IMPERIAL STORMTROOPER — THE MANDALORIAN

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES (HASBRO)

“Stormtroopers are elite shock troops fanatically loyal to the Empire and impossible to sway from the Imperial cause.”

Given their prominence in the original trilogy, it’s no surprise that we got figure coverage of the Imperial Stormtroopers fairly early into Hasbro’s Star Wars: The Black Series.  However, there’s really no denying that the quality of the figures has improved leaps and bounds over the last few years.  Many of the central characters have gotten some more recent figures in alternate looks to help update them a bit, but a character such as the Stormtrooper, who has the same basic look in all three of the original movies, doesn’t exactly make a variant release very easy t justify.  Fortunately, their reappearance in The Mandalorian gave Hasbro a pretty good excuse to give them the re-do treatment, which I’ll be taking a look at today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Imperial Stormtrooper is, much like yesterday’s Mando, part of the first wave of the relaunched Black Series.  He too is from The Mandalorian sub-set of figures, where he’s figure #02.  He’s officially based on the trooper design from the show (and Rogue One, since they use the same armor), but he works as a pretty basic OT-era Stormtrooper just in general.  The figure stands 6 inches tall and he has 29 points of articulation.  The original Stormtrooper was the most posable figure in the line at the time of his release, but that was at the sacrifice of appearance, as a good number of those joints really jumped out off of the figure.  This one takes a page out of the recent Clone Trooper page and does a total overhaul on the movement scheme.  The joints are granted a much larger range of motion, while also being a bit more cleverly hidden, though use of actual armor plates that are separate pieces, rather than just sculpting them right onto the body.  This results in there being much more depth to the sculpt, which helps the give it a more realistic quality.  The helmet gets a re-work, so that now, instead of being a solid piece, it’s an actual helmet sitting on a head.  The head’s the same as the Clone Trooper, but at least this way we know there’s some consistency in sizing and design, and we won’t be faced with the same issues the original body had when the repurposed it for Luke and Han.  The helmet also seems to be just a touch more screen accurate than the original.  In general, the armor on this guy is a little closer to the movies and a little bit sharper in terms of detailing.  It’s just an overall slicker appearance.  The Stormtrooper’s paint work is pretty decent.  Fairly minimal, since the separate construction of the body and the armor allows for them to each be molded in the proper colors, but the accents look nice and sharp.  The Stormtrooper is packed with a single blaster rifle.  It’s a new piece, and certainly a nice one, though it’s kind of a shame that we’re down to just one accessory on these guys.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I quite liked the original Black Series Stormtrooper when he was released, but after a few years of the line improving, I was definitely eager to see what Hasbro could do with an improved one.  I was on board for this guy as soon as he was shown off.  As with the rest of this first wave, he’s been pretty scarce, even more so given he’s an army builder, but I was able to at least get my hands on one, and I do really quite like him.  I look forward to seeing what other trooper variants they build on this body.

Thanks to my sponsors at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure for review.  If you’re looking for Black Series, or other toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.