OBI WAN KENOBI
STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES
Today is Day 13, the penultimate day of my Christmas Reviews. In these last two reviews, I’ll be moving away from the Aliens and Doctor Who stuff. Instead, I’ll be focusing on that galaxy far, far away.
Generally speaking, I’m not much of a fan of the Star Wars prequels. To paraphrase the wonderful Hayden Christensen, they’re coarse and they get eeeeeverywhere. But, they aren’t completely without their merits. For one thing, the toys didn’t suck too badly (though some were worse than others.) And some of the actors made the best of their roles. One such actor was Ewan McGregor, who portrayed a younger version of Alec Guinness’s Obi Wan Kenobi. He did his best not to let that role suck (even when he was dealing with words like “midiclorians” or “younglings.” Eughghh!) and he ended up being tolerable for most of the three films’ runtime. So, let’s look at an Obi Wan figure.
THE FIGURE ITSELF
Obi Wan here was released as part of the first series of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones 12-inch figures. As you can probably gather, that means he’s based on his appearance in Attack of the Clones, which is alright, I suppose. The figure is 12 inches tall and features 22 points of articulation. Obi Wan’s underlying body is the standard Star Wars 12-Inch body of the time. Sadly, while Hasbro’s own GI Joe line had made leaps and bounds worth of improvement to its base body, the SW body was rather behind, even when this was released. It’s needlessly chunky, and the arms are noticeably stubby. And that’s not even touching on those oven mitts he’s got for hands! By Series Two of this line, they’d moved on to a better body, but not here. The figure has a uniquely sculpted head, as well as boots and a belt. The head is a passable resemblance to Ewan McGregor, which is more than can be said about most of the Kenobis offered for Attack of the Clones. The details are a little soft, but not too bad, especially when you’re dealing with rotocasting. The belt and boots are very nicely detailed, with lots of nice textures and such. The figure’s clothing is done with actual cloth, as is the standard for most 12-inch figures. It’s actually surprisingly well-tailored, although that body isn’t doing it any favors. The figure’s paint is minimal; it’s mostly on the head. What’s there is rather cleanly applied, and it seems all the colors are pretty spot on. Obi Wan is armed with a lightsaber that features a removable blade.
THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION
Obi Wan was a Christmas gift from my good pal Phil. Phil and I frequently have discussions about our various Star Wars toys, so this was a pretty cool gift. What’s also kinda neat is that this is the only one of the three Series One figures that I never got (The Clone Trooper and Anakin were also given to me as gifts, years ago). Though the figure won’t be winning any awards for ingenuity or anything, but it’s not terrible figure. Opening him up filled me with a nice little twinge of nostalgia, which was really cool!