The Star Wars Figuarts line has been slightly polarizing for some, but it has also been met with uproarious excitement from many. With Hasbro’s 6-inch line taking flack for one reason or another, the Figuarts line has been looked at as a new hope in 6-inch Star Wars figures, delivering great-looking and playetic figures of some of our favorite characters. With figures like farmboy Luke, Han, and Mace Windu coming up, the future is looking great . . . even if the rollout is slow.
These are pricier figures than Hasbro’s offerings, but the rewards for that price mean better quality plastic, more accessories, and multiple hands where necessary. The higher price can be weighed against a much slower figure release schedule, so for me I’m not interested in dropping one line for the other; the more Star Wars, the better. Which is probably insane, but your mother wears combat boots.
The Figuarts Clone Trooper is a sleek and shiny figure full of sharp and crisp details. I tend to get annoyed at people’s overuse of the term “soft sculpt” when talking about action figures, but when you put the Figuarts trooper next to Hasbro’s Trooper, it’s easy to see the rounded edges and loss of distinction on the latter. The Figuarts Trooper more or less looks like an official replica shrunk down to toy size. The color scheme as as basic as black and white with very little paint anywhere except for his helmet, where there’s a nice gloss black on his visor area.
Figuarts is known for crazy articulation, but even with that reputation the Trooper still suffers in a handful of areas, most of which is due to his design. It’s hard to get him in a decent kneeling pose with those pointy armor tips on his thighs. For some reason Figuarts didn’t go with the drop-down hip setup they sometimes use on figures. I’m not sure if that would have helped, but it would have been interesting to find out.
The arm will only get 90 degrees out of the elbow articulation — again, a product of the armor design. This is definitely enough to get the Trooper into plenty of rifle-firing or carrying positions, so I’m not noticing too many restrictions to what he can do. I think going in knowing that the armor is going to cause problems means some allowances can be made, even if you’re an articulation whore like I am. Usually all I ask is that articulation not be hampered for stupid reasons, and that’s not the case here; it’s all due to design reasons.
The minuses are balanced by the pluses on the articulation front, however. For instance, the shoulder panels are hinged, which, when combined with the ball-jointed shoulders, allows for more motion in the shoulders. There’s a nice amount of play in the torso, so he can twist side-to-side and rock forward and backward. He’s got ball-jointed wrists and ankles, which allow for more range of motion there, even taking the armor into account.
You can check out a full articulation breakdown in Robo’s video review:
For accessories, the Trooper comes with his large DC-15 Blaster rifle and his smaller DC 15A blaster, both of which fit snugly in his hands and can be cradled aimed or any number of poses easily. Again, like with the Trooper, both weapons are sharp and detailed.
The multiple hands aid in his blaster-toting abilities. The Trooper comes with a pair of cradling hands, a pair of wider cradling hands for the larger gun, a pair of fists, and a pair of trigger-finger hands. These can be used for field-pointing as well. There’s always an enemy to point at.
The Clone Trooper is another excellent offering that shows that Figuarts seems to be settling into a certain scale, and also seems to prove that Vader’s smaller stature was an anomaly. I’m not sure if they’ll go back and make a slightly larger Vader or if they consider his size good as-is, but it seems as if those who are looking to supplement or replace their Hasbro figures are going to be pretty happy from here on. The higher price is a bit challenging to army-building, so I’m jealous of those of you who can head down that road with Figuarts.
This figure appears to be sold out at Amiami and HobbyLinkjapan, but is available for preorder at Big Bad Toy Store for what seems like an excessive price.