I am quite seriously backlogged in my Sixth-Scale figure reviews, but what better motivation to get my ass in gear than the recent reveal of Hot Toys’ third figure based on the titular Mandalorian, this time appearing in his Second Season armor. The first release was how he appeared at the beginning of the series, and the one I’m looking at today is his later appearance, after securing some of that scrummy Beskar armor. I skipped the first figure, opting for what I hoped would be his final form, and I’m still pretty content with that decision. The second season saw him replacing the final pieces of his crappier armor, so as I see it this version is a nice compromise between his ramshackle beginnings and the spiffy complete suit. That’s also my way of convincing myself that I’m good with owning just the one release. Also note, this is a Deluxe figure and I’ve got to make it a two-parter, because there’s so much to look at here!

As I’ve said many times before, the packaging on these figures is nothing special. You get minimalist art design, and a pretty simple shoebox with an illustrated band around it. There’s also an illustrated inside cover over the trays, all showing pictures of the toy inside. Since this is a Deluxe set, the box is wider than your average Hot Toys release, and the three levels of nested trays are absolutely packed with stuff. So much stuff! I was genuinely overwhelmed when I first opened it. This may be the most accessories I’ve seen included with any of my Hot Toys purchases. Some of these goodies I’ll look at as part of the outfit, while other’s we’ll take a closer look at. I’ve kitted Mando out with most of his gear from the start, so let’s have a look!

Straightaway, I’ll say that Mando’s outfit presented Hot Toys with plenty of opportunities to go wild, and they certainly stepped up to the challenge. He comes out of the box mostly ready to go, with a few bits and bobs that need to be added to his person, and in this case I already slung his rifle across his back. The costume is built around a simple gray jumpsuit with the armor pieces attached. Wait, what? Gray? Yeah, I’m not sure what happened there. The solicitation photos showed the correct brown suit, but that’s not what we got. For a company that is so meticulous about correct detail, I’m not sure why they changed it to wrong. Personally, I think the gray looks better with the shiny Beskar, but that doesn’t make it right. Anywho, the armor includes his chest piece, pelvic piece, shoulders, arm bracers, two thigh guards, a right knee guard, and a couple of hip plates. All of these pieces are fashioned to look like shiny new Beskar, with the exception of his holdover right thigh plate and knee guard. The weathering on the older pieces is very well done, retaining the ugly brown of his old armor. There’s scuffing and even some splattering of silver on the thigh plate. The finish on all the Beskar pieces is beautiful and pretty convincing as metal even though they are all simple plastic. I just love seeing the light reflect off of it!

His cape is made of a fine material, which falls about the figure quite naturally. I dig the way it wraps around his front, and the color of the fabric matches his jumpsuit pretty closely. There’s a hole in the back of the cape where you can pass the retaining strap through, to help hold his rifle in place, whereas another strap goes over Mando’s left shoulder and pegs into his bandoleer to secure it. This makes it pretty easy to take off and put back on, which is always a good thing! I love that the cape doesn’t interfere with having the rifle on his back, but things will get a little trickier later when we equip his jetpack.

The right shoulder armor is actually removable so the figure can be displayed with or without his newly earned signet. It’s attached by velcro, so swapping them out requires no fuss at all. The embossed Mudhorn is the only difference between the two pieces, and I’ve chosen to go with the signet piece for photos throughout the review.

The brown bandoleer strap runs from his left shoulder down to his gun belt. There are loops on the strap and the belt to hold some of his ammo cartridges. Here you can also see a few pouches on the belt and a place where he tucks his bounty tracking fob for safe keeping. Or at least where I chose to tuck it! Below that he has a holster with retaining strap to keep his pistol and some additional cartridges on the belt behind it. He also has a place for three detonators on his left hip, the first of which is removable. As expected the belts and holster are meticulously stitched and look great on the figure. The holster is very easy to work with too, which was a welcome treat. Having passed on the first release, I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that a lot of this stuff is recycled from that figure. Boy was I happy to see all this rigging already on the figure straight out of the box!

Moving down to his high boots, he has a belt with more ammo cartridges around his lower right leg and a dagger thrust into the top of his boot. The boots are fairly convincing as being all one piece, but there is a ball joint hidden up in the ankle for those wide stances or flight poses.

The helmet hasn’t changed much between the outfits, although this one looks cleaner than the previous release. This set does not include an unmasked portrait, and that’s fine with me. Obviously the unmasked portrait would add a lot ot the value, but I honestly can’t imagine displaying the figure without his helmet, especially since we’ve only seen Mando’s face like three times during the run of two seasons. Sorry, Pedro, if it were up to me you would have kept your helmet on the whole time.

The helmet does include a swap-out flashlight for the right side. It’s easy enough to pull off the retracted plate and pop on the one with the device deployed. I may actually leave the light out when I display him, as it adds a little something to the helmet.

The vibro blade dagger and the tracking fob, which I already mentioned, are cool little accessories, but probably best displayed as part of his outfit. Both feature great sculpts with a lot of attention to detail. The figure comes with a hand specifically made for holding the dagger, but it’s a real tight fit. The fob can be coaxed into it as well, but I think this hand needed to be reworked in order to be up to the task. I might as well point out here that Mando comes with all the usual extra hands, including pairs of relaxed, pistol-holding, rifle-holding, and the so-called dagger-holding right hand. All of these are extremely stiff with next to no flexibility in the fingers, so be careful with those fragile accessories!

Each of Mando’s arm bracers contains a weapon, and there are accessories to show them off. On the left gauntlet, you get two different pieces for the Whistling Bird, one with the tiny missiles retracted and one with them deployed and ready to fire. I gotta say, the inclusion of two different pieces here just feels like Hot Toys flexing their ridiculous attention to detail. Even with the two different pieces side by side the difference isn’t all that noticeable to me. This is one of those tiny accessories that I would never have missed if it wasn’t included, but I can appreciate that they did it anyway.

The Whistling Bird also has a firing effect part, which I believe is exclusive to the Deluxe release. It doesn’t quite convey the sheer number of independently directional micro-missiles as seen in the show, but it’s certainly not a bad effort. I also appreciate that the effect part is super easy to put on and take off. My only real gripe here is that the range in Mando’s shoulders isn’t quite enough to have him hold his arm fully perpendicular to his body, which is really how they should be positioned when firing this weapon. Official pictures do show the figure in that pose, but I can only get about 70-degrees before it feels like I’m forcing it, and I’m not about to do that. It’s a little frustrating, since there’s nothing about the costume that should be restricting his movement like that. It feels like all the resistance is coming from the padding between the body and the costume.

The right bracer features his flame thrower, and this is a plastic effect part that clips onto the edge of the bracer and lines up with the tiny nozzle. Again, range of motion in the shoulder doesn’t make for optimal posing, but I absolutely love the way this effect looks. They did a beautiful job recreating the flame jet with translucent plastic. It’s substantial, but not too heavy, and to continue one of the running themes of this figure, it’s easy to attach and remove.

The final attachment for the right arm bracer is the grapple hook. The hook is attached to a piece of stiff wire which plugs right into the gauntlet. This was a cool surprise, as I hadn’t even realized it was going to be included. And now that we’re through all these hidden gizmos, let’s take a look at his regular weapons.

Being a firearms enthusiast, one of my favorite things about the guns of the Star Wars Universe is that they’re nearly all based on real world counterparts. Modifying these functional weapon designs gives these fantasy guns a great degree of credibility and realism. Mando’s pistol design comes from the Swiss made Bergmann M1894 7.5mm pistol. It was a distinctive design even before the sci-fi mods were added, and Hot Toys did a wonderful job recreating it in plastic. The sculpt is intricately detailed, features a nice weathered finish, and some additional silver and copper paint hits. It’s a good fit in the intended trigger-finger hand, and this piece is easy to remove and replace from the holster.

The Amban Phase-Pulse Blaster rifle looks every bit as cool as its name sounds. This design was famously inspired by Boba Fett’s rifle in the animated short of the Star Wars Holiday Special, and with the exception of the tuning forks at the muzzle, it reminds me of an old Moroccan firing piece. Once again, the sculpting on this accessory is absolutely off the charts. From the intricate mechanisms in the breech to the copper bands holding on the scope, it seems like not a detail has been missed and every one of those little details looks like it serves a purpose. Not only does this weapon look great, but it can even open and be loaded with one of the many cartridges on Mando’s person. Sadly, I’m not able to get him into a decent firing position with it, but he does look great holding it, or displaying it slung across his back. Hey… You still with me? We’re not done yet… Who wants some ice cream?

Fans of Willrow Hood, will be happy to see this rather detailed recreation of the camtono personal vault included in this set. It’s the vessel used to safehouse the Beskar paid to Mando for retrieving The Baby. This protector of valuables and crafter of cold dairy treats has some nice weathering on it, as well as a hidden battery compartment to power it’s LED feature.

When opened, it lights up to showcase the precious Beskar inside. Each of the container’s three hatches can be opened and the switch for the lights is hidden under a removable cap on the top. A cap that I did not do a good job of closing up in the previous photo. The Beskar can be removed and separated into a larger and smaller pile. The set also contains a single separate Beskar bar as well. These have a nice finish, but I think they could have done a better job on the Imperial insignia stamp. Hey, nitpickers gonna pick.

Mando also comes with this little armor hologram, cast in translucent blue plastic with a silver disk base for the emitter. He can hold this pretty well in one of his left hands. Phew… are we done yet? Almost!

Last, but certainly not least, is Mando’s jet pack. This beauty appears to be sculpted in mostly one piece and features a beautiful silver finish that matches the armor. The details are sharp, and the paintwork features a few areas of pitting, as well as some scorch marks from the heat.

The jetpack is covered on the reverse side with felt and there are magnets inside to attach it to the figure’s back quick and easy. And if you’ve spent any time attaching jetpacks to either Hot Toys or Sideshow’s Boba Fett figures, you know what a relief this is! No tiny clasps to deal with! You do have to push the cape all the way to one side to attach it, which gets me to thinking about how it’s probably not a good idea to wear a cape with a jetpack. Speaking of flaming exhaust… The jetpack also includes some effect parts that plug into the thruster cones, which look great, but are a little understated and difficult to see from the front. All in all I dig the jetpack a lot and it was an essential inclusion, but I’ll be displaying my figure with the rifle on his back instead.

Whoops, not quite done yet, because you also get the figure stand. The rectangular base with angled silver nameplate is pretty standard stuff for Hot Toys Star Wars these days. The sculpted sand base is a nice flourish, though. It actually has foot imprints to position Mando’s feet, although I would have preferred had they left those out. Instead of the typical crotch cradle, the stand features one of those thick semi-posable cables with a spring-loaded waist clasp. I can appreciate the thought behind this giving the ability to display Mando in a flight pose, but I would have much preferred a standard support. The bulky clasp tends to be at odds with the cape and rifle, and that’s how I plan on displaying him.

There’s no doubt that this set is worthy of the Deluxe moniker, and we still have more stuff to look at, so I’m going to call it quits here for today and reconvene on Friday, because I’m sure people “Would like to see The Baby!” As curious as I am as to why they went with the gray colored jumpsuit, the reality is it doesn’t bother me at all. I may not have even noticed if it weren’t for the brown suit depicted on the box. Yes, the limitations in the shoulder are more than a bit disappointing. It’s not that I usually expect crazy articulation out of my Hot Toys, but the costume didn’t seem like it would be restrictive, and in this case I was expecting more. I guess I hadn’t counted on the interior padding. Still, all in all, none of these downsides have really hurt my appreciation of this figure. It looks absolutely gorgeous, and there is a crazy amount of stuff here to mess around with. And I’ll bring even more to the table on Friday when I wrap up this review with part two!