Star Wars Black Series Dryden Vos
When I hit a lot of stores hunting for figures, sometimes fatigue sets in. I start looking only at the expected pegs and not the surrounding area. That’s a bad move. You have to look on the shelf below, the shelf across the aisle, if you don’t, you may miss a last minute discarded figure. That’s how I found Dryden Vos, chilling with Optimus and Megatron in the Transformers section of Target on Saturday. Let’s take a look!
Dryden comes in the standard black series packaging and it strikes me that I’m going to miss these when they are gone. The numbers are getting high though, so I bet that factors into the change along with the regular philosophy of freshening up the packaging on evergreen lines to draw the eye.
Dryden comes with two short double bladed knuckle duster knives that I learned today are called Kyuzo Petars. I love little details like this because Kyuzo is the name of an alien species in Star Wars we’ve already met in the persons of the Clone Wars Bounty Hunter Embo and the (in)famous Constable Zuvio. The name Kyuzo is also a reference to one of the characters in The Seven Samurai.
None of this matters for Solo, but I love the layer upon layers of geeky info packed into each of these movies and their surrounding materials. In the film, they have a laser edge to them that cuts through solid objects. I find myself wondering how they would stand up to lightsabers.
They look appropriately scaled and detailed, and when I first opened them, I found myself wishing that they had a red line across the center to represent the blade. As it got colder, I noticed that more red was showing through where the laser blades should be. I think there’s thermoreactive paint on the weapon, because when I placed it on an ice pack, the red along the blades stood out more. It’s subtle, but I see it. Has anyone else noted this or am I going nuts?
Before ice pack 
after applying ice pack
The sculpt is somewhat sharp, but the plastic is soft enough so that nobody is going to get hurt handling this toy.
The sculpt continues with Solo’s excellent run of great figures and the head is a brilliant likeness. The body is long and lean as Bettany is a pretty tall guy.
Dryden is kind of interesting for a Star Wars character because he dresses pretty fancy. His outfit is like a space version of a black suit and Hasbro managed to milk a nice bit of detail out of a simple costume, adding some interesting texture to the pants and vest and detailing Dryden’s jewelry and oddly elaborate belt.
The half cape jacket is cast in fairly thin plastic, so it is flexible, but you are somewhat limited in posing because if the left arm moves too much the cape will ride up.
One tiny missed detail is that the hand is missing Dryden’s weird elongated thumb. It’s an easy to miss detail, so I don’t blame them or really find the omission that objectionable. you can remove the coat easily, but I think he comes off way too gaingly without it.
The articulation is Black Series standard with:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Ball and socket head and mid torso
- Double hinged knees
- Thigh swivel
I like that the right wrist is hinged up/down as it lends itself to better Petar posing. The head doesn’t have the additional neck joint we’ve seen implemented a lot lately, probably due to the height of the collar. I also really like how Dryden’s elbows get more than a 90 degree bend on single elbow hinge. His hips do feel a little looser than most recent figures.
The paint on this figure is good, if simple. Most of the figure is cast in a matte black plastic that works well for the outfit. I do like the slight wash on his hair. Dryden’s head is cast in flesh colored plastic with accurate face printing for his features and scars.
This brings me back to thermoreactive paint. In the film, Dryden’s scars get more red as Dryden becomes more agitated. For the figure, the scars get a lot darker when exposed to cold. The below pictures show room temperature on top and the bottom one is after I wrapped a cold pack around his head.
It was actually a little warm where I was taking these pictures, so the red would fade pretty quick. The below two pictures were some of the most red I was able to capture.
It’s a neat effect and took me back to gimmicky toys of my youth which is always nice. Living in Southern CA, I think my Dryden will most likely remain in light scar mode most of the time, but I did notice that after I left him in the garage over night the scars were angry and red due to the morning cold.
Overall I think Dryden is a very good figure. If I had to pick a negative, I’d say I might have preferred Dryden’s look from the end of the film with the looser white shirt. It would have been cool to get some coaxium containers to beef up his accessory count a little. He does feel a little incomplete without his henchmen so I teamed him up with the Guavian Death Gang.
That might be my biggest beef with this figure. It makes me want more figures and I now want a fancy Qi’Ra and his Hyloben guards to go with him.
