Black Dragon (1995)
A blond martial artist on a GI Joe team? Where have I seen that before? He’s got an Asian sounding name as well. I don’t quite get what’s going on there, but a blonde martial artist could be considered Extreme on some level. What’s also Extreme is his weapon. Look at that thing. It’s really kind of a mess. It actually looks more than a little Ninja Turtley (is that a word?) and is part of his main gimmick. You see, both of his hands spin at the wrist. Then there’s a little wheel on his back that sends both hands flailing wildly. When you stick his katana and nunchaku onto his multi-flail mace thingamijig, it makes for a whirring golden ninja wheel of death. I’m a sucker for action features, when they’re integrated well, and they work, but Black Dragon’s spinning hands won’t stay still when the weapons are in them. They just kind of droop. Bummer.
The sculpt is all over the place, like much of the rest of the Extreme line. The sculpting is soft, dull and simplistic, akin to the early Toy Biz Marvel figures. It actually looks cheap in a way. It’s a really disappointing toy, in the end. If you didn’t know anything about the Extreme cast of characters, you might think it was some schlub from Wildcats or any other 90s comic book toy lines. You certainly wouldn’t mistake it for Snake Eyes.
Kudos for covering the lowlights as well as the highlights. This reinforces my previous decision to never go extreme.
That’s an…interesting toy to say the least.
I remember seeing these advertised in the same catalouge that came packed with the POTF2 Speeder bike set. I couldnt have cared less about these hideous things but my little brother really wanted them. We checked every toy store we could find but we never saw any.
I know people say they are hideous but thats what most [if not] all action figures in the 90’s looked like
I think the reason the Extreme line failed was that most of the heroes were varients of LT Stone and three of the five villains are Iron Klaw
I think this guy is worth reinventing in the 30th style
Extreme should be prime material for a convention set.
In my mind, I always just assumed this guy was the son of Snake-Eyes and Scarlett.
@Craig
I used to think that too
Extreme took place in the far of year of 2009 [thats what my comic books of it say] but Scarlet and Snakeyes werent married until 1994 which makes this guy 15? but he could be older as people dont usually need to be married in order to have kids
Yeah, when I first saw this guy, I figured he was Snakes much like Freight was Roadblock and Stone either Duke or Hawk. Made me wonder why they cancelled the Real American Hero line if they couldn’t come up with actual new characters for this incarnation.
I wanted to like Extreme, I really did. But the pre-posed sculpts and minimal articulation went against everything that was cool about G.I. Joe in the first place. Apparently, most everyone else thought the same.
Hey don’t lump this guy in with my beloved wildc.a.t.s
Hard to believe they didn’t put the ninja in the first wave. The second round of Extreme was hard to find. I never saw them, of course, I wasn’t looking too hard because the toys were terrible.
I always figured Black Dragon just dyed his hair blonde. A lot of Asian people dye their hair.
Hell, 99.9999% of music acts in Japan have their hair dyed one color or another.
Bleah!
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