All parts - Shang Tsung (Mortal Kombat Movie Edition)

Helmet - Shang Tsung (Mortal Kombat Movie Edition)
Sword - Snake Eyes v19

We were going to get a second version of Budo in 1995 until the entire GI Joe line was cancelled that year. The figure mold did get used to make a movie edition of Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat. So by taking one of those figures, and the available pre-production photo of the 1995 Ninja Force figures, we can make an approximation of that Budo. I decided against just making a straight reproduction of it, since I thought the paint apps and some of the colour scheme could be better, so we can say this custom is inspired by the 1995 figure rather than based on it. I used chrome ink on the sword blade to make it super-shiny. The figure sculpt is both good and bad. The head sculpt is pretty fantastic, but the figure suffers from the oversized torso that Ninja Force and other later Joe figures had. Plus his legs are too skinny, but the arms are just fine. The pattern on his pants is not something I came up with - those little designs are sculpted into his legs. The most challenging part of this custom is, of course, the fact that the torso is permanently glued together, with no screw in the back. I could have tried splitting it apart and then gluing it back together when done, but I decided to just paint the figure without disassembling it.