It’s time to open up some more 3 3/4″ Star Wars figures and this time I’m going with the “Snow Mission” series, which oddly enough consists of Rey and a First Order Stormtrooper. I say it’s odd because neither of these figures seem to fit their “mission” series. Rey is specified as “Starkiller Base” Rey, which we know is on an arctic planet, but she’s still wearing her Jakku robes and we already know that The First Order has specialty Snowtroopers for those arctic climates. Ah, but I’m probably trying to read way too much into a movie that I haven’t even seen yet, so let’s just press on…

No question about it, Hasbro absolutely nailed the packaging for this line. Sure, they’re not at all collector friendly, but the cards are just gorgeous and it’s such a treat to see individual character art on the cards again. For the longest time I was convinced that Hasbro had sacked their entire art design department, but it looks like they may have hired a few back for these snazzy packages. Let’s rip these open and kick things off with Rey.

Yeeeah… Well, as already mentioned, Rey is wearing the same clothes she has on during all those Jakku scenes we see in the trailers, which makes it the same outfit as her 6-inch Black counterpart. I suppose it’s possible she doesn’t change clothes, but that would mean less variant figures to sell and I think Disney and Hasbro are smarter than that. Also, she looks like she’d get really cold in that outfit while traipsing through the snow. Anywho, this is a fairly detailed sculpt for the scale, complete with all the little wrinkles and wrappings of Rey’s garb. The head sculpt isn’t good, but I’d say it’s not all that much worse than the 6-inch version. That’s not really so much a compliment for this figure but a jab at the other. The paint is serviceable for the scale, but not great. It looks fine with the naked eye, but when the camera gets in close I can see all sorts of slop.

Rey comes with her staff or gun or whatever the hell this thing is. She also comes with a pretty cool backpack with snaps on the shoulder straps. It looks great on the figure and it’s adjustable so you could put it on pretty much any figure in the series. That was a nice surprise!

I don’t have a lot to say about the he Stormtrooper, as it is more or less the exact same figure that came with the Assault Walker only minus the pauldron and with a slightly less plastic sheen to him. It’s a great looking figure and includes the same blaster, which can be tabbed into his leg for storage. I commented early about it being odd that a Snowtrooper wasn’t included in the “snow” mission assortment, but I imagine these regular troopers will be on patrol inside Starkiller Base. Either way, I’m probably in for a least couple more of these, assuming I can ever find any.

Last time, I didn’t even bother to talk about the build-a-weapon pieces, but I will this time because these two sort of interest me. Rey’s piece looks like it could make a decent jet pack if the figures had peg holes in the backs, but neither of these do. The Stormtrooper’s weapon is a giant gun, which can be used as a weapon all on its own, even if it is ridiculously huge. Combine these two with the piece that comes with Darth Vader and you can build a pretty decent looking gun turret. Alas, I have no interest in picking up the Vader so it’s not going to happen.

Obviously, these are very basic figures and still only feature that basic 5-POA style of articulation, slightly enhanced with ball jointed necks. Some fans are never going to get past that, and I can understand the hang up. Nothing about these figures is especially great or noteworthy and while I don’t hate them, the thought is constantly nagging at me that a brand new Star Wars movie deserves so much better than this. I probably would have been a lot more resentful of these if the articulated 6-inch line didn’t exist, but since it does, I suppose I can accept these for what they are, throwbacks to a long gone age. Whether I continue to collect these past the initial wave that I have remains to be seen. Next week, I’ll revisit the line with a look at the “Desert Mission” Finn and Flametrooper.