PERSONAL COLLECTION #1: GI JOE Sigma 6 8" NightOps Snake Eyes

After so much deliberation, I finally gave in and purchased my very first 8-inch G.I. Joe figure, late last February. Feeling traumatized all these years for having sold my 60+-piece 3.75" GI Joe figs -- which was a stupidly desperate decision on my part -- I had promised myself that I would never get into another Joe collection.

And so I find myself wandering off to a hobby shop in a mall close to where I live, and finding this on the pegs. NightOps Snake Eyes. I initially resisted the urge to get this, since I was still in my Tamiya Mini4WD phase and I had already burned a lot of cash for those little buggers. After admitting to myself that the local Mini4WD scene has been, to put it nicely, "so-so", with the lack of any nearby tracks to test my car setups and race events that always contradict with my work schedule, I decided to get this one. Just this one. Shyeeahhhh riiiight.

What drew me into buying this - aside from the reason that Snake Eyes had always been my favorite character in the JoeVerse - was its 27 points of articulation (did I count that correctly?). And while 3.75" purists and 6" purists might be bashing this line due to it's size, I thought it was a cool concept -- not that I abhor 3.75" nowadays (hey, it's all good to me -- 2.5", 3.75", 6", 8", even 12" or bigger! As long as I like the figure, I'll definitely be getting it), but if I were to look for and buy back each and every one of those figures I sold, I would have to subsist on noodles, handwashing my laundry, and no cellphone service for a year or so.

What I had to get used to, was how these figures were sculpted. The Sigma 6 line has a distinct anime-like style, so one will see angled muscles and bowling ball shoulders as the norm. Another thing I noticed was how Snake Eyes seemed to be anorexic compared to his 3.75" versions where he was somewhat muscular.

For his accessories, he comes with two grenades, a mini-whipstar, a webgear that doubles as a sword sheath at the back, grappling hook, a sword which has a retractable blade underneath the handle, and cool NV goggles.

Disappointingly, his main weapon is a spring-loaded rocket launcher whose barrel can be tilted 90 degrees either left or right. On the outset, I thought that its sideways-firing capability was silly until I remembered that there's already an actual 'bendable' weapon designed for and used by SWAT and special forces.

So what's my verdict? For it's price (Soldier class, which is about US$7.00) and the fact that this is my first Sigma 6 toy, this is a very respectable product.