COMMANDER FOX

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (HASBRO)

“Commander Fox heads a squad of clone troopers who accompany Padmé to the palace of Ziro the Hutt. She hopes to reopen negotiations with the Hutts, who have been tricked into believing the Jedi abducted Jabba’s son. The commander finds a hostile reception when the group arrives at Ziro’s lavish palace on Coruscant.”

The last time I was talking about Clone Wars, it was the Genndy Tartakovsky 2D-animated series, which actually aired between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, but there’s *another* Clone Wars animated series, launched with a 2008 theatrical film that served as the pilot to the show, which ran for seven seasons over the course of 12 years, and actually got a lot more toy coverage.  A lot of toy coverage that I happen to own, so behold, a new Star Wars theme for me to dive into for a good long while!  The back bone of Hasbro’s Clone Wars tie-in line was, unsurprisingly, the clones, and today I’m looking at one of those, Clone Commander Fox!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Commander Fox was released early on in Hasbro’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars tie-in line, right around the initial launch assortment and the theatrical release of the movie in 2008.  He was an exclusive release to a retail chain that shares his taste in being primarily red.  And also his taste in just being…the worst.  And turning on the people that trusted them.  Man, maybe Fox was a better fit for an exclusive than any of us knew in 2008.  I’m getting side-tracked though, aren’t I?  Fox was a standard packaged figure stuck into a clamshell, which was used to justify charging an extra $6 for him, which didn’t go over well at the time, but then people bought him anyway, so I guess no lesson was really learned.  Fox was seen here in his Phase I armor, which was all we knew him in at the time.  The figure stands 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 24 points of articulation.  Fox was entirely built from parts re-used from other figures in the launch assortment.  He’s predominantly the first Captain Rex figure, minus the removable pauldron and with the alternate helmeted head from the first Obi-Wan.  While the parts aren’t bad at all on their own, it’s a slightly awkward combo, mostly owing to the fact that the head sits a bit too high on the neck joint, so he’s got a bit of giraffe neck going on.  Otherwise, the figure’s mostly being sold by the new paint scheme.  The red seems a bit too dark, and the application’s a bit sloppy around the edges, but he’s at the very least pretty unique.  Fox is packed with a DC-15 long blaster rifle, and a pair of DC-17 blaster pistols.  He was notably lacking in the missile launcher style accessory that prominently featured in the early line releases, despite his much higher price point.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I recall Fox being released back in ’08, but I never actually saw one at retail, so I never had a chance to debate whether he was worth the extra money or not.  2008 me probably would have caved, if I’m honest.  That said, it was actually 2019 me that ultimately did the caving, when I got the chance to snag a sealed one through work at a stretch of time where he’d actually fallen a bit in value.  It’s honestly wild that he was so much more expensive than the main line, because he feels rather behind where most of this line was.  He’s certainly not bad, mostly by virtue of working from a really good bank of parts, but he’s a little awkward in his assembly, and he just has this overwhelming feeling of being rather phoned in.  Hasbro just hadn’t quite worked out how to make these repainted exclusive clones work to their advantage just yet for the line.