This figure has to be one of the shortest waits from reveal, to pre-order availability, and finally pick up in a long time. I love that he dropped right on the heels of the character’s debut in The Mandalorian too. Let’s take a look at the Heavy Infantry Mandalorian!
The Heavy Infantry Mandalorian comes in a slightly larger box than the standard Black Series figure which gives you a lot more real estate for the snazzy character portrait.
The box isn’t deeper, but is just slightly wider and he’s designated D2 as he’s the second deluxe figure for this year after General Grievous. It is interesting to me that he’s named Heavy Infantry Mandalorian because I think the character does get a name in the credits of chapter 3 and it’s a significant name for Mando lore, Paz Vizsla.
Pre Vizsla was a Mandalorian leader during the Clone Wars and was voiced by The Mandalorian producer/writer Jon Favreau. Our Heavy Infantry Mando also seems to be voiced by Favreau so perhaps he’s a descendant.
The Heavy comes with a massive blaster rifle with three barrels that attaches to a very detailed yellow jet pack. The ammo belt from the gun plugs into jet pack and a hose on the pack attaches to the figure’s flamethrower arm and there is a swivel joint where the ammo hose attaches to the gun.
These accessories are damn cool and really well detailed and I love that blaster can hook onto the pack itself for flight or just to save space on the shelf. I do wish he came with his knife from the episode and some blast effects. The pack can be easily detached for a more casual Friday look too.
The sculpting on this figure is fantastic with tons of pouches, tech, and battle damaged detail and an imposing frame. I love his squat antennae designs as they remind me of how the old Boba Fett figure had the range finder sculpted as one piece on the helmet. The design feels way more like Boba Fett to me than the Mandalorians from the Clone Wars in it’s piecemeal mismatched parts and hodgepodge of colors.
I do have to mention here that the figure is not quite on model to the character in the show, rather it matches some of the concept art in the credits. It’s a fairly subtle difference in the angles and depth of grooves on the helmet and the upper chest armor, but it’s nagging at me a bit. We see this kind of thing more often from Marvel Legends movie figures where they work from concept art in order to hit the target release date, so I wonder if that’s what happened here.
The figure moves really well for such a big beefy figure with:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, hips, wrists, and ankles
- Ball and socket, head, neck, and mid-torso
- Swivel forearms and thighs
- Double hinged knees
- Butterfly hinged pecs
The articulation works well with the swivel grip on the rifle to get the figure in a lot of cool blaster wielding poses. I really like that the elbows get more than a 90 degree bend too.
Paint is pretty cool on this guy. We get a dirty wash on all the yellow armor and jet pack pieces that brings out the detail nicely. There is also a lot of armor ding paint hits.
Overall I love this figure. It definitely falls into the hand candy category and is tons of fun to play with and looks awesome in a group on the shelf with his pop of blue and yellow. Some blast effects and his knife would have been nice and off-model parts do annoy me a bit, but that surprisingly doesn’t take away from the fun factor.
Thanks to Robo and Toybro, I did learn you can re-purpose some Marvel Legends blast effects for jet pack blasts and the Red Ranger’s flaming sword effect subs in nicely for a flamethrower.
