Monthly Archives: June 2022

Flashback Friday Addendum #0018: Captain Cassian Andor

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Flashback Friday Figure Addendum and tagged with , , , , ,

CAPTAIN CASSIAN ANDOR

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES (HASBRO)

Oh man, is this another Flashback Friday Figure Addendum?  It sure is!  At this point, they’re almost becoming a recurring feature again.  I mean, three in less than a year?  That’s pretty crazy right there.

My last one of these was because of Rogue One, and so is this one.  I picked up the Jyn re-do, and I’ve decided to follow that up by also picking up the Cassian re-do.  Where Jyn was a re-issue of a single release figure, and therefore had a pretty one-for-one addendum, Hasbro decided not to re-issue the single Cassian, and instead did his three-pack release.  So, I’ve done a slight edit to the text of the original review, just to help it stay more focused:

“An accomplished Alliance Intelligence officer with combat field experience, Captain Cassian Andor commands respect from his Rebel troops with his ability to keep a cool head under fire and complete his missions with minimal resources.”

There was one major piece of Rogue One merchandise I haven’t yet gotten around to reviewing.  It was sitting there in the store, staring at me, waiting, watching, and….uh, waiting.  Sorry, didn’t have a third “w” word, there.  Anyway, I finally have said piece of merchandise, so, without further ado, here’s this set with Cassian, Jyn, and a Deathtrooper!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

This three pack was a Target-exclusive, and started hitting shelves about a month after the main Rogue One product launch.  Of the three figures included, only Cassian is a truly unique figure.  The Deathtrooper has some minor tweaks as well, but Jyn is exactly the same as both her standard and SDCC-exclusive releases.

Despite his placement in a big exclusive set, the Cassian seen here is the standard version of the character, seen most frequently throughout the movie.  It was oddly scarce in the initial product launch, but by the end of all the Rogue One product, it did end up fairly well represented.  It’s definitely the selling point of this release.  The figure stands 6 inches tall and he has 27 points of articulation.  His head is shared with the Eadu version, which admittedly wasn’t the best Cassian sculpt we got, but it looks a little bit better here than it did on that figure.  The rest of the figure is a unique sculpt, and it’s a definite improvement over the Eadu look.  The details are generally a lot sharper, especially on the jacket, and the overall aesthetics just seem to flow a bit better.  He’s still a little bulky for Luna, but not as bad as the Eadu figure.  The movement is a lot better as well, thanks to the slightly less restrictive design.  Just like the sculpt, the paint on this Cassian is a marked improvement on the last figure.  The face is still a bit off, especially the beard, but it’s definitely a step up.  The eyebrows are less caterpillar-like, and the scruff is a little more reserved, so that’s a plus.  The rest of the body is pretty solid overall.  There’s a little bit of fuzz in a few spots (like the tops of his boots), but generally it’s pretty sharp.  Like his oh-so-awesome small-scale counterpart, this Cassian is packed with his modular blaster rifle, which maintains the oh-so-awesome-ness.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I passed on this set when it was new, because paying the cost of three figures and only getting one I actually wanted seemed a bit much.  Just after the new year, however, Target got around to marking the set down, to about the cost of a standard Black Series figure. That brought into a reasonable range for me, so I finally got it.  I’m glad I finally got this Cassian; he’s definitely my go-to figure of the character.  I’m also not unhappy about the Deathtrooper variant, though I can’t say it’s the sort of figure I would have paid full retail for.  Ultimately, I think bundling Cassian into this three-pack was a mistake, and I think the fact that the set ended up on such deep clearance speaks to that.  I get Hasbro’s desire to get as many Jyns as possible out there, but this exclusive really would have worked much better as a two-pack with Cassian and the Trooper.  Three times was just one time too many for the standard Jyn to get a straight re-release.

I reviewed the original release alarmingly late in the game, at least as far as my Black Series reviews tended to go.  All of the first batch of Rogue One stuff I got up within the first month or so, but this one wasn’t reviewed until about a year and a half after its release.  Its all because I was waiting for clearance, as I touched on in the original review.  I really wanted that Cassian, but couldn’t justify the whole three-pack for him.  I was fairly kind to this figure’s sculpt the first time around, and I stand by that.  A few years removed, the articulation’s not quite as good as it could be, but it’s honestly not as bad as some of the others from the era either.  The actual sculpted details are all still very crisp, and they did a solid job of capturing the design.  Once more, this figure’s change-up is the face paint.  All of the Cassian releases suffered from some pretty awful paint.  The two Black Series figures had it so bad that the actual sculpt took a fair bit of the blame.  With a much improved coat of paint, the sculpt is definitely a lot better than I originally thought.  It’s still not spot on, but it lands much closer, and I really do like it a lot more now.

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

#3109: Baze Malbus

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

BAZE MALBUS

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES (HASBRO)

“Baze Malbus has a bravado that provides a marked contrast to the spiritual centeredness of his best friend and moral compass, Chirrut Îmwe.”

Hey, look at that, we’re back to Star Wars.   It was bound to happen eventually, I suppose.  Back in February, I took my first look at Hasbro’s re-visit of Rogue One in Black Series format.  I’ve already looked at the main line’s one new figure, Bodhi, and a pair of the re-issues that hit alongside him.  Today, I’m following that up with another re-issue.  But it’s okay, because it’s one I didn’t get the first time around.  So, it’s like it’s all-new, right?  Sure!  Alright, here’s Baze Malbus.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Baze Malbus is figure 5 in the Rogue One set of Black Series Phase IV.  He reissues the #37 figure from Phase III of the line, which hit alongside Chirrut during the latter part of the original Rogue One run.  The figure stands a hair shy of 6 inches tall and he has 27 points of articulation.  As I discussed in Chirrut’s review, the Rogue One era figures, especially the later ones, don’t represent the line at its best in terms of articulation schemes.  Hasbro was definitely still learning how to adapt the schemes to differing designs, so there are a good number of figures where the joints just aren’t optimized for the sculpts they’re attached to.  Baze is definitely one of those cases.  The shaping of the hair reduces the neck motion to little more than a swivel, the structuring of the chest armor makes the mid-torso joint mostly immobile, the hips are unable to get much motion at all to the sides, and the ankles can only go forward the slightest bit, making keeping the rather back-heavy figure standing something of a challenge.  The arms do at least get some okay movement, giving him the ability to at the very least hold his weapon half-way decently.  It may not seem like much, but it’s actually rather significant for this era of figure.  Baze’s sculpt was unique when he was first released, and has thus far only been used for this particular release since.  Issues with the articulation aside, it’s not a bad one.  The joints aren’t quite as clunky looking as they were on Chirrut, and the general level of detailing is pretty sharp.  The head sports a pretty strong likeness of Jiang Wen in the role, and is probably the nicest of the original Rogue One era sculpts.  The outfit is a good mix of clean and smooth armor with very broken in cloth pieces.  The boots are slightly on the softer side, but other than that, everything looks alright.  Baze’s paint work marks the primary change-up for this release.  The face gets the printing, and the head in general just gets a bit more detailing.  Some of the other colors on the palette have also been tweaked a bit, and he’s just generally a little bolder and more well defined than the prior release.  It makes an incredible difference, especially on the face, elevating the sculpt a whole lot in the process.  Baze is packed with his heavy repeater cannon, its ammo belt and canister, and a small taser which can be stowed on the back of his belt.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As I noted in my review of Chirrut, the assortment that included these two was never particularly plentiful, so I only saw Baze and Chirrut once at retail each, and not even at the same time.  I’ve had a few more chances to get one or the other in the following years, but with it looking like the team wasn’t going to be finished, and not being able to even get the two of them at the same time, I didn’t have much drive to actually grab either of them.  With the team actually set to be completed, it’s easier to justify them both.  While Baze still exhibits some of the articulation troubles I had with Chirrut, he’s overall a stronger figure, and one that benefits far more from the improvements of this release.  And, hey, now I’ve got the full team.  How about that?

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

#3108: Ultimate Ash

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

ULTIMATE ASH

THE EVIL DEAD: 40TH ANNIVERSARY (NECA)

In 1981, after a series of glorified home movies, and otherwise widely unseen product, Sam Raimi and a bunch of his friends put together a full-length feature.  A horror movie about a group of friends trapped in a haunted cabin in the woods, and an extremely low-budget affair to boot, The Evil Dead gained quite a bit of notoriety for its cast and crew, especially Raimi, and the film’s star, Bruce Campbell, who made his first turn as Ash Williams, the man who would become the face of a franchise.  While there’s been toy coverage for the ultimate badass that Ash would become, we’ve never gotten anything based on his debut appearance.  In honor of the film’s 40th anniversary (well, last year, anyway), NECA’s gone back to the beginning, with a full on “Ultimate” treatment for Ash, circa the first film.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Ultimate Ash is a single release figure, under NECA’s general Evil Dead banner, but the very first to be officially branded as The Evil Dead, aka the first movie.  The figure was first released in limited quantities to Target as part of their “Haulathon” event, before getting a wider release through specialty stores the following month.  This figure stands about 7 inches tall and he has 28 points of articulation.  Ash’s articulation scheme matches up with the modern NECA set-up.  It’s generally pretty decent, but there are certainly some areas where he could stand to have a little more range of motion.  For the most part, it does what it needs to, however.  Ash’s sculpt is an all-new affair, based specifically on Bruce Campbell’s much less action hero-y portrayal of the character from the first movie.  It does a pretty respectable job on that front.  The details match up well with the look from the movie, and the sculpting is all pretty sharp and on point.  There are three heads included with this release, each with a slightly different expression.  Given how expressive Campbell is in all of the Evil Dead films, it’s nice that NECA continues to give us a full range of extra heads to fully showcase this.  Of the three, I particularly like the more frightened head, which I feel best fits the first movie version of the character, but all three of them have a pretty respectable likeness of a very young Campbell.  Ash’s paint work is generally alright.  Nothing too fancy going on here.  Ash is based on his appearance early on in the film, before he really gets all messy from killing his possessed friends.  Knowing NECA, a bloody version will more than likely follow, but this one keeps with the clean look.  Given that all of the Evil Dead 2 figures had him in various states of dirtiness, having this one be totally clean actually makes it a bit more distinctive.  Ash is packed with a sizable assortment of accessories, befitting the “Ultimate” status of this figure.  He gets three alternate right hands (basic grip, trigger finger, and lantern holding), a lantern, chainsaw, rifle, axe, and the tape recorder he and his friends find in the cabin.  He lacks the book of the dead, which feels like an odd omission; maybe that’s a piece they’re saving for that inevitable bloody variant.  As it stands, not a bad assortment of extras.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As I’ve addressed before, my first introduction to the Evil Dead films was via Bruce Campbell’s behind-the-scenes discussions regarding them in If Chins Could Kill.  I really enjoyed the book, and figured I might as well actually watch the films discussed there in.  I watched them in order, and notably caught The Evil Dead after midnight, which certainly made for a slightly more restless night.  I love the low-budget roots of the film, and I’ve been hoping to see some sort of toy coverage for a while now.  This guy finally gives us that, and he does it well.  He’s quite a lot of fun, even if he’s not the distinctive version of Ash that most people remember.

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