I never thought I’d see human characters in the Bandai Star Wars model kit line. Armored people, droids, troopers, sure. But something involving skintones and eyes and shading? Naw, no way. Ten Bandai said “Uh, yes way” and announced A New Hope Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in Stormtrooper gear.
What, my favorite kit with faceprint-type tech on the human heads? I was pumped. Game changer for this line! Gimme all you can gimme! And then they solicited Han and Luke and haven’t announced anything since. They’ve teased an unhelmeted Darth Vader but nothing yet. But Han is released and he’s pretty nice!
But it’s not perfect. Well, head-wise, anyway.
The body is the Stormtrooper kit we know and love. It was the kit that made me go “Oh, these are amazing, MORE!” Beautiful look, amazing sculpt, nicely articulated. And the Sandtrooper is more of the same but with a modified helmet and neck that I prefer over the original Stormtrooper. They could have fixed it for Han but as far as I could tell, the sprues are exactly the same except the addition of the new head in it’s own tree.
The Han head looks great. It doesn’t look exactly like Han, but it evokes Han. If I think about it too much without actually looking for reference pictures, it makes me think of the old vintage Han head after they tweaked it. Not the original thin mushroom shaped head but the later thick head. And that makes this work for me simply for nostalgia sake.
The paint tech is pretty good here. Up close and macro you can see the little dots and such, much like SHF, but it’s not a perfect process. When up close you can see mine’s eyes are crossed a bit. Also, straight out the box the skin is really shiny and the hair unexciting in one color. I actually hit it with Dullcote to kill the gloss and threw a drybrush of brown on the hair to liven it up. That’s what all the pics below show because my dumbass forgot to take before pictures. I was excited to get it built! But you can see it in the video.
Another thing that sticks out is the lack of the same detail paint on the skin of the neck. The transition from chin to neck is a bit jarring.
But overall it’s a great kit. I never picked up the Black Series Han Trooper so this fits that slot nicely. I’m excited to get Luke soon too, both because I want to see how that head turned out and they changed the pieces a bit to make it shorter. I’m curious.
Box:
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Action:
You can pre-order this kit at BigBadToyStore!
