick figure. And the color. Oh my god. Can we talk about the color? It doesn't matter if it's in standard mode or invisible mode. It's bad. We sacrificed a good color scheme and paint applications so this figure could have Inviso power. And the Inviso power isn't really Inviso power. Like check it out. I have Inviso power too. Can you see me? Of course you can because I'm not invisible. I'm sorry if this was your favorite action figure as a kid. I don't want to make fun of anyone's favorite figure but if this was your favorite I really would like to get a time machine and go back to your childhood and give you version 1 or version 2 of Snake Eyes so you could play with a good figure. That doesn't seem like a very good use of a time machine. I'd probably kill Hitler too but after that I'm giving you a good action figure. That was my review of Shadow Ninja's Snake Eyes. I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked it please give it a thumbs up on YouTube, comment and subscribe. I've got a lot more GI Joe toy reviews coming up and I do review the good ones too I promise. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Patreon. Your support on Patreon will help me get to Joe Con this year. 2018 will be the final Joe Con and I'm hoping to see a lot of you out there. I have to say in all sincerity you are the best viewers and supporters on the whole internet. I read everything you say on my videos and your kindness and support is overwhelming. Thank you so much. I will see you next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review and until then remember only GI Joe is GI Joe. Dear Sean, there is no honor or glory in the primary occupation of the soldier. There are only long stretches of interminable boredom punctuated by brief flurries of pure terror. There is no winning. Ask anyone who has sat benumbed in the aftermath of battle surrounded by stinking ragged wet bodies of comrades hastily covered with ponchos assailed by the unearthly screaming of the maimed. You talk about glory and I suppose you mean heroism and all the accolades that adorn it. I've known some real heroes in my time but pitifully few of them were the type to jump out of the foxhole and shout follow me. Take Ramon Escobedo. He was in the LERP team with your dad Storm Shadow stalker and me. One day he got a letter from home. His mom said that his kid brother just graduated from basic training and got 11B20 as his MOS. Infantry. Ramon's tour in NAMM was due to be up in three months. He was a two-digit midget Bukku short timer. That meant that his kid brother would be eligible to ship out to NAMM. Ramon wanted to go home to East LA more than anything in the world but he re-upped and extended his tour so that uncle sure couldn't send his brother to NAMM and violate the DOD rule against two members of the same family serving simultaneously in a war zone. Two weeks later we all walked into that stinking valley where Ramon and Dickie got wasted. Ramon didn't look all that heroic when he died. He just looked surprised. Dickie Saperstein was a short timer too. He had less than two months to go before he rotated home. His letter came from his mom. Dickie's dad was in the hospital and needed an operation. They didn't have the bucks. Uncle Sugar was offering a cash re-up bonus back then. He signed up for a burst of four and Sam would give you a down payment on a brand new Camaro or a heart valve dilation in this case. Dickie was kind of burnt by then. He had the dreads before every mission and puked his guts out. He did his job. We all knew he would never let the team down. So Dickie signed up and got his bonuses and extended his tour and his dad died on the operating table. His mom went sort of nuts after that now with her only son being stuck in a combat zone for another year. We all knew Dickie could have got a compassionate but he felt like he had made a deal and he was going to stick to it. He had this sense of honor you see. He was doing his job running to outflank Charlie and bloop frags on his head when he ran into that mine. Stalker didn't sign up for glory, honor, or adventure. He was looking to get away from the mean streets of Detroit, the streets that had already killed his two older brothers. He was determined that his mom would not worry about him and he went to elaborate means to deceive her. He had a cousin in the engineers in Darmstadt, Germany. Stalker had him take out a post office box there for him and all his mother's letters went to Germany where she thought her last son had a safe job in a personnel office. The cousin rerouted all the mail to Vietnam and back. We used to sit around the hooch with him and help him make up this whole fairy tale about taking leaves to go see Munich at Oktoberfest and hiking in the Tannis Mountains. He couldn't understand how some other guys could stand to write their own mothers and tell them what it was like over there. He couldn't understand how anyone could come to Vietnam thinking it would be a great adventure. To him, a great adventure would have been to tool around Germany tasting the local beers. Storm Shadow wasn't out for glory or adventure either. He came from a whole family of ninjas. They looked at a real shooting war as a sort of graduate school for their prize pupil. It was more like a doctorate. Long Range Recon is the Harvard University of sneak and peak. You get real good at creeping through the bush without making any noise. You get real careful. You get real paranoid. Out there in the stinking bush, not enough sleep, itching, aching guts and constant upheaval, perpetually in a state of quasi hallucination, you start thinking you're some sort of phantom, an invisible wraith slithering between the fronds. That's what you do if you survive long enough. You get through it on sheer badness and if you don't slide right off the other end into a permanent stare, you get real good at appearing normal to everyone else back in the world. But inside, you're still a big bad ninja killing machine, slithering through the endless triple canopy jungle of the rest of the world. You are one crazy, tightly wound, ultra-wacko psycho killer who desperately needs the strict discipline of a martial arts environment to cool you out and keep the devils in check. And me. I'm still searching for my reasons. I came home from the war and everything I had was gone. People spat at me on the street and called me a baby killer. I tried making a new start in the family business of my best friend. It was a disaster. I went to lose myself in the mountains just brooding and thinking too much, mostly about myself, which is a subject that always leads to trouble. It tends to put the center of the universe in the wrong place. Hawk and Stalker came and found me and took me back into the fold. On one of our first missions in the Middle East, I got caught in the blast from an exploding helicopter. There wasn't much they could do for my appearance after that. I had to get used to the fact that people tend to stare fixedly at the top button on my shirt when they talk to me. My voice, well, I could never carry a tune anyway. I still wake up in a cold sweat on Tuesday mornings. Tuesdays was deep riding day at the Army Hospital burn unit where I recovered. There was never any way to shut out the screams of the burn victims as dead tissue was flayed off them. Me? I couldn't have screamed if I had wanted to. I was relatively lucky. I still had most of my face. I met some guys who didn't have ears, nose, lips, or eyelids. One of them, his name was Travis, kept begging me to smother him with a pillow. You know, I never got a welcome party or a parade or anything when I came back from some horrible place stinking of burnt smoking powder, JP for bug juice and sweat. It's just as well. I tend to make people uncomfortable. If you're going to be a soldier, don't expect to be appreciated. Don't expect a nation to be grateful. Don't expect a pension you can live on without food stamps. Expect to see the worst humanity has to offer. Nastiness to the nth degree, vileness, meanness, total despicable cruelty, and unspeakable in humanity. Expect to see the best humanity has to offer. Selfless bravery, compassion, honor, and dignity in the face of sure death. After all this discouragement, do I have any regrets about having been a soldier? Not a one. I had the privilege and honor of serving with men and women whom I could depend on utterly. I have had comrades lay down their lives for me and I would have gladly laid down mine for them. How many other occupations engender such camaraderie? But then this bearing of arms in defense of the Constitution of the United States of America is not really a profession per se. It's a trust. A letter from Snake Eyes in G.I. Joe, a real American hero, issue number 155 written by Larry Hama.