COMMANDO DROID

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (HASBRO)

“Commando droids land on the Rishi moon to attack a Republic outpost. Designed for surprise assaults, the droids quickly overwhelm the new clone trooper recruits stationed there. With this strategic outpost now in Separatist hands, General Grievous has everything in position to launch a surprise attack anywhere in the Outer Rim.”

Each of the Star Wars prequels added one specialized droid in addition to the standard Battle Droid, presumably to somewhat offset the general ineffectiveness of the standards.  The trend continued past the movies, with Clone Wars adding a few of its own Droids.  Most of them were situation-specific, but my personal favorite was the Commando Droid.  Introduced early in Season 1 in the episode “Rookies,” the Commandos were honestly just a more intimidating equivalent to the rank and file Battle Droids, who would become a common place feature whenever the show needed the droid threat to be genuinely threatening.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Commando Droid is figure CW16, and was released in the third assortment of the second generation of Hasbro’s Clone Wars line, which hit in 2009.  Up to this point, the line had roughly one Droid army builder per series, and the Commando Droid took that spot in this line-up.  The figure stands about 3 3/4 inches tall and has 21 points of articulation.  Up to this point in the line, most of the droids wound up with lackluster articulation, but the Assassin Droid had changed that, and this guy followed suit.  He’s the best articulated of the Droids the line put out, effectively on the same level as the upgraded Clone body used for the ARF Trooper.  And, with the ball-joint construction on the hips, you can even swap the legs and flip the mid-section around, to do the hunch that the Commandos frequently sported on the show.  This guy got an all-new mold, which Hasbro would re-use a few more times for other Commando Droid re-decos.  It’s a really good sculpt.  It’s accurate to the animation models, while also keeping the articulation useful and still worked into the sculpt.  He’s one of the few instances of a droid actually getting movement at all of the notable joints in the actual design, so there weren’t any of the phantom joints that the main Battle Droid mold got.  The figure’s paint work is decent enough; nothing crazy or anything.  The bulk of it’s a molded gunmetal grey, with some slight accent work in gold, as well as his eyes and the insignia on his torso.  Application is all pretty clean, so that all works out rather nicely.  The Commando Droid was originally packed with a single droid style blaster, though somewhere along the way, mine seems to have picked up a second blaster somewhere along the way.  That’s definitely not standard.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The Commando Droid is one of those figures that I wanted before it actually existed.  When they showed up in “Rookies”, I was immediately a fan of the design and eager to see it in figure form.  This is definitely one I actively hunted for.  If I recall correctly, he got added to my collection during a sizable run of Clone Wars purchases in early 2010, when my parents were out of town for a week, and I had regular access to a car and some money to spend.  He’s definitely one of my favorites from the line, and he holds up astoundingly well.  I’d love to see him updated to Black Series one of these days.