You might have noticed that some of the Fwoosh staff have gone a little Star Wars crazy lately. I’m always on the lookout for cool new third-party items to supplement my Hasbro Black Series collection, and today we’ll look at a couple of Yoda modifications by The Fwoosh’s own Ibentmyman-thing!
I though the Black Series Yoda was a bit of a mixed bag. The sculpt is nice, the accessories are good, but the paint and odd articulation choices hurt the final figure. I had been thinking about attempting a repaint of the head sculpt, but I never started because I was having a hard time choosing the colors.
Yoda’s skin color looks different from scene to scene, so I wasn’t sure how to paint it. Fortunately for me, I happened upon a repainted head cast on eBay by Ibentmyman-thing that looked amazing, so I bought that instead.
Not long after that, Benty posted a modified Yoda cast inspired by the new Sideshow Yoda that comes with a head sculpt with eyes closed in force manipulating concentration, so I grabbed that too.
I’m so glad I did. The repaints bring out all of the great detail in the sculpt and makes it look like a completely different toy. The eyes on the regular head have real life to them that was missing from the original paint work.
The likeness is so improved by the paint that I swear every time I pass by these figures I start humming Yoda’s theme and hear Yoda talking in my head. That could be some early warning signs of mental illness, but I’m going to blame the quality of the paint job.
The modified sculpt on the closed-eyes Yoda is a nice subtle bit of sculpting that is simple and effective and recalls a great scene from The Empire Strikes Back. The casts are sharp and they pop on and off the figure’s neck joint with a little effort and stay on securely while retaining poseability.
I have two Yoda figures because I wanted one in the Original Trilogy style with his Dagobah dirty robe, and one with a more Prequel Trilogy style with a nicer hooded robe and the lightsaber, and I find that these two heads work nicely on either version.
I decided to repaint the hands and feet to match the head sculpt better, and while I think you could get away without doing that, it was a simple and fun one-day custom project.
Benty is charging 20 dollars apiece for these, and I think that’s a steal for hand-cast custom paint job of this quality. One fun side affect of this purchase is that it’s sparked the customizing bug back up in me and I’ve started repainting the extra Yoda heads I now have lying around.
I’m thinking it might be fun to get more alternate Yoda heads so he can look in different directions. Besides, I need to practice my eye-painting skills.
Last I looked, Benty still had a couple on eBay. Go grab one if you are interested!
