As some of my more stalwart readers may remember, back during the First Great Toy Purge I sold off the bulk of my 3 ¾” Star Wars figures. A lot of them went, although I did spare my Imperial Forces and even if you don’t count those I still had over 200 figures left. After that I picked up a few here and there, but when the 6-inch Black line was revealed, I promised myself no more 3 ¾” Star Wars figures. I finally had an out. Then Amazon had a half-price sale on them and I buckled because I am a weak, weak man who cannot even keep a promise to himself. Among the figures I bought was this addition to my army of about 30 or so Stormtroopers. Most of mine are from the Vintage Collection and the Legacy Collection, so I was rather interested to see if these Black Stormies were better, worse, or just repacks of the same figures. Keep in mind I absolutely hate scrutinizing subtle differences between releases, as I find it tedious and boring. Plus, I’ve been out of Star Wars collecting long enough that I’m hardly an authority on it anyway. I will, however, use the Legacy version with the removable helmet as a stand in for comparison, since I have a lot of those in my army. I hated the removable helmet on that guy, but I still think they were pretty good figures. Nobody seemed to want them so I was able to find them on the pegs just about every time I went shopping at Target or Walmart.

This is my first look at the 3 ¾” Scale SWB packaging. It mimics the black, minimalist decos used on the larger scale boxes, only this time in the form of a more traditional card and bubble affair. I like the look of this on the 6-inch line, but here I’m not so sure. The artsy-fartsy style lends itself to promote the larger figures as a collector line, whereas it seems rather out of place on figures that look more or less the same as the stuff we’ve been getting for years decades now, especially since some of these figures are straight repacks or kitbashes. And not showing additional figures on the back of the card? That’s been a tradition since the first Star Wars figure rolled off the line way back when and it seems like sacrilege not to do it. I should also note here that a lot of collectors are reporting instances where the bubbles don’t stick to the card properly. As an opener, it doesn’t bother me, but I can see where the bubble on this one is beginning to separate from the card at the top. MOC collectors, beware!

Ok, so a little research tells me that this is a Vintage Collection Sandtrooper with a regular VC Stormtrooper’s belt. {YAWN!} See? I’m boring myself to tears already. The torso and arms seem pretty close to my Legacy trooper, but when we move below the waist the Black version has something that looks more like a T-crotch only it isn’t. The hips are still ball jointed but he has an awkward and permanent wide stance, which doesn’t look right. Some have complained about the giraffe neck, which comes from this being a Sandtrooper with no pauldron, but honestly I don’t see it as a big issue with my figure. Perhaps the fact that he’s perpetually bow-legged draws my attention away from the neck. There is, however, some notable black paint slop on some of the white armor and even white showing through on the black joints. Jeez, Hasbro, the figure is white plastic with black paint. How hard is that to get right? To slam the disappointment home, I had to shave some mold flashing off this guy, particularly around the joints. That’s the first time I ever had to do that with a 3 3/4″ Star Wars figure. I thought even the 3 ¾” version of Black is still supposed to be a collector line. You wouldn’t know it with this kind of QC.

But we haven’t even gotten to the real sticking point yet. The helmet is god awful. There’s more paint slop, particularly around the chin and the sculpting for the eyes make his helmet look puffy and wrong. Seriously, look at his eyes… it looks like he just woke up or is having an allergy attack. And why are they set so far apart? Keep in mind, I’m comparing this head sculpt to the removable helmet on my Legacy figure. By all rights the Legacy figure should look worse because it’s sculpted on soft rubbery plastic. But, no. It looks so much better. The Black figure looks like it’s supposed to be some kind of primitive variant helmet. Folks, I am by no means a stickler for total accuracy on these figures. Hasbro can get (and probably have) an awful lot of discrepencies past me without me even noticing, but they weren’t even in the ballpark with this one.

The articulation here is fine. This guy is loaded with ball joints so I can get him into all the usual shooting and dying poses that I require from my Stormies. Ironically, however, the weird configuration of the hips makes him look odd when just standing at attention in my ranks. It’s like this guy has spent way too much time in the saddle of a Dewback.

As far as accessories go, This Stormy comes with the same belt as my Legacy version, which is cool because it includes the functional holster. He comes with a rifle and a brand new E-11 Blaster, or at least it’s new  to me! I find it ironic that Hasbro flubbed so much with the actual figure and then went all out on the Blaster, which now features a multi-piece folding stock. I’ve never seen this piece before and it is quite impressive for a weapon in this scale. But to further drive the irony home, you have to pull off all the extra parts if you want it to go into the holster and that gets the official Admiral Ackbar Facepalm Award.

If you can’t tell by now, I’m not impressed with this figure. I realize that the 6-inch Black figures are the real collectible line, but by putting out the crappy 5-point articulation 3 ¾” figures on the pegs alongside these, Hasbro is practically targeting these to collectors as well. This figure is a huge step back from a number of recent Stormtrooper releases and that’s just baffling to me, because they would have better served their customers by just repacking the VC or Legacy figures and making them available again. At $5 each through Amazon’s sale, I was tempted to buy five of these, and I am oh, so glad that I didn’t. Of course, the great thing about army building Stormtroopers is you can always put the sub-par ones in the back of a display to fill out the ranks and that’s where this guy is going to go.