6 INCH: SNAKE EYES

I'll be honest here, I don't know what to make of this guy. I'm cool with his comic history and the Sunbow treatment of him was pretty much a joke. It comes down to, 'what is Snake Eyes?' He's been portrayed as a ninja. He's been portrayed as a commando. He's been portrayed as a ninja commando! That latter gives the implication that he uses guns (like his uzi or a pistol) and bladed weapons (like swords, knives, etc). That's just Snake Eyes as a character.

The figure here is another matter. I love the visual look/design. I've owned the figure three times now? Each figure has had a loose chest joint and incredibly stiff hands. Everything else about him is pretty decent. (the pistol is kinda weird; I think Hasbro liked the idea that it could attach to his pack but the hole in the gun was supposed to be overlooked by fans?) 

Oddly, Snake Eyes has always had a role in my Joe Universe. I think a lot of it had to do with him visually. Hasbro made a ton of versions of this guy and sure, it was very hit and miss. But even designs I didn't like (the 25th era had a version with the knives on his chest that I didn't care for), they were sometimes well executed. The Resolute Snake Eyes was fantastic. The Pursuit of Cobra Snake Eyes was great. The 30th Anniversary Snake Eyes was pretty good. Hasbro made it really hard to not want and like the versions they were putting out. Resolute was my standard for some time and my MTF'd version pales in comparison to what Hasbro had done.

I didn't make Snake Eyes a gun-fu dude. Not sure why, it would have fit. I decided at some point that he's a ninja commando. Not commando ninja. To me, a ninja commando is basically, he's a ninja force. Stealthy, silent, kills with silent weapons, etc. The commando part is that he doesn't dress like a ninja (not like Red Ninja or Storm Shadow) and carries a couple of different guns. And that he can be a soldier that is a team player as opposed to always being a solo operator.

I should mention, he had a pretty good Sigma 6 version if you could handle him looking like he was on the Atkins diet. Actually, now I think about it, I think he had a couple of cool versions. Be it the jungle outfit or the jetpack version.

The big Snake Eyes is often used for just photography. I had a VS story for him but never wrote it. It's not the strongest story. It was going to be Snake Eyes vs Night Creeper. It was going to focus more on the Night Creeper in terms of what they are and what they do. I think it was going to take place in a hi-tech office where the Night Creeper(s) were stealing data and Snake Eyes has to stop them. It was probably going to be written that Snake Eyes was going after Cobra operatives; he wouldn't know who or what he'd really be facing.