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.
The week of G.I. Joe: Retaliation extends into a second week with Carded Heroes’ review of the new Red Ninja from the G.I. Joe: Retaliation line. As primarily a repaint from the 30th Anniversary Storm Shadow (but actually improved upon, if you can believe that) this is a great figure that is sure to appeal to vintage purists, but also has a nice tie in to the new summer film coming out June 29th.
Check out the review on Carded Heroes, and take a peek at just a few mirrored images below.
Thanks to Destro from HissTank.com for posting an image that reveals some details about the Amazon Exclusive G.I. Joe: Renegades 4-Pack story we broke early this week. This single image is truly fascinating. Check it out below:
Uhhh WOW.
Yeah, these are not straight-up repaints of figures we got already. That right there looks like at least some new tooling. Duke is obviously the same with the addition of recolored Cobra Trooper legs (don’t know how I feel about that). But Storm Shadow is considerably different. The head sculpt looks more animated, the proportions of the arms (not to mention the sleeveless look) are certainly different. Very, very interesting. Snake Eyes is a little tough to tell, though the feet at least look different.
And is it just me, or are there some different hip joints going on there?
Plus, look at the feet. The sculpt there looks exaggerated, too. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m seriously wondering if these were some of the “animated” style figures we’d heard about before the outcry moved us back to the more realistic style. Very interesting. I just went from pretty excited to absolutely ecstatic. Here’s hoping we get to see some of these figures in more detail soon, this is just aching to be dissected.
Fantastic.
UPDATE – As commentor Plokoon5 points out as well, it looks like Duke has G.I. Joe: Renegades Law’s hands instead of his original hands, which is a significant improvement to the figure as well. It took one of the glaring flaws in that figure and improved it 100%. Good observation.
Someone out there has passed along some very interesting images of what looks to be a potential G.I. Joe: Renegades themed 4-Pack as an Amazon.com exclusive. This surprising and somewhat mind-blowing set doesn’t feature any new characters (beyond the Red Ninja) and the look of the characters on the box is remarkably similar to what we’ve seen already.
But here’s a question… considering that G.I. Joe: Renegades was initially being designed as an animated style figure line, is it possible some of that defunct tooling could find their way into this set? I don’t know. Maybe I’m looking too deeply into it, but it seems weird to me that they would release a 4-Pack with mostly the same figures that we’ve seen at mass retail already. Some previously unused tooling would make this set a LOT more desirable, I think.
I guess time will tell. Until we get more details, check out the terrific looking box art below. Can’t wait to see some images of the figures!!
no images were found
UPDATE – Now that my little Renegades geek heart has slowed down a little bit… there are some indications here that these could in fact be new figures of some sort. Looking at the arms for Storm Shadow and Red Ninja, they look completely different than what we saw in the 30th Anniversary version. Also, with Snake Eyes jumping around in a trench coat, could we see a coated version of Snake Eyes in this set?
Another day, another carded image posted from the upcoming G.I. Joe: Retaliation toyline. The GIJoeClub website has been posting them on a regular basis, and this time they put up the awesome looking Red Ninja.
Using a lot of Storm Shadow tooling, this figure makes for a great classic homage or a boost to your Cobra ninja forces no matter which era you collect. Check out a small piece of the image below, or hit up GIJoeClub.com for the full shot.
To see my review of the upcoming G.I. Joe: Retaliation 3-Pack Red Ninja, click here. To see my awful YouTube video review showing the zipline in action, check the embedded video below.
