It feels like new Classified figures are arriving every other week, burying my large backlog little by little. Indeed, I think I could devote this entire blog to this line and still not be caught up for a long while. But, these are nice problems to have, and it’s rare these days to get an action figure line producing this kind of quality and quantity on a regular basis. I pushed these two recent additions to the front of the line, Night-Creeper and Jinx, but not necessarily because I was super excited to get them, but more because I don’t think I ever owned either of the original figures, so I’m entering unexplored territory!

Classified is back to using the window boxes and they got something of a redesign. They are a lot less colorful than the older boxes, but I like them a lot. There’s a sense of classy uniformity here and I frankly, I think the best marketing this line can do is just show off how good the figures look. I’ve gone on record many times here with how I’m not a big fan of ninjas taking over my GI JOE vs Cobra narrative, but sprinkling them sparingly into the mix ain’t necessarily a bad thing. In this case, my only familiarity with Jinx has been from the original movie and I have very little familiarity with the Night-Creeper at all, so let’s start with him.

Night-Creeper was first released in the Real American Hero line in 1990 and I was well out of GI JOE by then. I was just starting college, what little disposable income I had was spent on video games, and it would be about a decade until I would start collecting toys as an adult. With that having been said, this guy looks like a pretty solid update to that original figure. The maroon, gray, and purple deco is certainly distinctive without being quite as outrageous as the feast of neon decos that was yet to come. The sculpt gets by with some rumples to the suit, prominent shoulder cuffs and a plate armor vest. Finally, there’s a belt worn by the figure that has sheathes for his twin hooked blades to live. The original outfit design is enhanced here by some segmented armor shin guards and tabi.

You get two heads to choose from. The first pays respects to the original figure, and I think this is an awesome update. The face is covered with a featureless mask and the eyes shielded by a silver visor. All that is wrapped up in a hood and topped off with a silver skull cap. The hood is attached to the head so it works well with the neck articulation.

The second head references the next version of Night-Creeper, which was put out about three years later. This one is a fully enclosed helmet and features what I think is a much stronger sci-fi vibe. There’s an interesting mix of organic curves with some harsh angles in the cheeks. The visor strip is painted in red, while the rest of the helmet and mask match the maroon and purple of the suit. I will likely stick with the first helmet for display, but this one is really creepy and I dig it a lot.

The backpack is designed to hold all the rest of his gear and it has its ups and downs. There are clips on the sides for his two swords. There are some sculpted crossbow bolts across the back along with one free slot to store a loose bolt, and there are two triangular tabs to secure his crossbow. In theory it’s great, but I find that the sword clips are the only thing that really work very well. The loose bolt will stay notched as long as you don’t put the crossbow over it, meanwhile, the tabs to hold the crossbow are warped and don’t align properly. As a result, the crossbow pops out very easily as does the bolt. This rig also makes the figure very back-heavy. Normally, I love when figures can carry all their stuff, but in this case, it’s kind of a disaster.

Night-Creeper comes with two sets of hands. The first pair are both gun-hands with trigger fingers, but these work fine as all-purpose accessory holding hands. The other set includes a right chopping hand and a left hand with a black shuriken sculpted into it. I’m a big fan of the sculpted shuriken, rather than trying to have to get him to hold a tiny loose one. A left chopping hand or fist would have been nice, but I’m still happy with the variety here.

The hooked knives are cast in all black and at least these secure quite well in the sheaths and work fine with the gun-hands. These knives also have rings in the pommels so you can attach a chain or a piece of string.

The swords are very cool updates to the ones included with the original figure, with each having a unique and wicked looking blades. One has a wavy kris-style blade in silver and the other has barbed hooks and is finished in a metallic green. Both weapons have black hilts with excellent sculpted detail.

And finally, Night-Creeper comes with his crossbow and a single loose bolt. I dig the crossbow a lot, even if it is rather bulky. It’s rifle configuration has a stock and a foregrip and it’s sculpted with reserve hours stored underneath. You can load the loose arrow into the weapon and it stays put there a lot better than it does in the backpack. A few design issues aside, Night-Creeper is a very cool looking figure with a great array of accessories. Let’s move on to Jinx!

As I mentioned at the beginning, my only exposure to Jinx was from the original animated movie. I may have still been picked up a few JOEs when Jinx’s figure released in 1987, but she wasn’t one of them. Couple that with my relative indifference toward mixing ninjas in my GI JOEs, and this Classified release wasn’t super high on my list, but in hand I’m pretty pleased with her. She comes in a sculpted red ninja suit with a black sash tied around her waist and a black dragon emblem printed over her left breast. The suit has some purple accents on the sides, her arms are exposed and there’s a tattoo printed down the length of her right arm. The costume is rounded out by black wrappings over her forearms, wrists and palms and red and black slippers. Jinx’s certainly isn’t one of the more elaborate body sculpts we’ve had in Classified, but it does a fine job paying respect to the source material. I think she strikes a nice balance between the RAH and Sunbow designs.

You get two heads to choose from: One masked and one unmasked. Both of these are excellent, but I think Hasbro did a particularly nice job on the unmasked face. It’s a very pretty sculpt with extremely clean printing for the lips and eyes and the hair looks great. There’s a removable choker neckless, and she has a black headband, which can be lowered to work as a blindfold, referencing her uncanny abilities at fighting blind as demonstrated in the film. The masked head doesn’t allow for as much flare in the sculpt, but you do still get to see her pretty eyes. It’s nice to have these options, but I’ll likely be displaying her unmasked most of the time.

Jinx comes with two sets of hands, which include an accessory holding pair and a pair of fists. I know asking for three pairs of hands in a regular Classified release may sound greedy, but the lack of chopping hands feels like a really big omission. Indeed, I would have rather had chopping hands than fists. I’ll also toss out here that I could have done without the arm tattoo. The Classified design team seems to have a real tattoo fetish. In a lot of cases I think it enhances the figure, but not here. It’s especially annoying since they probably redesigned her without the long sleeves just to tatt her up.

The original RAH figure came with two swords and a backpack to hold them, whereas this Classified version comes with one sword and a scabbard that pegs into her back. I’m fine with this, as I think the scabbard looks better than the backpack The sword is a simple sculpt with some detailed wrappings on the grip but nothing on the tsuba. Alas, the blade and tsuba are left bare gray plastic, and these would have looked much better painted silver.

Jinx also comes with a double-bladed pole weapon based on the one included with the RAH figure. The blades have ornate designs and are painted silver, while the pole is black and there’s some maroon paint on the sculpted wraps near each blade.

Even as a tepid I am on ninjas in my GI JOE, I like these figures quite a bit. Night-Creeper could have used some quality control on his backpack’s crossbow tabs, but overall, he’s a really cool figure that comes with a lot of neat stuff. My only real issue with Jinx is she seems light on accessories when compared with Night-Creeper, so that extra pair of chopping hands doesn’t seem like that big an ask. And these will probably do it for me and Classified ninjas for a while. I skipped Kamakura because I just had no interest in him, but I do still have a few Cobra ninjas in my collection to check out, but I’ll likely save those for if I ever get caught up.