Toy Review: Hall of Heroes Commando Snake Eyes

Commando Snake Eyes

When I first started collecting G.I. Joes, the thing that drew me to them the most was the sheer number of accessories they had. It was much the same for my entire street. You had your little army of plastic men in loud little get-ups with a plethora of ordanance and you kept all of these in a big box labelled with stickers of various 80’s cartoons, which you’d then bring out to the back yard with your friends and their boxes and promptly start planning how to thwart Cobra’s next big plot. Since I didn’t have the Terrordrome back then, my neighborhood gang would mainly raid my dad’s toolshed (or theirs depending where we were) and build one ourselves, and then proceed to choose whatever gun or sword or backpack looked good (and hadn’t been lost) and staged the big battle.

Sadly, I had to sell off alot of my toys when we moved here and the rest kind of lost the charm once the “hyper-articulation” movement started. Let’s face it, those old toys were great, but none of them holds a candle to today’s figures in terms of posebility. Plus, by this time, Sigma 6 had come out and here were the characters I remembered, but bigger, and with more STUFF. So I let the rest of my Joe collection that survived the move go to fellow collectors here.

Snake Eyes, as I said in my Snake Eyes with Timber review, is a popular character in the collecting world, so it’s not surprising that there are more than one version of him in the 25th anniversary line. This time I’m gonna go over my thoughts on the Hall of Heroes (HOH) Commando Snake Eyes.

The Commando Snake Eyes shares the same box as all the HOH figures, which is basically just a wrapper for a gold foil card. It protects the figure well and stacks easily on the shelf. It looks very, very pretty, but basically it’s a whole lot of wasted space, which is why they probably went with the re-designed cards for the new movie line. If you like to display the figure in the packaging, they I don’t suggest you try removing it. It’s not really a box you can open; you’ll need to rip it to get the figure out.

Out of the box, this figure is probably my favorite of the bunch. It leans more towards Snake Eyes as an elite commando operative than a secret super-ninja, which is how I remember him (don’t ask me why, I can barely remember which episodes he was actually in). Whenever I display my Sigma6 figure, it’s always with alot of military style stuff, not the numerous swords they came with.

In this scale it’s no different, and this release has all the cool stuff to make him seem like he’s out to single-handedly take down a terrorist organization. There’s his trademark machine gun (uzi?), a sidearm, and a knife. The pistol and knife both fit right into sheaths that are glued to his sides. Then he’s got some web gear that has pockets up the wazoo. You can be sure that those babies are filled with water purification tablets, poisons, detonators, clips, gear, etc. Then he’s got the satchel labelled “explosives”. I’ll give you three guesses whats in that.

Paint really isn’t an issue. There are tiny applications like the aforementioned “explosives”, and some blacking on his knife, but that’s the extent of it. Not that it’s needed. He’s a guy who dresses in black leather. Naturally, Hasbro cast him in black plastic. It’s a no-brainer.

Articulation is adequate. Yes he’s got a ton more than the old joes, but all the 25th anniversary figures have a few things lacking that would make them the equal of the Marvel Legends line. The first is THIGH CUTS! and the second is double hinged elbows.

These newer joes have improved on the old hip articulation that the classics had (remember those little black rubber bands we had to keep replacing?) but the lack of that thigh cut (or a ball joint/peg at the hip like some of the Marvel Universe figures), limits the way you can pose them. While it’s not as apparent on this one, if you have the “Arctic” Snake Eyes, it’s really obvious what you’re missing. The double elbows would be a nice feature as well, since it would allow them to hold weapons with both hands. Right now you need to do some bending of plastic to do so.

Another problem with these toys is that at this scale, they’re quite obviously for older kids. I can just imagine how fast me and my friends would have lost these tiny little parts. A hundred thousand years from now, some archeologist will dig up that suburb of Honolulu and find a patch of dirt with tiny little bits of plastic and various body parts molded from plastic and have a field day.