I’ll confess that last week’s trailer for Force Awakens has done its job and whipped me into some serious anticipation. It’s also motivated me to take my last look at the initial assortment of Force Awakens 3 3/4″ figures. So far, I’ve looked at two figures from each of the Desert, Jungle, and Snow Mission series and that just leaves the Space Mission Poe and TIE Fighter Pilot, so let’s blow this thing and go home.

I’m still quite in love with this packaging. The cards look amazing and it’s so nice to see individualized character art on each one and not just a small headshot on a bubble insert. Alas, they are not collector friendly, which leads me to the admission that I really wish I hadn’t opened any of these. I know, at about eight bucks a pop, it wouldn’t break my bank to get doubles, but I’m not about to get involved in all that. Anyway, let’s start with Poe.

As this is the Space Mission Series, Poe comes in his X-Wing pilot gear, which pays homage to the OT flight suits, but still manages to be rather distinctive. The sculpt on the suit is pretty wonky and while there are some nice details, like the texturing and all the rumples, there’s something off about this figure to me. It kind of looks like it’s a poor custom job made from another figure using sculpey. The paint, especially around the white vest, is also rough. But hey, he does come with a little functional holster for his tiny pistol. I guess that’s something.

And yet my biggest criticism here is the permanent helmet on the head. Hasbro has been doing removable helmets on their pilot figures for a while now, so this strikes me as a particularly cheap way to get collectors to buy the X-Wing, which includes a Poe figure sans helmet. It’s also worth noting that the head on my Poe is crazy loose. Top it off with the fact that it isn’t a paritcularly good head sculpt, what with the super thick visor.

Poe’s Build-A-Weapon piece can peg into his back to form a kind of VTOL jetpack sort of thing. It’s kind of dopey, but still infinitely better than Finn’s shoulder-mounted machine guns. In case you can’t tell, this figure is not impressing me. Let’s try the TIE Fighter Pilot…

Now, this guy should have been a slam dunk, seeing as how all the 3 3/4″ Stormtroopers have been quite good, but here’s another one that I think Hasbro stumbled on. The body is fair enough with some decent detail and some minimal paint apps on his chest boxes and insignia on his shoulders, but the helmet sculpt is so soft, I can barely make out any of the details. Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s black on black on black, but I really have to get the light to shine on that head just right to pick out what’s going on there. He comes with a little pistol, but no holster to put it in.

The TIE Fighter Pilot’s Build-A-Weapon piece is a chair. I shit you not. It’s a chair. Getting the piece that comes with the Resistance Trooper will allow you to build a sort of gun turret kind of thing.

This Space Mission Series is easily the most disappointing assortment in the wave and really drives home why I wish I had kept these carded. On the cards, these figures were enhanced by some great packaging, loose they’re mediocre at best. Neither figure is all that remarkable and if you’re not already sold on this line, I doubt this pair will do it. At some point, I’m going to swing back and check out the Resistance Trooper from this assortment and Constable Zuvio, but I don’t have either figure yet and with the sour taste these two have left, I’m not in a big rush to pick them up.

I’m continuing to chip away at the initial assortment of Force Awakens 3 3/4″ figures. So far I’ve looked at Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma from the Jungle Mission and Rey and a Stormtrooper from the Snow Mission. Let’s move things to the desert today and open up Finn and the First Order Flametrooper.

I’ve already gushed on and on about how much I love these packages, but damn, don’t they look nice? Individual character art right on the card, great colors, a big bubble to show off the figure. It gets me a lot more excited about buying action figures than the bland packaging Hasbro has been using for Star Wars Black and Marvel Universe Infinite. I hope this is a sign of things to come. Let’s start with Finn…

This version of Finn is associated with Jakku and it’s the exact same outfit that we saw used for the 6-inch Black figure. This is a really solid sculpt for the smaller scale and apart from the obvious hit to articulation, I don’t think much is lost from the 6-inch figure. The jacket is sculpted in soft plastic and layered onto the figure like a vest with sculpted texture on the shirt underneath. The illusion of the sculpted arm sleeves actually works better with the simple rotating shoulder hinges. The portrait is excellent with a solid likeness and sharp paint. Once again, the eyes are painted looking up, which is getting to be a weird trend for Hasbro and this character. It’s perhaps worth noting that Finn is ever so slightly pre-posed as he stands naturally with one foot slightly in front of the other.

Finn comes with the same style blaster as the 6-inch figure, which makes me reconsider my prediction that the weapon might not be in the film. It still looks rather large and ungainly to be a carried in the movie, but I’m probably wrong about that. At least this time it’s cast in gray plastic and not in the same color as the jacket. Alright, that’s enough about Finn… moving on to the Flametrooper…

I was really excited to get this guy, mainly because he isn’t available in the 6-inch scale yet. I dig the design of this armor a lot and, to my surprise, the Flametrooper doesn’t share any parts with the regular Stormtrooper. I’ve always loved the idea of specialized Stormtroopers, especially when they involve new armor and not just different colors painted on them. The helmet design is pretty damn sinister looking.

Naturally, the Flametrooper comes with a flamethrower, which consists of a removable backpack that pegs into place and the gun connected with a flexible plastic hose. Not sure why the hand held piece has to look like a friggin assault rifle, but it’s neat nonetheless. I also love the little OII sculpted into the backpack. It’s a nice little nod back to the Imperial Stormtroopers.

The build-a-weapon pieces included with these figures are a little better as standalone pieces than what I’ve seen so far, but they’re still plenty goofy. Finn’s looks like a tracked robot with twin machine gun arms and it can be pegged into his back. The obvious downside here is that they had to put a hole in his back just for this gimmick and I’d rather they didn’t. The Flametroopers’ piece can be used as a big, bulky shield. If you connect them together, you do get what I think is a pretty cool looking little robot. It works fine as it is, but the third figure in this assortment, Constable Zuvio will add blade pieces. Frankly, I haven’t decided whether I’m picking him up yet.

With six of these figures now opened, I find I’m still rather soft on them. The sculpts are not bad for what they are, but I’m not sure I’m feeling motivated to keep collecting them, at least not with the 6-inch Black series out there promising releases of all of these characters. On the other hand, when they’re available at $7.99 a pop, it’s kind of hard for me to resist. I’ve still got two more to open before I make any final decisions, so sometime next week we’ll check out Poe Dameron and the First Order Tie Pilot from the Space Mission!

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.

I get the idea that Force Friday proved to be more of a hit with Hasbro than it did with the fans. Stores quickly sold of of all their figures and to my surprise the 3 3/4″ line seemed to be among the hardest to track down. Even the e-tailing juggernaut Amazon has been dry. Luckily Toys R Us added some to their website about a week after the big day and I was able to order most of the initial assortment before they disappeared again. The figures are assorted into “mission” categories (Desert, Snow, Jungle, and Space), which feels rather weird for a Star Wars line, but it’s not something that’s really emphasized, especially if you’re like me and have no interest in the lame build-a-weapon gimmick. Yeah, take a good look at those pieces in the package, because I’m not going to bother to show them again.

The figures come on cards which are folded over to envelope the edges of the bubble. It’s kind of weird and hard to describe, but it gives the card the illusion of being made from thicker stock. At first, I thought this meant that I’d be able to carefully cut the tape and slide the bubble out, but there’s still plenty of glue making these decidedly un-collector-friendly. The packages themselves look amazing with some wonderful individualized character art and Kylo Ren’s mask and lightsaber up at the top. With Hasbro’s ho-hum package design lately, it’s nice to see presentation that looks this good swinging on the pegs again. I imagine they’ll be a real treat for Mint on Card collectors. Me? I’m an opener, so let’s tear these babies open and check them out. I’ll start with Kylo Ren…

As everyone knows by now, these are very basic figures and the articulation here is a straight 5-POA style exactly like the old Kenner figures only with a ball joint in the head instead of just a swivel. Like it or lump it, it is what it is. That having been said, Kylo Ren, the mysterious hooded villain, is reproduced here quite well in the 3 3/4″ scale thanks to a surprisingly detailed sculpt. The entirety of his robes are textured with a crossthatch pattern, the arm wraps are sculpted and even the insides of his robes if you move his legs apart reveal his sculpted legs underneath. The hood is part of the head sculpt, but the cape is a separate piece that can be removed if you pop off Kylo’s noggin. There’s not a lot of paint here, but that suits the design. You do get a little silver on the mask and a little on the belt buckle.

Naturally, Kylo Ren comes with his unconventional lightsaber, which looks great for the smaller scale and even includes the crossguard blades cast in clear red plastic. The only downside here is that the blades don’t come out, so the only display option is to go with it activated. Moving on to…

Captain Phasma! This character’s popularity has already reached critical mass via what I like to call “Boba Fett Syndrome.” We know nothing about her, but her bad ass chromed out Stormtrooper armor sure is bringing all the boys to the yard. It’s nice to see that this isn’t just a re-used Stormtrooper and that she’s properly sized and about a full head and shoulders taller than the troops. I don’t think anyone was expecting a vac-metal figure in this scale, but the silver plastic Hasbro used does a fairly decent job. There’s a few stray black marks here and there, but otherwise the paint is sharp and clean.

Phasma comes with her cape, which is cast in soft, pliable plastic and is removable by popping the head off the figure. She also comes with her blaster, which can tab onto her leg and can be held fairly well in either hand.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with this pair, articulation not withstanding. The plastic feels good and the sculpts are quite detailed. They look great standing on the shelf and only really disappoint when I take them down and start fiddling with them and their limited poseability takes over. I’m sort of warming up to the idea of looking to the 6-inch scale for my articulation and relying on these smaller figures for the whole retro-charm thing. I can understand collectors not embracing these, but I find I’m totally fine with them and at $7.99 a pop, they seem to be priced right.

Over the weekend, I did some sniping at Hasbro’s Force Awakens 3 3/4″ line, or more specifically at one particular toy, which should have been an easy success for Hasbro, but turned out not so good. Holy shit, Hasbro, how long have you been making X-Wings for? And most of them up until now have been pretty good. Sheesh! Anyway, lest you thought that meant I wasn’t getting into the smaller scale line, I’ll re-assure you that I already had a lot of this stuff ordered. And yes, while I did cancel Poe Dameron’s X-Wing, the rest of the stuff is still either here or on its way. Today I’m opening up the Assault Walker and Stormtrooper Sergeant.

With so many ho-hum packages from Hasbro in the toy aisles these days, I have to give credit where credit is due, because this one is a fantastic piece of work. It’s got all the color and excitement that toy packaging should have. There’s some amazing artwork on the front with laser blasts and explosions and Kylo Ren staring at you from the corner with his lightsaber and holy shit, this makes me want to tear open this box and start playing. The box is almost fully enclosed with just a little window for the action figure. It’s also got that J-hook on the back flap so it can hang on a peg or sit on the shelf. The back of the box has actual pictures of what you’re getting and the whole thing is totally collector friendly. Ah, but as pretty as it is, I’m still going to shred it and pitch it. Let’s start with the figure…

The Stormtrooper Sergeant figure appears to be only available in this set and I’ll confess that was what made me buy it. He isn’t even included in the Amazon Exclusive Troop Building Pack. That having been said, he’s basically just a First Order Stormtrooper with a black pauldron, which is removable by just popping off his head and slipping it off. I really dig that, because now I can have either the Sergeant or just a vanilla trooper.

The plastic on this figure feels great and the paint, what little there is of it looks pretty good. There’s a little slop here and there, but most isn’t noticeable when not scrutinized by the camera. Even the gun managed to retain the white paint apps that we saw on the larger 6-inch Black figure and it still tabs into his leg for storage. I was expecting something that felt cheap, but I’d say the quality is in line with the regular Star Wars figures and better than what we saw with Rebels. Of course, the five points of articulation are still the order of the day and to some people that’s just unacceptable.

The Assault Walker, which I’ve opted to call the AT-AW, is extremely reminiscent of the AT-RT released in the Revenge of the Sith line. It’s a one-person vehicle that will almost certainly not be actually in the movie. That’s cool with me, I’ve enjoyed the whole off-Screen toy idea ever since Kenner’s Mini-Rigs and this thing definitely gives me the same warm and fuzzy vibe. That having been said, this thing is super tiny. When I pulled the cardboard tray out of the box, the first thing I noticed was they could have easily fit two of these in there.

There’s no walking gimmick or anything like what we saw with the AT-RT. This toy is as simple as it gets. The legs are hinged at the tops and again at the ankles, but not in the middle, with ratchets that are strong enough to hold it up. Frankly, I’m surprised we got ankle hinges because the Scout Walker from Rebels didn’t even have those. The chin gun can rotate left and right, and the handle bars fold down so the Stormtrooper can grip them. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t actually sit in this thing. Nope, he stands in it.

The sculpting is actually pretty good. There’s plenty of detail all over the place and even the paintwork isn’t too bad. There’s no actual paint on the body or legs, but the front armor piece and the feet are dark green with some yellow accents and there’s even some jungle camo on the armor plate. Yup, if you look on the side of the box, there’s an emblem that identifies this as part of the Jungle Mission Collection.

At $20, I’m a little conflicted on this set. The figure is pretty good, so long as you’re willing to pretend it’s 1977 again and there’s no such thing as elbows and knees yet. Frankly articulation on these figures isn’t a huge deal to me and in some cases, I can appreciate that these 5POAs can stand up better and straighter than, let’s say some of the heavily articulated early Marvel Universe stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t prefer the limited articulation, but as long as the sculpt and paint is there, I can live with it. As for the Walker, it manages to toe the line between being a goofy and credible design. I could easily see one of these things animated into the backdrop of a scene and not think twice about it. And if you consider that the figures are selling for between $7.99 and $9.99 when you can find them, then I guess the vehicle isn’t a terrible value. If I were a kid, I’d have fun with this thing. As an adult collector, it looks OK standing on the shelf. Mostly, I’m just happy to have the Stormtrooper, especially considering the going rate for them on the scalper’s market is about the same as this one with the vehicle.