G.I. Joe: Retaliation - Wave 4 Kim "Jinx" Arashikage

Movie themed toys are always a trick as Hasbro's ultimate desire is to make a toy that's fun and playable for kids, but at the same time represents a character's look in the major motion picture the toy is based on. You run into some issues when the character is featured in several pretty key scenes of the movie, but Hasbro elected to go with the scene that had inarguably the largest focus in promotional spots, and also allowed them to make a figure that fit into tooling budgets, yet still looked somewhat interesting.

I think from a collectible point of view, I'd rather have a Jinx figure from the final Fort Sumter battle, but I understand why Hasbro made the choice they did, even if the execution isn't quite perfect.

As mentioned, Hasbro elected to choose Jinx's combat uniform from the Ninja temple battle, which makes sense from a conceptual perspective, as that's the version of Jinx most people saw from the many trailers and TV spots that featured her as a central character. This also allowed Hasbro to reuse all of the tooling from the previous Jinx figure released as a San Diego ComicCon exclusive. Yes, that's right, this entire figure is just a repaint of the red uniform Jinx from SDCC.

From afar the reused tooling isn't that big of a deal, as the color patterns all match the bodysuit from the film, but once you look up close, you can tell that the pattern of the uniform sculpting doesn't match the paint deco at all, and it can be a little distracting. Of course, when talking about female figures you risk the whole "girl figures don't sell" argument, which probably justifies (in Hasbro's mind) the need for reused tooling to reduce production costs on a figure that supposedly won't sell. As I said, on display, you can't really tell, and it looks close enough to the film to work well enough.

Merely from a sculpting standpoint, this figure is really nice with the same great articulation and sculpting that we got with the SDCC version. The figure is slender, yet very nicely sculpted with terrific range of motion. Aesthetically I prefer the red version, but it's cool to have this version on shelves, too. The bright yellow and black remains somewhat evocative of the Sigma 6 Kamakura (whether intentional or not, I don't know) and was purposefully not red to avoid confusion with the enemy Red Ninjas. While this figure does look nice on display, it's a shame that she doesn't really mix with the other Retaliation figures because her look isn't quite as realistic and the scene she's in really doesn't fit the aesthetic of any other figures (besides Snake Eyes). Ultimately that's why I would have prefered the black trench coat look from the final battle.

ACCESSORIES

One area where Jinx excels is with the accessories. Yeah, she comes with a ton of them. Obviously the central accessory is her trunk that converts into a neat zipline feature with plenty of space inside to hold ninja weaponry.

I'm a little conflicted about this accessory. I like all of the space for the ninja weapons, but the zipline is way too short to be completely functional.

Instructions come with the figure, but the weapons they show in the case don't match the weapons that actually come with the figure, so a little experimentation is required. The above configuration is what seems to work best, though with the axes there the sides don't quite latch closed all the way. Close enough to work, though.

One interesting element of this ninja trunk is the inclusion of a familiar key and keyhole system that we saw at JoeCon a couple of years ago with the G.I. Joe: Renegades vehicles that ultimately were never released. One wonders if this trunk is a leftover from that era, or just a new item using that same concept.

Jinx comes with a mix of re-purposed weapons and new gear, and she's pretty loaded with neat ninja weapons, but nothing amazing. I expected to love her ninja equipment trunk, but I hate to say it was "just okay". Perhaps if it has been obviously designed to hold weapons very specifically or actually came with weapons designed to fit into it, but as it stands, it's a pretty neat add on, but not quite as interesting as I thought it could be.

From a completist's stance, this is a great figure to get, but I do think the impact and importance of this version of Jinx was somewhat diluted by the cancelation of the movie accurate Red Ninja figures. A potential great display with her, Snake Eyes, and those Red Ninjas could have been great, but instead she is kind of a lone wolf that doesn't really fit in display-wise with any other Retaliation figures. The base figure itself is pretty terrific, but I don't see a whole lot of special appeal with this repaint. Some of the gear is great, but in the end, it doesn't fill a necessary hole in my Retaliation collection.

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