The latest Black Series wave of figures is chock full of Star Wars goodness and finally sees the release of Skiff Guard Lando. I feel like we saw that prototype a couple of years ago at this point. Okay, maybe it was one year ago, but I’m an impatient guy when it comes to my Black Series figures, especially Lando figures. There’s something about Lando, you know? And in the vintage line, this was such a fun figure to take on adventures. I got hours of entertainment out of the removeable helmet alone. fLet’s take a look at Lando as Tamtel Skreej!
Who in the galaxies is Tamtel Skreej? That is one of the many silly Star Wars names I have floating around my temporal lobe and pertains to this figure as it was the old Expanded Universe alias Lando used to become one of Jabba’s guards. I can’t even remember which story I read it in, but it’s one of those names that stuck with me for some reason. Anyway, Tamtel comes in the standard Black Series box with pretty picture by artist Gregory Titus.
Lando comes with a removeable helmet and a vibro-axe. The helmet pops on and off pretty easily and has very nice sculpted detail around the jaw-bone face guard and the leathery cap.
I like it very much, but it’s just slightly off for my taste. The gap between the jaw-bone face guard feels slightly too large so I’m either showing too much Lando eyes or mouth depending on the pose. I’ve settled on, and think it looks best, pulled a little lower.
The vibro-axe is also nicely detailed and well scaled to Lando. It’s one of my favorite melee weapons from the OT, so it’s great to get a full-sized one. It’s cast in a flat, gray plastic and has a little bit of metallic dry brush on it that does a decent job of highlighting the details.
The sculpt is fantastic all around. The body, like the helmet is just rife with details like hammered metal textures on the armor, different clothing textures, and realistic clothing folds. The armor shoulder pads are very thin, soft plastic, but hold a lot of detail and hook into the arms with ball joints that allow a great deal of arm movement.
The head sculpt is also very nice, though a bit lean for Billy Dee in ROTJ, it’s recognizably him.
The head sculpt has a similar feel to the Cloud City Lando, but it’s different which you can see more clearly in the hair sculpt. Unfortunately they aren’t simple swaps overs because the peg hole is so much larger on the Cloud City Lando, but it could be done with a little customizing work.
The articulation is Black Series standard and it all works well. This figure has the feature where the head has a double ball barbell joint and the neck connects with it’s own ball and socket joint. The wrists hinge up/down on the right hand and left/right on the left and the elbows get more than a 90 degree bend. The aforementioned shoulder pads are attached to straps on the shoulder and peg into the arm with ball and socket joint.
It looks good and is functional, allowing for good arm movement, though I noticed that the arms don’t quite want to rest all the way at the figure’s sides due to tightness of this connection.
Finally, paint is very well done on this figure. They added some wash on the leather parts of the outfit and the hammered texture chest plate to bring out those details. The facial printing works it’s wonders here as well.
Overall, I think Hasbro is continuing with their streak and this is an excellent figure. He’s really put me in the mood to get a couple more of the Weequay skiff guards in this line.
