The 1993 Night Creeper figure is the only Ninja Force figure that I actually bought at retail. I didn't, though, buy him for his weapons. I just bought him because I was desperate to add something to my collection after several failed trips to Toys R Us. And, he looked the most palatable of all the bad options.
What I did not notice, though, was that the weapons on his card artwork did not match the weapon tree that was included with the figure. Instead, the Night Creeper is drawn with weapons that ultimately released with the 1993 Slice figure. No real mention of this change is made. In fact, both weapons are called out on the Night Creeper's filecard. Oddly, there is also a cape mentioned. Meaning, this figure had a cape pretty far into his design process. But, it was eliminated even before his Toy Fair debut.
Below you will see photos from the 1993 Toy Fair catalog and the 1993 Ninja Force toy commercial that featured the upcoming Ninja Force figures. The Night Creeper is clearly photographed holding the light blue versions of the Slice accessories. They match the two in his hands on the card artwork. It is notable because the tree that included these weapons was fairly uncommon. So, you don't often see these weapons used with Ninja Force figures even though they are among the best accessories that sub-line produced.
The change in accessories kind of makes sense. While I'd have loved for the Night Creeper to include the Slice weapons, this is a function of the fact that I army build the figure and the Slice gear looks better in photos. Upon their introduction in 1990, the Night Creeper were sold as archers. The original figure included an awesome crossbow. So, switching the Night Creeper over to a weapon tree with a bow to match their original release at least makes some kind of sense.
In the Toy Fair catalog, Ninja Force is noted as including 7 figures in the wave. The photo, though, only shows 6. A seventh, Stormshadow, appears atop the Ninja Lightning motorcycle...likely as a placeholder for the T'Gin Tzu that would use his mold. The missing figure is Slice. So, it's probable that Slice was the final addition to the 1993 Ninja Force lineup. (He is numbered 7 in the set and the only repaint released in the 1993 carded series.) And, when looking for something to make Slice more memorable, giving him the more distinctive weapon tree made some logical sense.
It's pretty likely that someone out there has copies of the unproduced Night Creeper weapon trees. There may even be some people who picked up Hasbro overstock who have a bunch of alternate trees sitting in a box in their basement: not realizing what's actually there. But, they are a fairly lost element of the late run line.
Personally, the cape is always the thing that I've found to be more intriguing. From the card art, it almost looks like it would have been furry (like some ninja ghillie suit maybe?).
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I don't think it would have added much to the finished figure. However, in a year where they were clearly moving away from individualized, character-specific accessories, it's odd that the cape concept evidently survived until the card art stage (and, yet, I've never seen any evidence of a physical preproduction cape).
It seems unlikely that the artist doing the card art would have added that flourish on his own, (or that Hasbro would have left such an unsolicited flourish on the finished card art), but I guess it can't be ruled out at this point.
The cape is in the comics too.
DeleteOh yeah...I forgot that they eventually used the 1993 design in the comics (and that they had the capes).
DeleteThe weapons on the prototype ended up on the shadow ninja
ReplyDelete