Oh my God, Karen, you can't just ask people why they're green!
Country of Origin: Brazil
Fighting Style: Electricity, feral maneuvers
In the Street Fighter backstory, a small plane flying over the Amazon rainforest was shot down for getting too close to a secret Shadaloo facility, killing the pilot but leaving his 10-year-old son alive. The boy grew up in the wilds, becoming something of a local cryptid, until he walked out of the rain forest one day and challenged anyone who wanted to a fight. It'd be like if a Bigfoot showed up an arm-wrestling tournament.
Sometimes character revisions truly are for the best. Lots of media at the time had to have a "man-beast" character, and Blanka was Street Fighter's;
but much like Guile was originally "Shilke Muller," the character we know as Blanka was at first going to be "Anabebe," an African man who had been raised by lions, and was now kept, chained up, by a lion tamer named Rothenberger, which sure is a very Dutch-sounding name, isn't it? That's certainly something! There's a certain... innocence to Japan's racism, which is mainly a result of absorbing America's more malicious kind via pop culture.
Like all Jada's Street Fighter figures, Blanka includes two heads: one is just snarling, while the other has his mouth fully open to show off his fangs. There have been a few "official" stories about Blanka's (in-universe) origins, with one of them being that there was some kind of mutagenic material wherever the plane crashed, and that's why he's green, can generate electricity, and has other animal features like those fangs.
Unlike the hyper-detailed SOTA figures, this line favors a simpler, smoother style. Blanka is still muscular and very broad, but the shapes are almost cartoony rather than trying to capture every little vein and muscle fiber. There's a bit of texture on his tattered pants, and it's even different on the frayed edges, while the most detailed part of the sculpt is the hair on his forearms, shins, and chest. The hair on his head is the gigantic mane it's meant to be, and is sculpted to stick out a bit, to facilitate tipping the head back. And instead of being solid plastic, it's two nested, hollow pieces of PVC to keep it light and flexible.
Although we think of Blanka as "green," the color the original game used was much closer to yellow than anything else. (He was originally going to be pink, but the designs found that ugly and changed it.) The standard release of this figure does a great job of matching that particular shade
of green, way better than SOTA's did; this, however, is not the standard release. This is the Entertainment Earth exclusive Glow-in-the-Dark version, because I love a good gimmick. SOTA made one of those, too, but when they did, it was all-over green, with the only paint being the eyes and mouth; Jada's gets those painted, but also his shorts, shackles, nails, and hair. That means he looks "normal" when the lights are on, but manages to glow brightly once the lights are off. And let me tell you, this glow is enduring. I had it in a room that was fairly dark, only had the lights on in there for a few minutes at a time, but I'd go past it hours later and he'd still be 100% visible. It's wild!
Blanka's default posture has him all hunched over, so it would kind of annoying if the toy couldn't do that, right? Thankfully,
he has all the same articulation as the other SFII figures: swivel/hinge ankles, swivel shins, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljoint hips, a balljoint waist, balljointed chest, swivel/hinged wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, hinged neck, and barbell head. He coudl really use those hip hinges GI Joe Classified gets, to help him squat better, but you can still manage if you try. Making the top of his shorts out of PVC helps. The notch they took out of the back of the neck was a great decision, because it allows him to tip his head all the way back - that is, to look forward when he's bent over.
Blanka is sold in a larger box with a larger price tag, just like Sagat was. To make up for this, his accessories are larger than average:
like most figures, he gets alternate hands (open or closed) and energy effects. Since his main energy attack is to squat in place and electrify himself, zapping anyone foolish enough to touch him in that state, he gets a pair of freestanding lightning effects to surround him. They're like those Tamashii Nations effects sets, but available with a US toy instead of only imports! On the standard release, they fade from yellow to clear, but for this exclusive, they're the same pale green GitD plastic all the way through - the better choice! They're not two of the same sculpt, either, but distinct things with their own unique designs.
After moving on from Anabebe, Capcom's next iteration of the "wild man" archetype was called Hamablanka, which Western fans on the early internet mistakenly Romanized as "Hammer Blanka," as though he were named after the tool. Then they tried to do a folk etymology where it was derived from the locals near his jungle calling him "el hombre blanco," despite the fact that 1) he's green, not white, and B) they speak Portuguese in Brazil, not Spanish. But the truth is, from 1971 to 2005, there was a tourist attraction in Wakayama (about an hour away from Capcom's offices in Osaka) called Hama Blanca, from the Japanese word for "beach" and the back half of "Casablanca." The park started as a botanical garden, and showcased all sorts of tropical plants, then started doing stage shows that featured a very Caribbean/South American style of costumes. So the Capcom team would likely have seen advertisements for this jungle-themed resort, thought the name "Hama Blanca" sounded exotic, and just dropped it onto their legally mandated wild-man character. Jada's done a wonderful job bringing him to plastic life, and the glow-in-the-dark variant is exceptionally cool on top of that.
-- 07/23/26
What shade do you like Blanka to be? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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