Pursuit of Cobra
“Desert Battle” Storm Shadow
If you still haven’t got yourself one of the Pursuit of Cobra figures, get off you lazy ass and do it now, soldier!
G.I. Joe has never been better than it was with the first 4 waves of this sub-line. Sure we all have a soft spot for the bright colors and the insanely silly characters of the old TV show (if you don’t know what I mean, read this article at Toplessrobot.com), but Pursuit of CObra turned things around and gave us more “realistic” takes on the formula.
I’ve done the Desert Battle Snake Eyes from Wave 3 and the Cobra Shock Troopers from Wave 3 so let’s go back to the start and look at Wave 1 with the Desert Battle Storm Shadow.
If you’ve never heard of Storm Shadow, educate yourself:
“Storm Shadow is a ninja mercenary who works for COBRA. As the desert battle rages, he hunts for Snake Eyes, the G.I. JOE ninja and his sworn enemy. The COBRA martial arts master is prepared for battle in samurai desert armor and armed with connectible katana swords and a manrikigusari chain weapon.”
So there. You can’t have Snake Eyes without Storm Shadow, good without evil, light without dark, Transformers without Michael Bay. I’ve got several pairs of the two ninjas, including the Sigma 6 versions, and a few from the movie line.
This figure in fact, is partly a re-tooling/ re-accessorized version of one of the movie figures. The pants are clearly a holdover from the Rise of Cobra line, and if I’m not mistaken, the body is entirely the same as the Artic Assualt Storm Shadow (which has the same kind of white pants and sneakers as the previous Rise of Cobra figures) and also bare chested. However, the head and forearms are new.
Like the Arctic Assault figure, this Storm Shadow also has a collar that rings his neck. The old one was supposed to be the remains of his shirt I imagine. This one is more like the veil that Tuareg males wear than a the mask and hood of the shinobi shozoku. It’s in keeping with the armor that they’ve given him, which has more of a Prince of Persia theme than a ninja’s traditional clothing. The collar is removable (if you take off his head first), but the wrap around his stomach is rather permanent, unless you’re willing to disassemble him.
Like the other Pursuit of Cobra figures, the beautiful thing about this figure is the gear. He has got something like 13-16 pieces depending on what you want to count as an accessory. Here’s the list:
What’s even better is that if you’re a bit creative, you can store all this gear on the figure! There are slots on the back of his skirt that can accomodate the kodachi swords, the shuriken fit on small pegs on his armor, and the ninjato swords and manrikigusari are modular, so you can just fit that sucker right onto the ends. That kind of forethought put into a figure is always a treat for collectors.
Though he wasn’t my first priority when I started with the Pursuit of Cobra line, Storm Shadow quickly became one of my favorites. The Arabian aesthetic is a nice counterpoint to the Japanese root of the character and it’s definitely nicer than some of the simple repaints. The armor skirt he has is much better than what the first Rise of Cobra Storm Shadow had to deal with and it doesn’t affect his articulation all that much.
His articulation, by the way, is just as good as any other G.I. Joe figure in recent years. He doesn’t share the awesome wrist articulation that the later waves have, but what they gave him is perfect since he doesn’t need to shoulder any rifles. His one bad joint is his ankle; he suffers the same limited range as all the other figures that share his pants do.
Overall, the Desert Battle Storm Shadow is a clear win. Unique sculpt, well crafted and detailed, excellent articulation, no deal breaking quality issues, and accesories up the wazoo.
To give you even more incentive, he isn’t even short packed and was included in most of the later case assortments of waves 2-4. I actually got 3 of him after buying several sets in order to complete my line up (I subsequently sold the extras).
Here in the Philippines, he retailed for about Php 500.00 (just over $11 US) but you could easily find him cheaper from collectors or hobby stores needing to unload extras. Though he’s since sold out at Toy Kingdom, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to find him now.
Go get him.
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