I honestly forgot I pre-ordered this figure in all of the Rogue One Force Friday excitement. Since that day I bought a few different Shore Troopers from Hasbro and I liked them quite a bit, so I was feeling a little ambivalent about this pricey little figure when it arrived. Let’s take a look at the Shoretrooper Captain!
Once I popped the figure out the packaging, my feelings of ambivalence disappeared. This is a really solidly put together figure with great paint, sculpt, articulation, and accessories.
The Captain comes with three sets of hands, including two fists, two gun-holding/pointing hands, and two gun barrel-cradling hands. They all pop onto the ball joints on the wrists easily.
It also comes with the double-barreled blaster, seen in the Hasbro Scarif Stormtrooper Squad Leader, and a regular Stormtrooper blaster. Both have nice sharp sculpt, though they don’t have any paint detail to speak of. They made an odd choice to fill in the trigger guard, though the more pointing nature of the gun holding hand makes it really not matter. The finger isn’t going in there anyway.
The regular Stormtrooper blaster feels a little small.
The sculpt is amazingly sharp. So sharp that it makes the Hasbro details seem soft in comparison when I didn’t have a problem with it before. There are some details that don’t look exactly correct, like the rib section of the chest plate armor that seems a little more square than the actual armor. The head feels proportionally a little small.
When put next to the Hasbro figure, the head looks even smaller and, oddly, the calf armor feels a little smaller too, but the stature is pretty close.
The articulation is pretty great:
- Ball/socket at the head and at the bottom of the neck
- Shoulders have a ball/socket inside the torso and a swivel/hinge at the shoulders
- Shoulder pads have a double hinge inside so they can move around
- Biceps swivel and the forearm armor swivels
- Torso has a ball/socket at the ribs and at the waist
- Hips are swivel hinge with a drop down hinge
- Knees are a single hinge
- Elbows are double hinged
- Wrists are hinge that swivel on the forearm side and a ball/socket at the hand
- Ankles are swivel/hinged with a rocker joint
The double hinge gets a better range of motion than the single hinge in the Hasbro figure, though not by much.
The armor positioning hinge is a little fiddly but allows the arms to move around freely. Overall, the articulation is pretty fabulous and it all feels really solid.
The paint is really nice, though it’s super clean. The shoretroopers do seem a little dirty in the movie. And I really like how sharp the panel lining is.
Overall, I am pretty pleased with this figure. I appreciate the extra poseability and the extra hands. I get a lot of enjoyment from the ability to swap in a pointing hand for my Captain to lead his troops.
He does not fit in perfectly with the Hasbro figures, but it’s close enough for my display, and it’s not redundant since Hasbro hasn’t released the Scarif Captain yet.
The Shoretrooper is available online several places like Amazon, AmiAmi and BBTS.
