The head is literally the only newly molded piece. Lightning and Shadow were phoned-in repaints of the line’s plain shirtless body and had the same pants and army boots as every other figure. It’s weird to think no other better-funded and wider-distributed ninja figure included hand claws as an accessory, but this is indeed the case. The markedly nicer and more legit hand-crafted version on the right above are available from Hyakuraiju. Ninja climbing claws were first popularized in Revenge of the Ninja, and man were they ever popularized! Every mail order martial arts outfitter had a cheesy welded-steel and nylon version of the claws for sale, and every flea market, dirt mall and Chinatown smoke shop was littered with even shoddier knock-offs. Pre-dating by two-plus years what I thought was the first ever action-figure ninja claw - the Version 2 Gi Joe Storm Shadow that included a single over-exaggerated anti-sword-claw - these cheap-ass Marchon ninja actually had removable rubber tekagi / shuko climbing claws, albeit applied in backwards fashion. It took a long while, but when I finally scored one of the increasingly elusive M-Force ninja, the claws were a revelation.
These somewhat long-forgotten toys are rare as hell in North America, and haven’t aged well. So when cheapskate Johnny-come-lately toy manufacturer Marchon wanted in on the military action figure scene, they used the Rambo line as ‘inspiration’ and came up with the derivative-as-hell “ M-Force.” And yes, M-Force had ninja.Īt first look, the “Lightning” and “Shadow” figures are pretty run of the mill, interesting only to completists with too much disposable cash (ahem, cough), but what I noticed in looking at these online for years is that they included perhaps the only example of a certain craze-era staple of ninja gear showing up in action figure land - CLIMBING CLAWS!
Savitar action figure series#
Circa 1985/86 GI Joe was starting to go full-bore on the rebranding of Snake-Eyes as a ninja, Eagle Force had Savitar, even Masters of the Universe had a ninja, and the 6″ figures for the Rambo: The Force of Freedom cartoon series followed the trend with both good white and evil black ninja in their character line-up.
0 kommentar(er)
