ARF TROOPER — JUNGLE CAMO
STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (HASBRO)
“Advanced Recon Force (ARF) clone troopers conduct reconnaissance missions. They are trained in stealth techniques to gather information without being detected by the enemy. Wearing jungle camouflage armor, they are deployed to the planet Teth to scout the location where Jabba the Hutt’s son Rotta is being held captive.”
Something I’ve brought up on this site numerous times before is my particular appreciation of for the ARF style of helmet for the Clone Troopers. It effectively serves as the Clone Wars counterpart to the Biker Scout design from Return of the Jedi, and I’m already a fan of them, so it didn’t take too much to get me on board with the ARF. Once Hasbro had the ARF mold for the toyline, as with all the other clone molds, they really got some mileage out of them, so there were plenty of variants for me to horde. Here’s one of those!
THE FIGURE ITSELF
Jungle Camo ARF Trooper was added to Hasbro’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars tie-in line in 2010, as figure CW24, released under the blue packaging style from that year. This was, I believe the first re-deco of the ARF mold, and the only one to be single-packed. The figure stands 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 26 points of articulation. The ARF mold remains one of my favorites from this line, as it not only has the really cool ARF helmet, but it also tweaked the hip joints to be universal joints, rather than just the t-hips of the standard clone, making for a better range of motion on this guy. Where this figure changes things up, of course, is on the paint. The original release was an all-clean shiny, but this release, as noted by the name, gives him jungle camo. Provided that jungle is primarily white and grey, that is. It’s a pretty impressive, and very in depth application of the camo patterns, which, along with shifting all of the accenting to dark grey, makes him rather different looking than the standard version. The Jungle Camo ARF was packed with a DC-15S blaster, a D-6 Rotary blaster, a missile for the rotary blaster, a display stand, and a “chance cube” for the “Galactic Battle” game that ran with the blue package figures. Wow, a repaint that came with more stuff than the original figure. How novel!
THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION
I loved the original ARF Trooper, so this one was one I was on-board for at the very start. I recall finding a bunch of the blue card figures while home from college, most likely for Thanksgiving break my freshman year, and this guy was in that batch. While he may not be much in the way of new or unique, another shot at a really good mold is never a bad thing, and he had a fun new deco, so I’ve got no complaints. I’m always down for another ARF.
