Oh wow! Oh WOW! Look at these figures.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a bit bitter that Hasbro scrapped G.I. Joe: Renegades without hardly even giving it a chance, and a part of my complaint lies within the fact that they ditched the animated aesthetic due to fandom outcry.
Now a big part of me doesn’t blame them one bit. I don’t have any false ideas that animated style figures would fly off the shelves…I have my doubts. Hasbro could have potentially shrugged off their long standing fans, and not drawn in any new ones, and the entire line could have gone straight down the crapper. I’m not sure G.I. Joe as a brand is quite strong enough for Hasbro to totally overhaul the realistic styling and still come out swinging. So, I don’t blame them, even though the animated figures were items I really wanted to see.
So Amazon.com comes through in a big way, offering a Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow figure that apparently use this discarded tooling to great success. Keep in mind I don’t yet have these figures in hand, and I will fully admit those hip joints immediately make me scared. I hate those hips on the Marvel figures, so I really, desperately hope the Joe design team has found a way to make those joints work better than the Marvel folks have been able to.
Aside from that, the angular sculpting of the figures, the articulation…everything else looks very cool, and I’m really digging the animated look. Part of me hopes we get a more normal Snake Eyes in this format, too. I don’t have any aspirations that they’ll do an entire Renegades run in this style, but I’ll take what I can get. Check out the original post by G.I. Joe: Renegades fan edhellman over at HissTank.com, and I’ve mirrored the images below.
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I love that Duke.
The stylized Ninjas would be fun to own, but I wouldn’t want them to be the standard.
I promise here I´ll never try to understand Hasbro again. Why they cut PoA on the movie toys (supposed to be the “main line”), and release a total new sculpted with EXTRA PoA on an “obscure” and probably hard to find pack??? WHY???
Completely agree. What the heck? Those figs all look great and I can’t wait to get my hands on them.
Simple. Because these were initially tooled up for individual release before they decided to redo them in a more standard style. So they were sitting there unused until Amazon bought the exclusive.
The hips scare the crap out of me too. I hope they don’t become standard for Joes in the future… unless, like Justin says, they are GREATLY improved over the MU ones which I hate.
Tooled, but not assembled, which is the excuse for cost increment on Retaliation figs.
About those hips joint, please clarify. I´m not an expert on Marvel 3.75″ figures, but I have an Iron Man and don´t see many problems with this joints…
Please, for the love of all that is holy, let this be the beginning and end of ball-joint hips on G.I. Joe figures.
It’s obvious that the hips are still on the old ball joints, they just have swivel joints underneath them for added articulation. Anyone who actually collects MU toys can see that those hips are nothing like these ones.
Even if they’re more functional than the atrocious MU hips, they’re still bastard ugly.
I thought so at first, but now I don’t think so… look at the side pic of SS. You can pretty clearly see they are significantly different. Whether they are better quality I don’t know.
thanks amazon…….way to handle this exclusive.
thats sarcasm.
THANKS AMAZON! what a way to restock this exclusive!
thats gratitude.
I’m not sure about the large kneepads on Duke. I might file down the pegs and glue on a pair from the original.
These sculpts are amazing! That is the Snake-Eyes I wanted for this line and, from a strictly sculpting point-of-view, this SS overshadows the 30th version. I cannot wait to get these figures next week.
A very Sigma Six look to the SS and SE, which isn’t particularly a bad thing. I hope Amazon gets more of these in stock as they told me they would.
That’s exactly what I was thinking looking at these.
Didn’t even notice the hips. Now I’m not all that crushed that the Red Ninja didn’t get the single-carded treatment (it’s the only one I wanted until now). I don’t know who came up with that joint or why they still use it.