Tommy Arashikage (2006)

The small GI Joe figures have always been an easy ssubject for customization. Their very construction allows for a nearly endless combination of parts and an ease of assembly, if one has access to a precision screwdriver. Before I ever performed any parts swapping among GI Joes, I experimented on a couple of Star Wars figures. During the post-Jedi years, I had picked up a few issues of the Marvel Star Wars comic, and was surprised to see Luke wearing color variations of his movie outfits. One was his Jedi gear, but with a white rather than brown tunic. I was at a friend’s house one weekend, and he had some white tempera paint. I went a bit hog wild, painting my Jedi Luke to resemble his comic counterpart. I didn’t stop there, also painting my Greedo figure’s clothes white. It was marvelous, and my toy customizing career began.

Around the same time, I was buying GI Joe comics, and had seen the Snake Eyes origin issues. I became fascinated by the appearance of the younger versions of Snakes, Stalker and Storm Shadow. To see the backstory of these characters was unexpected, and I began to wonder if toy versions would be released soon. Of course, they weren’t, so I had to make do by giving Frostbite’s scoped M-16 to my ’83 Stalker.

Years later, the comic packs fulfilled my wishes. All three of the flashback Joes finally made it to toy shelves. With a limited amount of new tooling, the comic packs weren’t always exacting in their depiction of their four color counterparts. The gist of the comic image comes across however, and Tommy even has some added web gear to help further disguise the old mold source.

The flashback figures don’t have a lot of uses, but are nontheless fun to have in a collection. The bow amd arrow are a nice touch, and the new head is well done. Though the figure isn’t perfect, it remains one of my favorite post-RAH o-ring figures.