The figure -
Nice design. Interesting take on the costume. Hasbro went with the second Snake Eyes design instead of the first, and he feels the first commando SE should have been released first, but the second "visor" version isn't bad at all.
He thinks the Hasbro designers took a lot of cues from the Retaliation costume, which was nice with a good balance of textures.
He's not crazy about the head sculpt. Feels the mouth vents and chin strap piece are distracting, and that Hasbro should have done one or the other and not both. But that's okay.
He has issues with the deco of the figure. The Retaliation design had some brown in it, but he feels it's a bit boring. He didn't want just a straight black figure for this 6" figure, but breaking up the deco on this figure with the brown, grey, and metallic colors was overdone.
They brought in too much grey into the arms and legs, and the brown looks ugly. The browns on SE's straps and arm guards are different browns, and that makes no sense. It's a big miss being on the figure overall all, and he would have gone with grey/dark grey instead.
Brown gives the feeling of leather, and having that color on the knuckles makes no sense. It should have been a metallic or flat dark grey, which would have made them pop more.
He does not like the pants being the color it is. It should have been black to pay homage to the original figure as the grey dominates the figure too much from top to bottom.
The Arashikage emblem is fine, but it's in too many places. The symbol on his chest is already showing signs of wear and is rubbing off.
The belt design makes no sense. It's one grey colored piece that looks like two belts that kinda looks like "a Liefeld (design)" that's there for no reason. It doesn't hold anything (weapons - molded or not) and with so much grey in the figure already, it kind of gets lost.
The knee pads are lazy. The front metallic is nice, but making the wrap around to the back of the knee metallic as well makes no sense. Why would the cloth part be the same color as the metal knee part?
The pins in the figure (for articulation) is lazy. They're all black instead of being the same color as the part of the figure they're holding together. Grey pants with black pins is a miss because it's an easy fix that he had done many times while he was working in Hasbro (most notably on the Marvel Legends line). He feels that when you're paying $50 for a figure, you wanna make sure it's worth the cash you're paying, and little misses like that tend to take away from the idea of it being a premium item.
The boots have more brown color, again, and Hasbro was very inconsistent with their paint finishes. Hasbro has a large book of paint chips with various finishes, and painting any piece in any type of finish is free - it's not an extra cost. Using gloss finishes and matte finishes should have been more closely payed attention to. The boots have too much gloss.
The (personal) glaring design problem he has are the design of the grenades. They're WW2-Vietnam pineapple grenades that don't exist in today's military. The design is a miss to him as he would have tons of reference folders to make sure things look correct and accurate. And since this figure line is being designed to look more modern day/post-2000 military, it bothers him a lot.
The shoulder/torso harnesses is nice and interesting, but it's a separate piece that keys into the torso. If you take it off, there's a weird area underneath that has no sculpt to it. Hasbro isn't giving the fans a chance to take it off (if they want to) because it leaves a blank space on his chest.
He loves the detail on the pants, with a nice texture of canvass to it. The detailing is great.
