GREEF KARGA

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES (HASBRO)

“As an agent of the Bounty Hunters Guild, Greef Karga secures bounty hunters in pursuit of valuable and rare quarries in the galaxy.”

Carl Weathers’ Greef Karga begins The Mandalorian as a rather unassuming sort of character, just a guy that hands out the jobs to the bounty hunters.  He’s clearly a bit disreputable, but he doesn’t seem overly complex.  When Mando turns on him later in the season, he does the rather expected thing, and turns right back.  However, his return after that is what really changes things up, taking him from sci-fi middle-management to a character that’s actually got a pretty good hold on how to spin things to his advantage as they happen.  He becomes a man with a grasp on the bigger picture, and suddenly he’s very intriguing, and a definite highlight of the show.  It’s only fair that he get a Black Series release out of it.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Greef Karga is part of Phase IV of The Black Series, a piece of the Mandalorian sub-set of the line, where he’s figure 06.  He’s part of the third post-relaunch assortment, which is generally pretty Mandalorian heavy in its character selection.  Greef is based on his Season 1 appearance (in contrast to the Season 2 appearance of his Vintage Collection and Retro Collection figures), which fits with most of the Mando stuff we’ve gotten so far.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 29 points of articulation.  Karga isn’t quite as agile as some of the line’s more recent releases, but he’s still got plenty of movement to him, and it’s certainly enough to cover the way the character is portrayed in the show.  His sculpt is an all-new piece of work, and it’s a pretty respectable one at that.  The head’s got a pretty solid likeness of Weathers from the first season, and his outfit does a respectable job of capturing the texturing and detailing on the various pieces of his outfit.  The coat/cape is a separate piece; it’s not designed to be removable, but can be with a little work if you are so inclined.  I wasn’t, personally.  Greef’s paint work is pretty heavy on the browns, as is appropriate for the character.  It matches pretty decently with what we see on screen, and the printing on the face is appropriately life-like.  Greef is packed with his two blaster pistols, which can be stowed in his holsters.  They’re nice pieces, but he does wind up feeling a little bit on the light side.  Maybe throwing in a few of the pucks, or even a piece of Beskar would have helped to alleviate it somewhat.  He’s got the basics, but that’s really it.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I was surprised by how much I liked Greef in the first season of the show, as I think a lot of people were.  I was definitely down for some toy treatment, and was pleased when he was shown off for the line.  He’s the sort of figure that doesn’t quite have the fancy flair of the other characters from the show, so I think he may wind up getting overlooked by a lot of collectors, but I see him definitely picking up in the long run.  It helps that he’s honestly a pretty solid figure, and a nice addition to the cast.

Thanks to my sponsors at All Time Toys for setting me up with this guy 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.