Tag Archives: star wars

Mar 9 2013

Star Wars Vintage Collection: Weequay and Wooof by Hasbro

A couple of weeks back I promised I’d be hunting down more Vintage Collection Skiff Guards and I have indeed done just that. If I promise you I’ll take out the garbage or leave the toilet seat down, I’m probably lying, but a promise to buy new toys is a promise I always keep. The next two nefarious sand pirates to join my crew are Weequay and Wooof. Wooof? WOOOF??? This guy is Klaatu. What the hell is this Wooof nonsense all about? Well, in a flurry of Jameson-fueled irritation, I found my way to a wiki article that is telling me that he was called Klaatu but then the original production name for him was Wooof, but then it says they were two different characters, and now I’m just as confused and back to just saying screw it… I’m calling him Klaatu. It helps that I got him loose, so there’s no evidence he was ever named Wooof.

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So, I’ve got no card to show you for Wooof Klaatu, but there’s Weequay’s card. As you can see, this isn’t the imposter, known as “Skiff Master Weequay,” that we looked at last time. No sir, this is the Weequay I grew up with and the one that will always have a special place in my fanboy heart. Look at him standing there proudly on the bow of his skiff. So noble… so magnificent… so Weequay! Since time began, Weequay figures have been sculpted with only one thing in mind… to hold their force pikes across their chests and mimic that… dare I say? Iconic pose. But now we finally have an articulated version that can do so much more. Let’s get him open and check him out…

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Weequay has always had pretty good figures, and the Vintage Collection version just does some fine tuning. He’s not the most intricately sculpted of the Skiff Guards, but that’s more on his character design than anything else. Weequay sports his trademark ribbed brown leather vest with shoulder guards and a simple belt with some sculpted pouches. There’s no functional holster, but in fairness the on screen character didn’t have a holster either.

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The head sculpt is fortified with all that raisin-headed goodness that I expect from my Weequay figures. He looks perpetually pissed off, as if letting us know that even an awesome job where you throw prisoners into giant sand vagina monsters can get to be a chore after a while. As with Skiff Master Weequay, I think Hasbro could have done a better job sculpting his braids, but they’re not bad. Weequay’s articulation includes ball joints in the neck, shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles. He has a T-crotch, swivels in the wrists and he can swivel at the waist. He comes with his pike and a hold out blaster. Well done, Hasbro.

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And then there’s Klaatu. I gotta tell you, Hasbro went above and beyond on this guy. The head sculpt is fantastic. It’s as expressive as you can get from a lizard man in this scale. His vest is sculpted over an armor plate and his belt secures a softgoods skirt that looks like it’s some kind of crazy Tatooine goat hair, but I’ll concede that it’s probably not.

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Klaatu features a removable hood, a removable bandolier strap, and a functional holster. Hooray for functional holsters! He comes with the same force pike (but different paint job) as Weequay and a very cool hold out blaster. Klaatu features ball joints in his neck, shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles. He has a T-crotch and he has swivel cuts in the waist and wrists.

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Weequay and Klaatu are a seriously cool pair of figures. If the Vintage Collection’s aim is to produce truly definitive versions of characters, Hasbro certainly succeeded here. Granted, I’m a little biased since I love the Sarlaac sequence in RotJ so much, but it’s just great to see these guys get such amazing figures. I grabbed them for ten bucks each and now my Tatooine Skiff is just that much nearer to being fully crewed. That leaves Kithaba and Nikto and I’ll be checking them out next week.

Feb 23 2013

Star Wars Power of the Force 2: Gamorrean Guard and Malakili by Hasbro

It’s the last day of this Jabba craziness and this week FigureFan has seen more Star Wars features than it has in a long time. I kind of enjoyed it, and I’m going to make a point to not ignore Star Wars quite so much in the future. Anyway, today we’re swinging back to the POTF2 line to take a look at a couple of Jabba’s husky henchmen. It’s a little known fact that yours’ truly could stand to shed a few pounds, so it’s always nice to see some portly action figures get some attention and make me feel fit by comparison. I think Jabba read in a PR magazine somewhere that if you surround yourself with heavy people, you look skinny. Sorry, Jabba, it ain’t working. To the figures!

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The packaging is the same we saw with the torture droids a couple of days back. These are also part of the Freeze Frame series, so you get a pair of slides showing the characters in screen grabs from the movie. Considering Malakili is in the film so briefly, his slide is extra important as it serves as evidence that Kenner and Hasbro didn’t just make him up. Let’s go ahead and start with him.

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Malakili: Once known only as “Rancor Keeper.” For the longest time, this guy was the best example of the fact that any Star Wars character was eligible for action figure honors. Sure, I had the vintage version of him as a kid, and yet I have no idea how or why. I have no recollection of actually walking into a store, being told by my parents that I could pick out a figure, and coming back with him. It’s hard to imagine that happening, and yet apparently it did. Maybe the rest of the pegs were full of Lobots. I also can’t remember ever playing with him. My ever creative kid brain summoned up all kinds of convoluted back stories for even the most obscure figures, but all Rancor Keeper ever did was stand somewhere behind Jabba’s throne and try not to be noticed. And now, I’ve gone so far as to have purchased him twice. Well played, Star Wars merchandising. Well played!

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In fairness, Malakili had a few nanoseconds of screen time more than a lot of figures produced by Kenner and Hasbro. So what, if he didn’t have a speaking line? He sobbed. That was more than we ever got out of Prune Face or Squid Head. I can remember seeing RotJ with my parents and asking why that man was crying. My Mom simply answered because his pet just died. I felt sad and my young mind started questioning the very foundations of my heroes. What kind of asshole was Luke that he killed the poor fat guy’s pet? It was right at that moment that I was truly introduced to the concept that maybe morality is actually subjective. Maybe there are no rights and wrongs, and there are only grey areas. Thank you, Malakili, you taught me more than my college philosophy professor ever could. Of course, Malakili went on to Mos Eisley to open a restaurant with his friend. It’s true! I can’t make that shit up, but apparently someone else can. Either way, it’s clear to me that Malakili in all of his 60 seconds of screen time invoked more empathy in me as a character than anyone who appeared in any or all of the prequels.

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So, I’ve gone on about Malakili for three paragraphs and haven’t said anything about the figure. But really, what is there to say? He’s a husky, shirtless guy in puffy pants with a hood. How many people do you know wear hoods with no jacket or shirt? He’s a trend setter. If you’re in the market for a Rancor Keeper, this one is improved over the original Kenner version and he’s actually not a bad sculpt, although Hasbro has since released a newer version in the Legacy Collection. The package on the POTF2 version says he comes with a vibro blade, but if you’re a ludicrously well informed nerd like me, then you know that’s a gaffi stick given to him by some Tusken Raiders for helping them out. And no, I didn’t really know that, I looked it up.

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And then there’s the Gamorrean Guard. I don’t have nearly as much to say about these guys, save for the fact that I’ve always had an inexplicable love for them. Maybe it’s because they’re one of the first aliens we’re introduced to in RotJ and they really set the tone for the crazy creaturefest that follows. Maybe it’s because they get to wear sandals to work. I do know that I love their medieval garb and the fact that they were so bad ass that they carry axes rather than fancy laser swords or blasters. I also love that they walk around with snot running out of their noses like leaky faucets. It’s like someone scooped them off their planet and never bothered to tell them about technology like blasters… or tissues.

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The vintage Kenner version of the Gamorrean Guard was a pretty good figure, but the POTF2 release has long been my Gamorrean of choice. I’ve yet to pick up a Vintage Collection version, but their pants look too furry and they’re way too expensive to army build. I can get three POTF2 Guards for every one VC version and it’s all about army building, my friends. In my mind, the POTF2 Gamorrean Guard is one of the best figures the line put out. He has a very good sculpt, which is pretty faithful to the source material, and if Hasbro meant to buff him out, you can’t tell because he was already fat. I can hate on plenty of the figures from this era, but this guy is solid enough to stand proudly in my Jabba display. I also like his axe better than the one that came with the vintage figure.

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Both figures feature the same six points of articulation. Their heads rotate, their arms rotate at the shoulders, they have standard T-crotches, and they can swivel at the waist.

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And that puts this week of Jabbapalooza in the bag. I’ll be back Monday with another Farscape figure and the rest of the week will be all about going through some new receivings, including some Marvel and DC figures, a Lego set, Transformers, and even a certain pair of third-party Transformers from Mech Ideas. Enjoy your Sundays, and after church, why not go take the kids to Malakili’s restaurant for a nice brunch? I’ll see ya there!

Feb 22 2013

Star Wars Saga Collection: Princess Leia in Boushh Disguise by Hasbro

I know… I just featured Slave Leia a couple of days ago. I’m a bad host. I’m double dipping on the Leia. But I wanted to get as many different lines into this week as possible and I just happened to have this Saga Collection version of her lying around too. But it’s ok. Even as a kid I never used my vintage Kenner version as Leia. I rarely ever took off the helmet and the figure was always just another bad ass bounty hunter to me. Decades later and nothing has changed. While my Boba Fett figure can keep his ongoing grudge chasing Han Solo, I consider this Boushh figure to be the original Ubese mercenary, still alive and well and earning his pay by killing Jedi stragglers for Crimson Nova. But for the purposes of this feature, I guess we’ll consider her Leia in disguise…. More than meets the eye!!! Sorry, I’ve had a few Jamesons. Let’s look at the package.

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Damn, this was some fine packaging. It borrowed heavily from the vintage cards with the starfield and the old school logo, and then blows my mind by putting a scene specific printed insert into the back of the bubble. The effect is like you’re getting a mini snowglobe diorama. Leia comes carded with her helmet off and beside her. With the exception of actually reproducing the vintage cards, I think this was Hasbro’s best original package design. Unfortunately, the figures themselves were a total mixed bag. You got some great new sculpts with good articulation, and you got some straight repacks going all the way back to the POTF2 line. Leia here was the first figure released in this series, let’s see how she turned out.

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She is indeed a brand new sculpt, and a mighty fine one at that. Her outfit is layered so that the cape, backpack, belt and bandolier strap are all one piece and fitted over the rest of the figure. The skirt is a second layer that hangs down over the tops of the legs. She’s also been scaled way down from the previous release to fit Leia’s tiny size. The portrait is ok, but not great. I don’t care much for the paint on her eyes, which makes her look kind of drugged out {token Carrie Fisher drug reference deleted} and the stray hair on each side of her face sort of looks more like sideburns than what it’s supposed to be. Still, all in all not bad, and I never display the figure with the helmet off anyway.

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The helmet is similar to what we’ve seen before. It’s a hollow, slightly rubbery piece that fits right over the figure’s head. The sculpt is great and it looks fantastic on the figure. There’s only one problem. Leia’s ponytail hangs out the back! It’s kind of like one of those episodes of Scooby Doo, where Shaggy and Scooby are disguised and sneaking away, but Scooby’s tail is hanging out the back of the disguise. No? Just me then? Ok. It’s not terribly obvious, and you can’t see it from the front, but I have been tempted to snip it off.

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While the sculpt may mingle with current Vintage Collection standards, the articulation sadly does not, but it comes frustratingly close. Leia has a ball jointed neck, as well as ball joints in the shoulders and the knees. She has swivels in the elbows and wrists and she can swivel at the waist. She has a typical T-crotch for articulation in the hips. She’s sort of pre-posed in a way to have her holding her long weapon in one hand and the thermal detonator in the other, but it’s not so obvious that you can’t get some more neutral stances out of her. The biggest shame of this figure is the lack of ball joints in the elbows. Those would have made her a lot closer to being a definitive version.

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In addition to her helmet, Leia comes with her rifle, a tiny thermal detonator, a personalized figure stand, and a hologram of Obi-Wan that looks like gummy candy. Too bad it’s not candy; at least I could eat it instead of throwing it away. The detonator is just a tiny ball that I will probably lose shortly after this feature. It pegs into Leia’s left hand.

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No doubt, this version of Leia/Boushh is a great figure. All this depth in the sculpt makes her look like she’s ahead of her time, especially for a 2006 assortment that retailed at $6.99. And that’s what made the Saga Collection so frustrating. If you were a seasoned Star Wars collector, you could easily spot when you were getting a cool new figure or a crappy old repack. On the other hand, the unsuspecting or those buying them by the case online, were in for quite the crap shoot. I’ve always liked the POTF2 version of Boushh, but this one has long since become my definitive figure of the character.

Feb 21 2013

Star Wars Vintage Collection: Weequay (Skiff Master) by Hasbro

I’ll refer you back to this feature for my confession of love for all things Weequay and my naive childhood notion that Weequay was the dude’s name and not his race. Yes, we’ll chalk that up to ignorance and not an early onset of racism. And while the brown vested Weequay will always be my favorite, the VC version of that figure is still eluding me now on order, so this week we’ll have to settle for the “Skiff Master” version. Hey, it’s all good. I prefer Coke, but offer me a Pepsi on a hot day and I’ll still accept it and thank you kindly. The Weequay figure isn’t officially Throne Room fodder, but more a part of my mission to stock my POTF2 Skiff with a Vintage Collection crew, but he’s also going to be hanging out somewhere in my Throne Room display. Hey, the guy can’t be feeding the Sarlacc all the time.

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The vintage style cards are so awesome. The fact that every figure Hasbro produces isn’t slapped onto one of these cards makes me question the sanity of the persons at Hasbro responsible for that decision. Even at times when I swore off Star Wars completely, seeing these cards on the pegs was always akin to offering a recovering addict a taste of blow. But it’s the ultimate instance of not being able to have your cake and eat it too. I want to buy them, I want to keep them carded, but I don’t have the space to buy doubles and I’m an opener at heart. Plus, opening this guy hurts even more because the card doesn’t have a giant f’ing Darth Maul face sticker on it schilling a mail away for Lucas’ toenail clippings or other such crap. And so I take a belt of Jameson to steady my nerves, and I rip the bastard open.

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The thing I dig so much about the skiff guards in RotJ is that they’re basically mercenary pirates that fly boats around in the desert. How is that not awesome? The Weequays are especially cool because they look like they were born mean and their heads have clearly been left out in the sun too long. Everyone knows those two things are top of the list when recruiting desert pirates. Hasbro did a fantastic job recreating this figure from his portrait. His grungy, segmented tunic looks spot on, his sculpted belt is perfect and his head is a great likeness. Weequay even has a functional holster. Damn, I love functional holsters in my 3 ¾” figures. Hey, Mattel… check this out. It’s a functional holster on a 3 ¾” figure. The gun can come out and the guy can hold it. Thought you might like to see this before you go and design those $15 Voltron pilot figures and… oh, wait that was last year… I’m way too late. Never mind. I also dig the way he wears his gun butt facing front, like he’s f’cking Lee Van Cleef. Welcome to FigureFan, where you get references to Voltron, Star Wars, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly all in the same feature. Enjoy!

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If I’m going to nitpick anything on Skiff Master Weequay, it’s going to be his sculpted hair braid. It’s a bit heavy handed and it sticks out a little too far. If this were a regular release, I’d be cool with it, but I’ve come to treat a lot of these VC figures as definitive. As in, “this is it, Hasbro, this is the last version of this figure I’m ever going to buy so please for the love of god, make it perfect!” The hair braids don’t ruin the figure for me by any stretch, but a little extra care could have been invested to make it look perfect. That’s all I’m saying. If all I can do is bitch about the guy’s braids, I think he’s doing ok.

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Weequay’s articulation features a ball jointed neck and shoulders. The arms have ball joints in the elbows and swivels in the wrists. He’s got ball jointed knees and swivels in his ankles. He’s got a standard T-crotch, which is somewhat restricted by his tunic, and he can also swivel at the waist. The shoulder joints in my figure feel like super tight ratchet joints. It’s kind of odd for a 3 ¾” figure, but it certainly helps him hold his poses.

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Accessories? What self-respecting mercenary desert pirate would be complete without some weapons? Weequay comes with a hold out blaster, which fits nicely in his holster, and a pike. I love the design of these pikes. Next to the Dreadnok chainsaw gun, I think it’s my favorite weapon design of the 80s. While Weequay comes carded holding his blaster in his left hand, it’s actually made to fit perfectly into his right. If you want him to hold it in his off hand, you better save those clear rubber bands!

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Skiff Master may not be my favorite Weequay, but I really love this figure. Everything about it is quality. In fact, I love it so much that after playing around with him for just a little while, I went and ordered the other VC Weequay along with Wooof, and I’m already eyeing VC Kithaba and Nikto. It’s a figure like this that make me weep for most of what Hasbro is turning out in the 3 ¾” scale these days. But let’s not sully Weequay’s feature by dwelling on the bad. Let’s celebrate the triumph of Weequay, for he is truly an excellent figure.

By my reckoning, I still have two more days of this Jabba madness. What’s on tap for tomorrow? I have no idea… I better start rummaging through some totes.

Feb 20 2013

Star Wars Power of the Force 2: 8D8 and EV-9D9 by Hasbro

Torture droids! Everybody loves torture droids!!! Despite being a franchise aimed at kids, every one of the three Star Wars films featured some kind of implied or explicit torture scene. Whether it was Princess Leia getting stuck with needles to give up the Rebel Base or Han Solo getting his face electrically burned off. And if that’s not creepy enough, Hasbro has delivered at least a few figures based on these scenes. But today we’re focused on a couple of the custodians of Jabba’s robot dungeon. And somehow toys based on the torture of robots seems a little less likely to offend the folks at Amnesty International. I loved the designs of these guys, and while I never owned EV-9D9 as a kid, I did have the 8D8 that came with the “Jabba’s Dungeon” playset and he was always a favorite of mine.

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This pair of sadistic servoids were released as part of the Freeze Frame sub-line in POTF2. They’re on green cards and each one comes with a slide showing the character in a screen grab. This was a great gimmick, and I always regret not getting that special offer display holder and saving them all. I have bags full of various crappy coins that came with Star Wars figures over the years, but somehow, I never manage to save any of these cool slides. The back panels of the cards show a large clip-out version of the scene on the slide. You also get some shots of other POTF2 goodies.

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Let’s start with 8D8. I’ll take this opportunity to point out that my favorite droid designs in the Star Wars films are the ones that couldn’t possibly support actors inside them. I was pretty fascinated with robots when I was a kid and to me having a robot in the movie that wasn’t just a guy in a suit was way cooler, even if they were more puppets than actual robots. 8D8 is one of those designs and that makes him a winner in my book.

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The other cool thing about 8D8 is just how damn creepy he looks. His white coloring, exposed “ribcage,” and his thin arms and piston-driven framework legs make him look like some kind of deformed skeleton. He also kind of looks like robot Christopher Lee and he’s got that awesome hunchback configuration that makes him perfect for lurking around a dank dungeon. The sculpting here is particularly good for a POTF2 figure. He doesn’t suffer from the buffed out proportions and basically takes the original vintage Kenner figure and tweaks it in all the right places. 8D8 includes his droid branding device, which comes in two pieces and an articulated lever. It’s a nice piece to display beside him, especially if you have any unruly Gonk Droids lying around.

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Next up is EV-9D9, who is another one of those cool robot designs that couldn’t support a human actor and thereby makes my Top Droids of Star Wars list. Like a lot of bit characters in the Star Wars Universe, she’s also got a somewhat involved backstory in the EU that can be traced back to Cloud City. She’s a lot taller than 8D8 and much less creepy looking, but she does feature the same thin arms and legs. She has three beady little yellow eyes, one of which she apparently installed herself to detect the pain levels in droids! My favorite thing about her design in the movie was the little articulated mouth flap. Oddly enough, the vintage Kenner figure translated that into a gimmick on the figure, but the POTF2 version doesn’t attempt it. I also dig that you can turn her head around and she looks like she’s has a new head with giant bug eyes. She also has a screw running up her back in place of a spine. EV-9D9 has a great bronze and black two-tone deco and comes with her console table.

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Both droids feature the same five points of articulation. You get rotating heads, shoulders and hips. No big surprises there. Their limbs are pretty rubbery, but both figures can stand fairly well.

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While not technically part of Jabba’s Throne Room entourage, these guys are still going to make it into my Jabba display when I put it together. I think I’ll likely just create a little alcove off to the side. For a couple of droids that were only in the film for a few moments, I love these guys a lot more than I have any right to and I’d love to see them given the modern treatment one of these days.

Feb 19 2013

Star Wars Legacy Collection: Princess Leia (Jabba’s Slave) by Hasbro

Alrighty, I’ve got five days ahead of me where I am committed to a regimen of features on figures from Jabba’s Palace. Let’s start with Slave Leia, because everyone loves Slave Leia… well, right up until she throttles you with her chains. There have been a few golden bikini clad Leias over the years, but today we’re looking at the one that was designed to work with the “Jabba’s Throne” set released by Hasbro right around the same time.

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There’s a long and tortured story behind me finally getting this figure into my collection. I paid no attention to it when it was first released, because I wasn’t collecting a lot of Star Wars and I doubted I had much chance of finding the “Jabba’s Throne” set because it was a Walmart Exclusive, and my Walmart seems to boycott their own exclusives. Nonetheless, eventually I got it and everything changed. I remembered Hasbro released a Slave Leia with the ability to sit on Jabba’s throne, only I didn’t know what series she was released in and I couldn’t find her anywhere. I thought I hit paydirt when I found the Vintage Collection figure, only to discover that she didn’t include the swappable lower half. It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when I was trawling Ebay for nothing in particular, that I stumbled upon a listing for her and grabbed her up.

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I’m pretty sure I’ve only picked up a couple of figures from this “Legacy Collection.” The packaging is so weird and so not Star Wars to me. The artsy cut edges of the card, the white background, the generic portrait of Leia, it’s no wonder I never paid much attention to this line when I saw it on the pegs. It’s not terrible, but it’s just bland and uninspired. I’d hate to see what the rejected Legacy package designs looked like. The large bubble shows off the figure and accessories pretty well, apart from the obnoxious Darth Maul head special offer sticker. It also displays the disembodied legs right next to the figure, which I thought was kind of odd. I guess since Hasbro was already hiding a Build-A-Droid part under the insert, there was no place to tastefully conceal Leia’s extra set of gams.

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Let’s start with Leia as she comes on the card. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but there’s something just a tad off about her. The face isn’t a slam dunk, but it’s not bad either. It’s not really Carrie Fisher, but the figure isn’t dog faced. Considering Hasbro’s track record with the portraits on Leia figures, this one is certainly passable, but not the best. Her bikini top and torso are nicely sculpted, and they even got some of the subtle muscle definition into her stomach. One of the little nagging issues is the way the chain around her neck and the pony tail over her shoulder make her cock her head to one side. You can take the chain off and bend the pony tail to the back to fix this, but it sucks that you have to. The ball joints also make her arms look rather funky looking, but I guess that’s the price we pay for articulation.

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The lower half of the figure has a sculpted belt, which secures a softgoods skirt and the figure looks fine so long as the skirt is covering her legs. If you get a good look at her legs, however, they seem short and stubby. Maybe this figure’s proportions are more accurate to Carrie Fisher, but all I know is she looked pretty damn good in that bikini, and that’s not necessarily reflected by the bottom half of this figure.

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Articulation includes ball joints in the neck, shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles. She has standard T-style joints in the hips, another ball joint under her breasts, and she can swivel at the waist. I don’t usually mind the T-crotch, but in this case, not having the ability to do a wider stance really hurts the figure.

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Of course, the main reason I got this figure is to display on Jabba’s throne. You can get some passable poses with her regular legs, but by the swappable lower half gets the job done better. The replacement legs are molded in one piece, along with her skirt and she is sitting on a pillow. The paintwork on the static legs isn’t as tight as it could be, there’s some bleeding between the flesh tones and the pillow, but the result still works really well and she certainly does look great sitting on Jabba’s throne.

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In addition to her extra set of extremities, Leia comes with a goblet and some kind of staff weapon. Similar looking weapons have been around since the Kenner vintage figure days, and I’ve never known what those things are. Is it a vibro axe? A force pike? A gun? How is that even used as a weapon? Is the top part sharp? Do you just use it to push people over the railings of the barges and skiffs? Somebody help me out here.

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The engineering behind this figure was a clever idea on Hasbro’s part and it certainly works well. That having been said, if we’re taking about the ass-kicking Sail Barge Slave Leia, I think I still prefer either the POTF2 or the POTJ versions of the character. I know, that sounds crazy. They are less articulated and the portrait isn’t quite as good, but they seem better proportioned to me. On the other hand, Legacy Leia works great as an accessory piece to Jabba’s Throne, and that’s what I bought her for, so it’s all good. Now I just have to decide whether Jabba’s got room for two bitches on his throne, or if Oola becomes Rancor food.

Jan 28 2013

Star Wars Vintage Collection: R2-D2 (“Jabba’s Sail Barge”) by Hasbro

Way back in October of 2010 I scored Hasbro’s awesome Jabba’s Throne set and ever since then I’ve been meaning to rebuild my once great collection of Jabba’s denizens. In the years since, I’ve been picking them up here and there, but mostly relegating them to storage totes until I could get motivated to start opening them and piecing the display back together again. Well, cleaning out the Toy Closet this weekend, I stumbled upon some of those figures and have been putting them aside so I can start opening them and looking at them here. And so, the first feature of this week’s Toy Closet Finds, might seem like an unlikely start, but I felt like opening me up an R2 figure and he just so happens to be the version from Jabba’s sail barge.

God, I love this packaging and it’s a crying shame that Hasbro is doing away with it this year. As superficial as it sounds, the vintage packaging is probably the only reason I even look at the Star Wars pegs anymore. Of course, I don’t buy a lot of them because it actually makes me sad to open them, and that’s coming from someone who usually doesn’t give a crap about tearing open his action figures. I’ve managed to shake a lot of the hold Star Wars figures have had on me since I was a kid, but even I can’t resist the appeal of the figures when they’re carded on pure nostalgia. When Vintage Collection came back I started to buy doubles, but space concerns being what they are, that strategy couldn’t last. And so, even now, I don’t want to open this figure, but like taking off a band aid, I’m just going to do it fast so it doesn’t hurt so much.

It has been AGES since I bought an R2 figure. In fact, the last one was probably the one from the Original Trilogy Vintage Collection, and I never opened it. It’s still stacked on a shelf with the other VOTC figures sealed in the clamshell. Having been out of the Star Wars scene for a while now, I couldn’t begin to follow all the repacks and slight modifications R2 figures have gone through over the years. Thankfully, I don’t have to, because this R2 is a completely new figure. That means this little droid should be a whole lot better than the last one I opened, right? I was pretty anxious to play around with him and see what Hasbro has done with him lately.


Make no mistake, this R2 is full of gimmickry, a lot of which intrudes on the articulation and aesthetics of the figure, so before we get into those, let’s start with the sculpt first. R2 has always been one of those figures that looks perfectly fine to me until the next release comes along and emphasizes everything that was wrong with the last one. That having been said, I think this one looks pretty solid. It seems like there’s still a little room for improvement on the dome, and I wish Hasbro could figure a way to not have seams running up the sides of it. But the body has all the appropriate sculpted panel lines, vents, ports, and doo-dads, front and back. For some reason the cables on R2’s feet have always been a sticking point with me and his figures, but they look good here. On the downside, he’s way too big for the Vintage Collection 3PO, but then I wasn’t a big fan of that figure anyway. That’s about as far as I can go without starting to talk about the gimmicks so let’s get to them.

Hasbro tried to make this a pretty versatile representation of R2 as seen in Return of the Jedi. In addition to the obvious drink tray and serving arm, he has a retractable servo arm, a sensor scope, and a lightsaber. About the only thing missing from the movie is the Ewok zapper and the buzzsaw.  Easily the most unsightly of the gimmicks is the servo arm, which is poorly concealed behind the lower blue horizontal servo arm on his chest. In the movies, this blue piece is the actual arm that closes up flush with his body. In the figure, the whole panel opens one way and the servo arm swings out the other way. Considering the door doesn’t close properly and it isn’t screen accurate, I’d rather Hasbro left this one out and went with one of the vertical arm hatches instead.


The third leg gimmick is bewilderingly tied in to the sensor scope. To extend the leg, you have to put the sensor scope into the open panel on R2’s head and push it all the way down. The scope conceals nicely, but if you leave it in there you can’t turn R2’s dome. You can, however, use the scope to extend the leg and then pull it out to regain dome movement. Because the two gimmicks are connected, in order to display the sensor scope extended, R2’s dome has to be centered and the third leg has to be retracted. That having been said, the scope looks really good and since it just sits in the socket, you can rotate it. The lightsaber… wait isn’t that Obi-Wan’s lightsaber? Ahem… the lightsaber also just sits in the same socket as if R2 is preparing to launch it to Luke.

The drink tray is definitely the coolest piece of all the gimmicks, but then I guess it’s more of an accessory than a gimmick. It’s wonderfully sculpted and far surpasses the crappy one that Hasbro released previously. It sits snugly on R2’s shoulders and the drink serving arm plugs right into the socket on the top of his head. Amazingly enough, the drinking glasses are actually removable.


I won’t deny this is an ambitious and, in some ways, fun little figure. He will definitely look great dispensing drinks to Jabba’s minions, but I was also hoping this R2 would be a definitive version and clearly he’s not. I think Hasbro packed a few too many gimmicks into him and the figure struggles under the weight of its own over-engineering. But I think in the end, it’s the loose front servo arm hatch that bugs me the most about him. Ah, but a little super glue should soon fix that.

Dec 22 2012

Star Wars: Republic Striker Class Starfighter (#9497) by Lego

Oh, Christ, it’s another Star Wars Lego set. But wait… let me explain. This one here is from the Old Republic. I fell in love with the ship designs from the Old Republic back when I was playing KOTOR and KOTOR II like crack. I would have gladly sliced off both my ears and mailed them to Hasbro if they would in return have made toys out of the Old Republic ships. I don’t want to tell you what I would cut off in exchange for an Ebon Hawk. Instead, all we got was a grab bag of hard to find figures. I had no idea Lego even made Old Republic sets until I was in the aisle looking for another Star Wars set to buy just passing quickly through the aisle, not looking for any new Star Wars sets to buy, and happened to spot this one. It was also ten dollars off and in truth… I’M WEAK… OH, GOD, I’M SUCH A SAD, WEAK, AND PATHETIC MAN!! Thankfully, Lego is my only real vice… well, Lego and any other kinds of toys… and alcohol, but that goes without saying because I’m kind of a functional alcoholic… and cigars, I really enjoy a good cigar… oh, and pizza and cheeseburgers… and cake, pretty much any kind of cake… let’s get on with the feature…


Damn, this box is awesome. It’s got a cool, darker motif than the other Star Wars sets and it brandishes the “Old Republic” logo right on the front. Alas, it still has Darth Maul’s friggin mug on the box as his agent is clearly working overtime to make him relevant. The box shows off photos of this seriously awesome looking ship along with some minifigs of characters I’ve never seen or heard of before. Inside, you get a meaty instruction book and three numbered baggies containing a total of 376 pieces, which build the three all new minifigs and the starfighter itself. Time to brew up a pot of coffee and get building!


The minifigs are Satele Shan, a Republic Trooper, and an Astromech Droid called T7-01. I had to consult the Wookipedia to see who the hell Satele Shan was, and it turns out she’s a descendent of Bastila Shan furthering the idea that everyone of any notoriety in the Star Wars universe is related to each other and possibly Kevin Bacon. I’m not a big fan of the way her ponytails are printed on her torso, but you have to look pretty closely to even see them. Nonetheless, she’s a pretty cool little figure and includes two printed faces and a double bladed lightsaber.


I really dig the Republic Trooper as well. His body features a colorful and highly detailed printed outfit, and he’s got a scruffy face and he’s all scarred up. The Republic Trooper also comes with one of the most complex and badass guns I’ve ever seen in a Lego set.


And lastly, there’s T7, who is no slouch either. I really love the primitive Astromech Droid designs from the Old Republic period and this minifig is a great recreation of it in Lego form. He’s also a far more complex build than I suspected. For a group of characters that mean nothing to me, this lot of minifigs is still a win.


The Striker is a wonderful and original Starfighter design. The dual position wings make it feel like the melding of an A-Wing with a Z-95 Headhunter. With the wings closed, the ship has a vaguely triangular configuration with two engines protruding off the back and the single-pilot cockpit right in the center of the ship. This mode is so well designed that it’s almost impossible to tell there’s a second configuration. It just looks like a forerunner to the A-Wing and it would have been a perfectly serviceable model even if this were the only mode it had.

The ship makes use of some printed detail on the hull, rather than stickers. There are also a bunch of bricks used to reinforce the plates of the wings, giving the model a lot of depth and complexity to the design. I consider these Lego’s answer to sculpted panel lines, and they go a long way to make the ship look more detailed and convincing, while actually serving to strengthen the model for playability. Yes, this is one solid build, which holds up really well under handling. There are two small articulated stabilizer pieces on the nose of the ship and a pair of clips concealed between the engines to store Satele’s lightsaber pieces. In this mode, the Striker’s armaments consist of two forward laser cannon positioned under the wings.


To put the Striker into its attack mode, you unclip the wings on either side of the Starfighter’s main body, just in front of the cockpit. The wings swing back on hinges and lock firmly into place near the engines. Then all you have to do is swing the laser cannon forward and now you have a completely different looking ship with similarities to the Z-95 design. This mode also gives the Striker a little more firepower by revealing a bank of two proton torpedoes under each wing. Holy crap, I can’t say enough about how much I love this ship!

While I would still prefer Hasbro to do some of these ships for the 3 ¾” figures, I’ll happily take the Lego versions instead. The Striker offers a fun and satisfying build and the end result is a really well-engineered model and definitely one of the coolest designed Star Wars ships I’ve seen since the V-Wing. The only odd thing about the set is that since the ship is a one-seater and it isn’t slotted for an Astromech droid, the extra minifigs feel out of place. Still, that’s the way the ship was designed and it isn’t Lego’s fault. Besides, I’m not about to complain about having extra minifigs in a set. As far as value goes, I’ve seen this set sell for as much as $55, which is really pushing it. My local Target offers it for the more reasonable $45, and I was able to pick it up on a Price Cut at $35. Not bad at all!

I’m taking tomorrow off so I can get some last minute stuff done after work and before Christmas, but I’ll be back on Monday to kick off the last week of 2012… Marvel style

Dec 15 2012

Star Wars: Luke’s Landspeeder (#8092) by Lego

 

I started this week with a Star Wars Lego set, so let’s end it with one too. Yesterday, I needed to pick up a pound of coffee and while the Lego aisle is on the exact opposite end of the store from the coffee aisle, I still found myself over there picking up today’s item. This set was the other one I was considering last weekend when I bought the Desert Skiff. I knew I’d be back for it sooner or later, and it turned out to be sooner.


The box calls this a ”special edition” and I’m not sure what that means. A number of different retailers sell it online, but Walmart is the only store I’ve ever actually seen it in.  I’m sure someone more enlightened in the way of Lego can clear this up for me. The box is satisfyingly large for the size assortment and features some very enticing photos of the finished products. Inside you get an instruction booklet, two curious bendy tubes, and three unnumbered baggies. All told, you get 163 pieces, which build the Landspeeder vehicle, four minifigs and a little sentry droid. To the Minifigs!

Starting off, you get Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Both are solid minifigs, but nothing extraordinary. The printing on their torsos does a good job reproducing their Tattooine clothing, although I think Obi-Wan could have used a cape. They each only have one printed face, and while Obi-Wan’s hair piece looks fine, Luke’s seems a little off to me. I know he had long hair, but this piece looks more like a chick’s hair. Both minifigs come with the same lightsaber and I’m cool with that. You can never have enough lightsabers.

Next up, you have the Sandtrooper and his sentry droid. The Sandtrooper is a regular Stormtrooper with extra bits to make up his backpack and pauldron. I understand some people have taken issue with him not being more unique, but I like the fact that you can turn him into a regular Stormtrooper if you want, so I’m very happy with him. The helmet sculpt is excellent, the printing on the torso is great, It could have used some printed detail on the legs, but he still looks good without it. There’s no Clone head under the helmet, just a blank, black head to hold it on. The sentry droid isn’t really a minifig, as he’s built with just regular pieces and he comes with some clear pieces to make a “levitating” stand. He’s ok, but nothing special.

Last up are the droids: R2-D2 and C-3PO. 3PO is ok, although the matte gold plastic they used for him looks kind of cheap. R2, on the other hand, well I’m really on the fence over him. The lack of printing on his back pisses me off quite a bit, and I don’t think it would have killed Lego to toss in a third leg. I also wish they had constructed him so that his dome would rotate. The droids are passable, but considering how many times Lego could repaint and reuse an Astromech and Protocol Droid, it seems like they could have put a little more effort into this pair.

The Landspeeder itself was a fun and somewhat surprising build. There’s a lot about it that didn’t go the way I thought it would, and that made it interesting. The color pallet on the vehicle seems a bit off, as I think the chassis should have been darker, but the end result still gives it a cool animated vibe. One of my favorite things about the build was the clever use of the tubes to make up the recessed bumper under the hood. I had no idea what those were going to be used for and when I got to that point in the build, I didn’t think it was going to work all that well, but it did and it looks very cool and unique.


I’m not terribly keen on the engines. While it’s cool that Lego designed one to look like it was ripped apart by the Sandpeople, the other two should have had proper tan or brown casings. As it is, they all look like they’ve been taken apart and exposed. Even the one that’s ripped apart has a couple of pieces on the front that doesn’t match the other two. They don’t totally kill the vehicle for me, but I think these parts could have been much better executed.


The build allows for the middle engine to be removed and it reveals a little storage compartment. If you disassemble the lightsabers you can store them both in there. It’ll also fit some guns, other accessories, or a sack lunch if you want to pack for your Tattooine day trips.

At $24.99, I’m pretty happy with this set. The minifigs are all solid, if not spectacular, efforts and certainly help give a new Star Wars Lego collector like me a number of core characters. The Landspeeder is nice, but I think Lego might have taken a few too many liberties with the design. It’s a good placeholder, but I can’t see this being a definitive Lego treatment of the iconic vehicle. Still, it’s a huge improvement over the last Lego Landspeeder, and I’ll be interested to see how much the design improves when they decide to revisit it again in the years ahead.

And that’s this week in the bag. I’m taking tomorrow off to get caught up on some stuff around the house because work and the holidays are taking turns kicking my ass. So, no feature tomorrow, but I will drop in to quickly set up next week.

Dec 10 2012

Star Wars: Desert Skiff (#9496) by Lego

I’ve been hankering to build a new Lego set for a while now and while I tell myself I went down to the Wally World to get some provisions for the week, it was really to scope out the Lego aisle and see if I could get into any trouble. Normally, getting Lego sets this time of year can be slim pickings, but they had all the new Hobbit sets and some other odds and ends. The Lord of the Rings “Mines of Moiria” set was really tempting, but I really didn’t want to drop a lot of money, as besides the usual Holiday spending, I have a number of pre-orders scheduled to hit my bank account any week now. In the end, I did something I swore I’d never do… I got a Star Wars Lego set. Star Wars was the only line with some good looking low-to-medium sized sets on the shelf, and since I’ve already expressed my love for the Tattooine Desert Skiff a little while back, it should be no surprise that was the set I ended up with.


There’s the box. It’s got a landscape orientation to it with a shot of the completed set on the front and back and various panels to show the goodies that are included. It’s also got Darth Maul’s ugly mug on the right corner. Are we back to putting his face on everything again just because he came back for Clone Wars? That’s apparently the case, because they’ve even got his face on every other page of the instruction book. Blah! Inside the box you get the usual instruction booklet, three loose long bricks, and three numbered baggies containing a total of 213 pieces. The pieces build the Skiff vehicle, the Sarlaac and four minifigs. As always, we’ll start with the minifigs.

I don’t envy Lego trying to decide which four minifigs to go with in this set. There were lots and lots of options and whoever they went with, the roster was inevitably going to feel incomplete. In the end, they decided on Jedi Luke, Lando in Skiff Guard Disguise, Boba Fett, and Kithaba… Wait, Kithaba? Really, Lego? We couldn’t get a Weequay? I wanted a Weequay. Boo! But, hey… Boba Fett! I’m sure he’s been done a billion times, but since this is my very first Star Wars Lego set, I’m glad to have him. Let’s check out the good guys first…

Luke is nothing special, but then he didn’t really need to be. He’s got a black body with the robes printed on the torso. The head and hair are unremarkable, and he only has one printed face. I do dig his lightsaber, though, and he’s a competent enough minifig. Lando is a little more exciting. Lego did an awesome job with his helmet and pike. Unfortunately, he lacks a hair piece, so you can’t really display him sans helmet, but that omission is the only flaw in an otherwise excellent minifig.


Moving on to the pair of scum and villainy, we’ve got Kithaba and Boba Fett. I don’t have a lot to say about Kithaba. He’s ok. He’s got nice, bright red pants and a dewrag for his head. His printed face is good and he comes with a little holdout blaster. Boba, on the other hand, well he’s the man, and he’s downright awesome. Besides the printing on the body recreating his armor, he has his trademark jetpack and half-cape, sash, thingie. His helmet is amazing and it fits over a head with a printed unshaven face. The targeting arm clips into the helmet and can rotate. It looks a little big, but if it were any smaller it would get lost too easy. Lego generously provided four of the arms as replacements, because chances are you’ll lose this one too.


Let’s get the Sarlaac out of the way first because I’m not all that crazy about it. It was a nice bonus to round out the set from a play-ability standpoint, but I really hate the Special Edition version of the Sarlaac and this Lego interpretation kind of looks like Audrey II in a kiddie pool. I’m probably being way too hard on it. It does have a pair of poseable tentacles and the mouth does open up and you can fit a minifig inside it. I think a lot of my criticism of the Sarlaac doubles back to my feeling that this set should have been bigger, but I’ll come back to that thought later.


The Skiff is excellent. At first, I thought it would be undersized, but it seems to be scaled pretty well to the minifigs, particularly when I compare the way the Kenner/Hasbro toy was scaled to the 3 ¾” figures. The Skiff was a fun build, and hits all the major design points of the original vehicle model. It holds together really well (despite the fact that you can see a loose brick in my pictures) and comes with three short, clear pylons for it to stand on and give it a levitating look. You can also string them all together for one really tall, albeit precarious, stand. I really like the overall two-tone brown and tan color scheme as it’s suggestive of an animated version of the likes you might have seen in the old Droids cartoon.

The Skiff includes a couple of cool play features too. The box on the deck opens up to store weapons (two bonus holdout blasters are included), the rear rudders are completely articulated, and the gangplank swings out from one side. And no, I’m not going to bitch that it just doesn’t slide straight out, because obviously sacrifices had to be made. You have a pilot station on the back for Kithaba to stand and work the controls. I also really dig the little flick-firing missile launcher mounted under the vehicle. It’s a nice little added design bonus.

At $24.99, I think this is one of the better priced Lego sets I’ve picked up in a while and with all the Holiday sales going on, you can probably even do a little better on the price if you hunt around. The four minifigs and the great vehicle make me happy enough with the purchase, so the Sarlaac is just gravy. The set is a good enough value that I may wind up grabbing a second so that I can have two skiffs and an extra Kithaba and then trade away the figures and Sarlaac.

Truth be told, I’ve been admiring a lot of the recent Star Wars Lego sets, so I think today’s purchase was inevitable and I’m pretty sure  it will end up being some kind of gateway floodgate. As Obi-Wan said, “Let’s go! You’ve taken your first step into a larger world… a world where you sign away even more of your monies to some company in Denmark.” Or something like that. As for today’s set, I honestly wish Lego had gone a little bigger on this one. It’s not that the Skiff feels undersized, but they could have gone for two skiffs, more minifigs, and a larger Sarlaac base. As it stands, though, it is a fine set. You get everything you need to have a battle and while I still can’t approve of the “Audrey II” style Sarlaac, Lego did the Desert Skiff proud with this model.