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I'm going to hold off on reviewing too much more this week, since I haven't picked up everything I want yet, hopefully that'll change by the weekend so I can review more stuff.

But anyway, here's my second Single Card Wave 1 Retaliation Review.

2) Red Ninja:
a) Packaging: Really the same as all the other wave one figures, check out the review with Cobra Trooper.
b) The Figure: This is a repaint of the Renegades Storm Shadow mold, which sadly I have not managed to get yet from the 30th anniversary.

This Cobra Troop Builder is articulated out the wazoo, with 16 points, the full range of most Modern Joes. We've got ball jointed neck, shoulders, elbows, waist, hips, ankles, double-jointed knees and pivot wrists. The articulation is perfect for a ninja character, and the repaint of the mold looks great.

Acessory Wise he comes with only four things, a removeable black belt/bandolier combination, two black handled silver bladed ninja swords and of course the gimmick weapon/accessory. This time it's a Zip Line, which I haven't tried out yet, it comes with 2 ft of string/line according to the packaging and features a lot of different methods for using it as a zip line. There's clips and hooks and grips and... Well it's tricky to explain, all I know is the thing probably works great. Unfortuantely there is no storage place for it, the zip line is also a really large chunk of plastic that, when attached via his arm to the Red Ninja it makes the arm top heavy.

Overall, while this figure is highly impressive and the sculpt looks great as an upgrade for the Red Ninja, it does suffer a little bit. While you could technically store one of his swords on his back by slipping the blade through the bandolier, it doesn't sit nice. The articulation is awesome for a ninja character, and the odd jointing of his feet means you can get some pretty damn cool poses, I just wish that Hasbro had not omitted the back scabbard or something to store the swords with.

The zip line is also, while impressive, quite cumbersome and has no storage for the line proper so you have 2 ft worth of string hanging off the thing.

I'm probably going to get a little flak for this, but I'm sticking with a 3.5 rating for this character. It's a great figure, don't get me wrong, and I can't wait to pick up another one for my troop building. I just feel that with the lack of proper sword storage capacity and on top of the generic looking packaging this figure will stay 3.5. The Red Ninja in the Ninja Showdown set appears to come with more accessories, I can't wait to pick it up to compare the two versions of. Hopefully on the weekend I can get that set.

Current Ratings: Cobra Trooper 4
Red Ninja 3.5

Edit: Darn it, forgot something monumentally important. The swords will not sit in the hands very tightly, they love to fall out at the least little adjustment of the arms for different poses. That's another reason why he has such a low rating, despite being repainted from a very in-demand version of SS.