Edmond Honda (1994)
GI Joe’s 80s period stands as a triumph of interconnected toys and accessories. Thanks to the common design and size of the figures, there are very few instances of characters not being able to fit in vehicles or borrow weapons and backpacks from their comrades (or opponents). As the series continued into the 90s, Hasbro veered off the compatability path a few times, offering up changes in construction as well as body size.
No figure represents the latter more than Edmond Honda. First released in the GI Joe Streetfighter II sub-team, he saw a variant offered in the 1994 Hasbro Street Fighter movie line. This figure is massive. Considering he’s a sumo wrestler, it would stand to reason. Thankfully Hasbro didn’t decide to slim him down to standard size, which wud have been laughably bad.
Like the other fighters, Honda has a built-in action gimmick, a springing leg kick. The action works for the most part, but the soft goods shorts often get hung up and keep the leg from resetting. I didn’t have a problem with the action features in the series, if they didn’t interfere much with the sculpt of the figure. Since Honda doesn’t have an o-ring, we don’t have to worry about not being able to replace a broken one.
The only changes from the official Joe version is the color of his shorts and face paint. Where the first was colored blue and red respectively, this one is white and blue. It would have been nice to get the head without any face paint.
Was there a palette swap in these colors in any of the games?
Dhalsim, Sagat, and E. Honda we’re excellent action figures and the perfect size to fight Snake Eyes and Stormshadow.
This is a fun and interesting figure, but man, the decision to give him a leg-related action feature and not some sort of rapid arm movement was a real missed opportunity.