2020 Desert Snake Eyes (The Black Major)

O-Ring G.I. Joe has been repaint based for the majority of it’s existence, while there was the occasional new part or re-sculpted figure, from 1997 on, it was repaints of figures from the initial vintage line, and to be honest, the vintage line’s waning years, specifically 1993 featured a high ratio of repainted figures. This isn’t entirely a bad thing, and in some ways the constant repaints allowed certain figures to maintain a level of mystique, as never getting a repaint allowed them to retain a perhaps blemish free record.

One fo the figures that maintained that mystique was the 1985 Snake Eyes mold, as despite it being the most recognizable and popular look for the character that was the most marketable one in the line, it never received a repaint. It had plenty of New Sculpt attempts at bringing aspects of the design back, but it never received a repaint or re-do from Hasbro, and it’s sole usage in a foreign market, was still black and grey.

Factory Customs have brought some of these under-utilized molds back into circulation, now the way in which this is done, is open to some critique, as there needs to be a return on investment, and any of the more daring molds (Anything that isn’t the COBRA Soldier), requires more separate repaints, in colour schemes that don’t always hit the mark. This also leads to people getting burnt out on molds relatively quickly, because the novelty of a non-black ’85 Snake Eyes wears off pretty immediately.

The mystique of the 1985 Snake Eyes mold, was driven by two major factors, the first of which being that it’s always been a relatively pricey figure. While prices today are fairly obscene, there were periods of time, specifically late 2002 through early 2004 where the vintage prices were insane for the timeframe. A lot of the popular figures from 83-86 would run around $50, which factoring how old they were and declining value of the dollar, it’s probably quite similar to the pricing seen today. What also drove the mystique was the fact that in a much smaller eco-system of fan produced content, you really didn’t see the 1985 Snake Eyes figure all that often.

One of the reasons you didn’t really see a lot of ’85 Snake Eyes usage is while the figure looks cool, it has a fair number of warts. It’s dumpy, not particularly detailed, and has that kind of “off” feeling, where the figure just doesn’t move the same way as other figures. Maybe the expectations of the figure are too high, but that’s just the way life goes.

When the Black Major started to do the ’85 Snake Eyes figure, it started off with a lot of COBRA Centric repaints, which were kind of hit or miss, the final wave of the figures, however were majority Snake Eyes based, and were done up in colour ways that were more environmentally based, rather than the sub-team approach usually reserved for figures (The fact Tiger Force was done as a COBRA, and Night Force and Slaughter’s Marauders were done in previous ways necessitated this), so instead we received things like two different Desert Snake Eyes.

I think both of the desert Snake Eyes figures have value, but if I had to choose one, I’d probably go with the one featuring the camouflage. The colouring is a little more eye catching, since the black contrasts from the base tan better than the brown, and the camo pattern works well in hiding the dumpiness of the mold. The use of two colours for the camouflage help give the figure a little more life, and the silver on the wrist mounted dart gun is a nice throw back to the original Snake Eyes. The red grenades on the bandolier are just enough of a splash of colour to give the figure that final push over the edge.

To me the most useful form of repaint is the environmentally specific version, as it provides additional value, because now it allows other figures designated for that environment another figure to interact with. I don’t really think I’d be thinking about pairing up Snake Eyes and Dusty at any point, but this desert repaint of Snake Eyes is a good match for the 1985 Dusty, both from a colouring perspective but as well as the mold’s original release year. That’s one of the areas where sometimes the sub-team repaints don’t work as well as they could, because there’s a disparity between a figure like Snake Eyes or the Eel and the figures that made up the Night Force subteam.

The nice thing about some of these off-beat repaints, is they aren’t the kind of releases you look at and think that no collection would be complete without it, because if they didn’t exist, it wouldn’t really change anything. So when they do exist, it’s a nice little surprise that helps to improve one’s collection. In a situation, like this figure, it allows the most popular character in the line’s most popular appearance, to get another lease on life. Would I argue that this is best desert Snake Eyes figure? probably not, as the 1991 mold was repainted for the desert, and that’s a superior figure to the 1985 Snake Eyes, in every way except recognizability.

While, I like aspects of the Snake Eyes character, and feel there are a lot of interesting things that can be done with it, I don’t really think about him in any form other than the 82-83 design. A lot of that stems from the fact that when I would daydream storylines and scenarios about G.I. Joe, I for the most part focused on the first couple years of the line, as those figures are my favourite, and the amount of figures and characters is easily maintainable.

Later on as I expanded my collection, I gave more thought to some of the later figures but they wound up generally being the figures from the 1987 and 1988 lines, if only because there’s enough of a skeleton in regards to characters, but not a lot of pre-determined meat on the bones, that requires discarding. Oftentimes when discarding some of the preconceived notions, you get the comments from people telling you how it’s supposed to be, which I don’t really want to bother reading, especially considering how often those people get basic facts wrong. However, the characters from the earliest days of the line, don’t get brought into the daydreams about the later figures, where these characters initially appeared, is kind of where they exist. Even when I make custom figures of later characters into the 82-84 style, they often are little more than background fodder.

So, because of that, the 1985 Snake Eyes and all of his repaints are figures I enjoy, but don’t really have anything that hooks me into using them, other than running across them in a bin. Even upon getting the figures when they were first released, I didn’t have that rush to use them, that I usually get with figures that show up in the mail.

This final wave of Snake Eyes figures were generally quite decent, but had the unfortunate aspect of one of the figures, Bonecrusher, a Snake Eyes painted up as a skeleton, really overshadowing the entire wave. I mean it’s understandable why that happened, skeletons are sick as hell.

Still, not a lot of figures from this wave show up much nowadays. Some of that is the fact that environmentally specific figures don’t have a lot of the appeal others do with the fanbase, as there was a bit of a paradigm shift at one point from people viewing the figures with a bit of desire for “realism”, to a heavier focus on things that have identifiable historical connections, which is why the most popular of all the TBM Snake Eyes figures will probably forever be the purple one from the first wave, since it was reminiscent of the Sunbow Snake Eyes. I don’t think one opinion on style of repaints is better than the other, because to me, they both have their positives and negatives, and I personally don’t want to see the 1985 Snake Eyes design in either TACTICOOL BAD ASS GUY WHO’S GONNA GET MURK’D BY A GOAT HERDER or THE GUY FROM THE CULTURE CLUB.

Though, there’s a nice thing when these relatively strong figures fall into the ether, as they give me something to go back to at some point. I’ve not had as much time for photography or collecting in the last year, which means having some figures that are relatively fresh to do something with, helps prevent a lot of potential burnout. It’s an odd phenomenon where there’s a contentedness of what my collection consists of, while also being in a spot where I really don’t have the time to do anything with it, and frankly I’m kind of glad to be in that spot, as I think O-Ring G.I. Joe is kind of nearing an end of history point, and so if it continues on, that’s fine, if nothing comes out again, that’s fine too.