CLONE TROOPER

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (HASBRO)

“Clone troopers put up an unrelenting defense against the hordes of battle droids that are pouring into the B’omarr monk monastery. The intrepid troopers are keeping the enemy at bay so that Anakin and Ahsoka can rescue Jabba’s kidnapped son. The clone troopers use their blasters and thermal detonators with skill, focusing exclusively on ensuring that the mission is a success.”

You can’t really do a toyline based on something called “Clone Wars” without a decent focus on the actual clones, can you?  No, that would just be silly.  Thankfully, Hasbro agreed, so their Clone Wars tie-in line was just chock full of Clone Troopers.  They had plenty of focus on named clones as the line continued, but at the beginning, their primary focus was just on building the numbers as quickly as possible.  The best way to facilitate that was kicking things off with a standard, all-white Clone, which I’m taking a look at today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Clone Trooper was figure 5 in the first series of Clone Wars, as one of the 8 figures that dropped at launch for the line.  The figure stands 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 24 points of articulation.  This figure debuted the standard Clone Trooper body, which this line made a ton of use of….well, mostly.  As with all of the early Clones, he’s one of the best articulated figures in the line, making him awesome for all sorts of great poses.  The body holds up as a respectably offering.  It’s not as accurate as the later clone bodies would, but it’s also better on the articulation set-up, which feels like an okay trade-off.  This figure and a small handful of other Clones close to launch had a different head sculpt than those that followed.  It’s less accurate to the animation model, and not as conducive to matching up with the removable helmets, which is why they changed it pretty quickly.  That being said, I’ve always liked it a little bit more than the later helmet.  Just one of those things that got lost in translation, I suppose.  The paint work on this guy starts out rather basic, since he’s got no markings on his armor, and then gets the heavy wash that all of the early figures got.  The Clone Trooper is packed with a mid-sized blaster rifle, a larger rocket launcher, and a missile.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The Clone Trooper was one of the first four figures I picked up from this line, back before the show and movie had hit.  While there was a degree of taking a chance on some of the others, I was already a sucker for a good clone, and even removed from the source material, that’s what this one was.  He was my favorite of the first batch I picked up, and set the standard for my love of all the clones in this line.