G.I. Joe: Renegades Amazon Exclusive 4-Pack - Snake Eyes

While I absolutely love the Amazon exclusive Storm Shadow, I'm not sure the "Renegades" moniker is necessarily accurate, just because the figure looks pretty different than Storm Shadow appeared in the cartoon.

This figure, though? For this figure, the theme fits to perfection. Throughout much of the G.I. Joe: Renegades animated series, we saw the ninja commando Snake Eyes running around in a trenchcoat, and it's a pretty great look. Ironically enough, a film many Joe fans detest, The Rise of Cobra, first kind of introduced the whole Snake Eyes in trenchcoat concept, and now it's starting to permeate other mythologies, I really dig it.

This figure is clearly modeled very closely off the Renegades model for Snake Eyes with some very smooth, sleek, and detail-lacking sculpting, but not detail lacking in a bad way. His head is a lot smoother and rounder, and his torso is very slick without any real contoured muscles or uniform textures. The result is a figure that looks extremely "animated", yet doesn't lack the articulation of other figures trying to accomplish the same feat.

Speaking of "feat" it's kind of funny... Snake Eyes really rings true to me as a Renegades version because of his... "feet". There's something very unique about how the G.I. Joe: Renegades Snake Eyes' feet were shaped and pointed, and this figure captures that excellently. There are other cool little touches as well, like the multi-colored hands that look just like the animated version, too.

Then we get to the trenchcoat. I find myself just a little bit conflicted here. I love the look of this trenchcoat, but I do find myself a bit bummed that it restricts articulation to the level that it does. Certainly it's not terrible. He can walk, he can pose his legs fairly well, but he is still relatively locked in to a specific set of poses, and not all of them are really versatile. I'm certain that if we actually got a "regular" Snake Eyes in this aesthetic as well, this wouldn't bother me nearly as much. But truth be told, I'm loving this animated look so much, I feel like the lack of a standard Snake Eyes with the animated tooling is a hole in my collection. And yeah, this is coming from someone who owns like 75 different freaking Snake Eyes figures.

Don't get me wrong, I think the retail release 30th Anniversary/Renegades version is pretty neat, but it doesn't even come close to approaching the accuracey and coolness of this version. I would love to see this one without the coat.

Like Storm Shadow and Ninja Viper, the articulation is fantastic, aside from any jacket-related restrictions. He's got great range of motion in the elbows, a fact which goes surprisingly unnoticed by many fans, in my opinion, and the new ball joint hips work just as well as they did on the Cobra ninjas. Great movement.

Snake Eyes doesn't come with a whole lot...he has that funky two-piece sheath that slides into itself and a pair of his familiar sleek swords that look cool, too. But that's pretty much it. I was a bit surprised to see that he didn't come with the Renegades style Uzi, but hey, I've got one from the retail release, so not a deal breaker.

He also comes with a filecard and battle stand, which is more than most of the Retaliation figures can claim.

So, any issues I have with this figure lie in the fact that the trenchcoat restricts just a bit too much movement, especially considering we never got a regular Snake Eyes figure. Aside from that relatively minor complaint, this figure looks amazing, and is by far the most accurate Renegades figure in this entire 4-Pack. While some Joe fans may lament that artistic style, I find myself really enjoying it, so I'm happy to see the close ties to Clem Sauve's style. It deserved much better than it got.

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