Tag Archives: Chewbacca

#1415: Chewbacca

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

CHEWBACCA

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

For The Force Awakens, Disney had some restrictions on which characters were allowed to be released before the film, which almost completely relegated the original trilogy’s returning heroes to post-film assortments.  One major exception to this was the franchise’s premier walking carpet, Chewbacca, who made several appearances at the first Force Friday.  I didn’t get any of them, but the option was there, and that’s the important thing.  Chewie’s returning yet again for The Last Jedi, and given that he accompanied Rey to meet Luke at the end of the last film, it’s likely he’ll be receiving a more prominent role to boot.  He’s taking it slow on the action figures this time, with just the one figure to start with.  That’s better than nothing, though.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Chewbacca is another of the 11 launch figures for the Star Wars: The Last Jedi line.  He comes from the Teal assortment, and gets to fight with C-3PO over which one of them’s the more known quantity in the set.  Chewbacca is based on his ever so slightly tweaked look from the new trilogy. It’s not much different from the prior design; the big change is the new bandolier.  The figure’s a big one, standing almost 5 inches tall.  He’s got the standard 5 points of articulation, though the neck movement is rather limited by the design.  The sculpt looks to re-use the torso and left arm from the TFA Millennium Falcon Chewie, albeit with some slightly sharper mold-lines.  The rest is new, or at the very least tweaked. The head and bandolier remove the elements of the Falcon headset, and the head gets an open mouthed expression in contrast to the closed mouths of the last two Chewies.  The bandolier is a separate piece, but thanks to the slight divot on the torso, it actually stays in place, which I’m a fan of.  The legs now have the slightest bend at the knees, making him appear to be mid-stride, and the right arm is bent at the elbow, so he can hold his bowcaster at least a little better than the prior figures.  There’s a nice heft to this figure, which I think has been missing from some of the more recent Chewbaccas (the Black Series version in particular felt far too scrawny to me).  Getting the paint right on a Chewbacca figure is always a little difficult.  Fur’s not easy to handle, especially at a mass-production scale.  This figure does okay.  Some of the transitions could stand to be a little more subtle, but I’ve seen far worse.  The work on the eyes and mouth is very sharp, and the bandolier is pretty decent, too.  Chewie is packed with his bowcaster, which is a new, three-piece mold.  It’s a cool idea, but ends up falling apart a lot, especially when you try getting him to hold it.  Chewie also includes the newest Star Wars-sensation, the Porg!  I have no clue how prominent these little guys will end up being, but it’s nice to get at least one small-scale version in the initial launch, and especially nice that it’s not in a huge set (like poor BB-8 was for TFA).

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I didn’t pick up a single Chewbacca from the Force Awakens product.  In fact, I haven’t actually bought a small-scale Chewbacca figure since the Star Wars Saga release from 2003.  I guess getting a new one was a bit overdue.  I wasn’t 100% sold on getting this guy, but when I saw the figure in person during my pre-Force Friday find, I liked him enough to put him on my list for the actual event.  He’s a nice figure, definitely one of the better versions of him I own.

#0672: Bounty Hunter Chewbacca

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

BOUNTY HUNTER CHEWBACCA

STAR WARS: POWER OF THE FORCE II

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My first introduction to Star Wars toys was courtesy of Kenner’s Power of the Force II line of figures. The interesting thing is that I came into the line during the second round of figures, so some of my initial versions of the main characters weren’t exactly standard issue. I’ve already discussed how Dagobah training Luke was my first figure in the line, and some of the other main characters followed a similar pattern. Chewbacca was one such character, which seems a little odd, since you wouldn’t think there would be a lot of potential Chewbacca variants. Well, faithful reader, feast your eyes on Bounty Hunter Chewbacca!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

ChewieBountyHunter2Bounty Hunter Chewbacca was part of the second year of Power of the Force II figures. He was released as part of a small subset of figures based on Shadows of the Empire, which is a story set between Empire and Jedi. In the story, Chewbacca has to take on the guise of well-known Wookie bounty hunter Snoova in order to infiltrate Imperial City. So, technically, this figure could pass for either character. This is only the third time that Chewbacca had made it into the 3 ¾ inch line, which is surprisingly low, given his prominence. The figure stands a little over 4 inches tall and has 6 points of articulation. As a Chewbacca variant, you might think that this figure would be heavy on reuse. However, that’s not the case, as the only shared part between this and the regular POTF2 Chewie is the left leg. Everything else is new to this guy, though the sculpt maintains more than a few similarities with the regular version. Chewbacca definitely has a slightly exaggerated style about him (as did most of the POTFII figures) but I think this is one of the few figures in the line that really couldn’t work without the slightly cartoony feel. The concept looks pretty nifty here, presented in all its over-complicated 90s glory, but placed on a more realistically proportioned body I dare say it would look downright silly. And being exaggerated certainly doesn’t mean the figure doesn’t have some great texturing. The armor in particular looks sufficiently worn and beaten. Someone had a lot of fun sculpting this guy. This version of Chewbacca also got some of the very best paintwork POTF2 had to offer. All of the base paint is cleanly applied, with minimal bleed over. He’s also got some pretty nice work on his fur, which, in story, has patches died to make him look more like Snoova. They could have just been solid blotches of color, but they’ve actually been worked in rather subtly, making them look like they’re actually died into his fur. Chewbacca was packed with a giant blaster and a sci-fi looking axe, which both just add to the 90s over-complication thing. They can both be held, or the axe can also be plugged into his back for storage.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

This guy was my very first Chewbacca figure. If I recall correctly, Chewie was one of the last main characters I got. I remember that my Grandmother took me to the store (Sears, I think) specifically because I had asked to get a Chewbacca figure. I seem to recall that both versions of Chewbacca were there, but I picked this one. Even then I knew what cool was! The one pictured is actually a replacement I picked up a few months ago, as the original got lost some ways back. I have to admit, I was ready to tear into this one for its absurdity when I first sat down to write this, but I’ve come out of the review with a rekindled love for this X-Treme little guy.

#0580: Chewbacca

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

CHEWBACCA

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES

Chewbacca1

Once a line of figures gets a few series in, there will inevitably crop up one or two characters that are noticeably absent. Following the first three series of Star Wars: The Black Series, it was quite obvious that these two characters were Darth Vader and Chewbacca. Then, both found their way into the 5th series of the line. And there was much rejoicing! Yay! Except for one small issue: they weren’t exactly easy to find. See, there were two things that led to this. The first was that stores were sitting on lots of unsold stock of the first four series, so they under-ordered Series 5. In addition, while the series was all new figures, two of the four were variants of previously released characters. Obviously, this made the two new characters even more desirable, causing quite a bit of scarcity. I myself missed out on Chewbacca the first time around, but, fortunately for me, he got a rerelease!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Chewbacca2Chewbacca was originally part of Series 5 of Star Wars: The Black Series, however he eventually found his way into Series 7 cases as well. He’s figure number 04 in the second round of numbering for the line. The figure has 27 points of articulation and stands a whopping 8 inches tall. He’s actually so tall that he was pushed back to Series 5 from Series 4 so that Hasbro would have time to re-design the packaging so that poor Chewy wouldn’t have to be crammed in some contorted pose in order to be properly seen. Dude’s really big.  Chewbacca is one of the handful of characters who essentially look the same in all of the Star Wars films they appear in. That being said, you can sort of tell which movie he’s from by what his “bangs” are doing. For this figure, they’ve gone with the slicked back A New Hope look, which works fine with me. Given Chewbacca’s unique look, it’s no surprise that he makes use of an entirely new set of sculpted pieces. To be totally honest, it isn’t one of my favorites that the line has produced. It’s certainly not bad, and in fact, they’ve done an admirable job of translating a design that doesn’t work very well on an articulated figure to…umm…an articulated figure. The fur is all pretty well textured, but the breaks for articulation are rather obvious and obtrusive. Not sure it could have been any better, but it looks off. The head was actually the part of the figure I liked the least at first, but my opinion has changed over time and now I think it might be my favorite part of the figure. I’m still not 100% sold on the decision for the mouth to be open, but it looks perfectly fine in person. The sculpt being a little on the wonky side is not at all helped by an iffy paint job. Now, to be fair, this paint isn’t poorly applied or messy. It’s all exactly where it should be. It’s just not as…subtle as it could be. There are two different shades of brown: one dark and one light. The problem is that there’s no shade between, so the change from one to another is rather sudden. It really doesn’t help that many of these changes occur at the connections of joints, which are already a bit jarring to begin with. Chewbacca is armed only with his trusty bowcaster. It might have been nice to get another Stormtrooper rifle or maybe a set of handcuffs, but the lighter accessory load is excusable given the figure’s size.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

When Series 5 was announced, I knew I wanted to get a Chewbacca figure. However, when I ended up finding the series, I could only find Luke and Vader, with no sign of Chewbacca. That bummed me out quite a bit. I mentioned it to my dad, who kept an eye out for Chewbacca for several months. He finally came across one while getting lunch from Wegman’s one day, much to my excitement. I know I was a little down on this guy in my actual review. I stand by that, but I will say that just having the figure in hand improves my personal opinion of the figure, even if the actual quality could be a bit better. I think part of it is just that Chewy is an important piece of the films and a collection wouldn’t be complete without him.

Chewbacca4