We want more! Send us whatever you’ve got that has a knock-off Kosugi Kick to krainville-at-vintageninja-dot-net, we’ll follow this post up at some point with a major collection.
Enter the ninja poster free#
Thus, our open call for help from you, our fan base who love this stuff as much as we do, but hopefully with more free time on your hands.īelow is the tip of the iceberg, images we’ve casually collected over the years in various categories. The Kosugi Kick was quickly cannibalized by video game companies for packaging and arcade marquees, cheapie toy manufacturers and myriad knock-off merch pirates, book and magazine cover illustrators, and so many more one can hardly keep track. They took the all-too-familiar pose (an icon and virtual logo of 70s kung-fu grindhouse itself), added the soon-to-be-famous black suit and a couple of swords (and note they’re off-the-shelf samurai swords, not the “ninja-to” that would quickly follow as a merchandise juggernaut) and declared THIS IS THE 80s, LET THE NINJA DECADE BEGIN! The Kosugi Kick wasn’t an original idea, rather a carefully calculated effort to evoke the familiar image of Bruce Lee’s famous jump kick, primarily from a press still of The Big Boss, but with their own new stamp. Note the lack of photographer credit or studio copyright. If photographers could realistically collect royalties every time their image was duplicated or directly lifted, whoever shot Sho that fateful day would be a billionaire.Īlas… From the original press kit.
Enter the ninja poster movie#
The retail poster had a more upright quality with the head turned more to the side, while the airbrush movie poster art had compositional corrections in the arms and swords.īut the image had serious legs outside official usage. Note the subtle differences between the various ‘takes’ of the famed pose. The only other official use of the shot was years later in movie industry trade papers during Canon’s interest-stirring efforts for American Ninja (both the recycled Kosugi Kick and a composited shot of Chuck Norris in the Ninja III: The Domination green ninja suit were used in such ads before the project was rebooted into the Michael Dudikoff vehicle).
Shot in a Hollywood studio for the Enter the Ninja press kit, the double wakizashi-waving jump-kicking Sho Kosugi was painted over for the film’s movie poster, ad slicks and subsequent home video packaging. It is THE single most recognizable icon of the 80s ninja craze, practically a logo for the ninja boom in and of itself - and one that has endured for decades.
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