POE DAMERON

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES

For day 11 of the Post-Christmas gift reviews, I’ll be taking one more venture into the far, far away galaxy of Star Wars. I really, really enjoyed The Force Awakens. More so than most movies I can remember, at least of those released in the last few years. I really can’t think of anything from the movie that I really disliked. Back before the film was released, when I was reviewing a bunch of figures I knew absolutely nothing about, I was somewhat intrigued by Poe Dameron, despite having next to nothing to go on as far as what the character would be like. Upon seeing the film, Poe quickly became my favorite of the new characters. All of the sudden, the two action figures I had just didn’t seem like enough. As luck would have it, I didn’t have to suffer through only having the two figures for very long, as Christmas brought me both the smaller scale Poe’s X-Wing Fighter set and the other of the two 6-inch scale Poes, which I’ll be reviewing today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Poe was released as part of the second series of the Force Awakens-branded Star Wars: The Black Series figures. He’s figure #07, which makes him numerically the second figure in this series, after Captain Phasma. The figure stands about 6 inches tall and has 25 points of articulation. The articulation is mostly pretty good, but the lack of back and forth movement on the wrists is more than a little frustrating. The last Black Series Poe I looked at was based on his jacketed look from towards the beginning of the movie, whereas this figure is based on his pilot look from the film’s second half. He’s a mostly unique sculpt, though I have seen the head before, by nature of getting the two-pack version of the character first. It is because of owning that figure that I can correctly diagnose that it is not the sculpt of the figure’s head that is to blame for it looking as hideous as it does. There is in fact a halfway decent Oscar Isaac sculpt hiding under the paint. The rest of the sculpt is pretty good, with lots of great texture work on the jumpsuit, especially the ribbing on the sides of the arms, and there’s also some very nice work on the layering of the various pieces of his outfit. The build of the figure feels perhaps a bit on the stocky side for Poe, but the flightsuit was somewhat bulky in the film, so it isn’t far off. When discussing the paint, one can’t exactly ignore the elephant in the room that is his head. I have no clue what happened here, but man is that face paint horrid. It’s proof positive that it doesn’t matter how good the sculpt is, a lousy paint job will kill it every time. Seriously, did Hasbro hand out pictures of Peter Falk as Columbo instead of Oscar Isaac as Poe? Because, when I see this guy, I expect him to say “oh, and there’s just one more thing…” and then solve a murder. The rest of the paint is actually quite good, with a number of washes to help bring out some of the sculpt’s finer details. Poe is packed with his helmet, a blaster pistol, and a spare set of ungloved hands. The extra hands are interesting, because they give the figure an extra four points of articulation, making the missing movement from the gloves all the more curious.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Poe was another gift from my parents. He’s actually a figure I’d seen once or twice before the movie’s release, only to pass on him, due to the face paint. After seeing the movie, and discovering just how awesome Poe is, I realized that was a mistake, so I was very happy to unwrap this figure on Christmas morning. No excuses can be made for that head, but, on the plus side, it can easily be swapped with the two-pack version with relative ease, making a decent figure downright amazing.