Budo - Ninja Commando

Parts Used

Shang Tsung (Mortal Kombat movie edition) figure and helmet

Appearances

None

The Ninja Commandos, with the possible exception of the Manimals, are the most notorious of those figures Hasbro planned but never released. Originally, plans called for them to be released in 1994 under the name "Battle Corps Ninja Force." For whatever reasons, they were delayed for release until 1995 and given the new name Ninja Commandos, but by then the 3 3/4" GI Joe line had already been cancelled. Rumors continue to persist that these figures DO exist in mass-produced form, and are currently in storage somewhere. The best evidence for this lies in the Mortal Kombat movie figure line. Three different figures have parts from three of the proposed Ninja Commandos, proving that molds were created for this lost chapter of the GI Joe story. Whether the molds were actually utilized to produce the 10,000 figure output of each Commando rumored to be in existence somewhere remains unknown.

Five different figures from the proposed line are shown in the 1994 convention issue of Action Figure News & Toy Review. The proposed characters are: Budo, Storm Shadow, Road Pig, Flint, and Knock-Out. Packaging for these resembles that later used for Mortal Kombat with figures "action-posed" inside the bubble rather than in the typical thin bubble used with GI Joe figures. 

As only Storm Shadow is shown with any accessories in the AFN & TR article, I have no idea what weapons Budo would have had in his arsenal. They probably would have been some of the typical weapons packaged with the Ninja Force figures of years past, as these are what Storm Shadow has. It is a fair assumption that Budo would have included a helmet from the same mold as Shang Tsung's. Whether or not it would have had the same color scheme as its counterpart is a bit more of an assumption, although I've chosen to leave the coloring as it was for Shang Tsung.

The Bivouac: 1998-2002
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