Disneyland’s Star Wars themed expansion, Galaxy’s Edge, opened last week and with it came a mountain of new Star Wars merchandise. Three exclusive four packs will be of particular interest to fans of the Star Wars Black Series we will be looking at them this week starting with the First Order Four Pack. Let’s take a look!
The set comes with another Kylo Ren in his TLJ outfit, gold plated Stormtrooper Commander Pyre, a Mouse (MSE) Droid and a Mountain Trooper. First, I’ll get the obvious complaint out of the way that labeling these sets as four packs seems a little disingenuous as it’s three figures and a small accessory, but the cost is $70, so it’s in between cost of three regular figures and four, but the price does feel like a bit of a gouge.
The package is a tall, slim box with a nice matte black finish and features some classy line drawings of the characters on the front and back. There is a velcro-sealed front flap that opens to reveal a window that shows off the figures and more interior art.
Of the three exclusive sets, The First Order box matches most of what I expect to see from black series box art since it usually sports a very First Order color scheme already. The packaging is all slightly themed differently to fit in with the different shops at Galaxy’s Edge.
Kylo Ren comes with two sabers (an activated version and a deactivated version that can peg into the belt) and a removeable cape. The deactivated blade does tend to pop out of the belt often on my figure.
I don’t know why I thought this figure came with an unmasked head, but it does not. That would have been nice to get, just for the opportunity to get a photo-real print of Kylo.
The figure is familiar if you bought the Episode VIII single carded Kylo, it seems to be mostly the same, it just has a masked head instead of the unmasked.
The sculpture is fine and the accessories appropriate, but he’s the dud of the set for me since I already have the Episode VIII figure and a similar Wal-Mart Exclusive version.
I can see why you would want to include him in a Disney Park set since Kylo actually walks around the park interrogating people (though in a different costume, apparently), but it doesn’t do much for me as a collector.
Kylo, Pyre, and the Mountain Trooper have typical Black Series articulation with:
- Swivel/hinge neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, wrists, and ankles
- Ball and socket head and mid-torso
- Swivel thighs
- Double hinged knees
The cape is flexible plastic, but gets in the way of any shoulder movement, so that has to go if you want to do much posing of this figure. The ankles seem a little weak and loose, but otherwise the articulation moves well.
Kylo’s paint is pretty basic, with some nice detail silver on the mask and that’s about it. It is interesting that the entire neck was painted black for this figure because in previous versions it’s flesh colored. The head swaps with the Wal-Mart Kylo Ren if you want to do that. While I’m not terribly impressed with Kylo, Commander Pyre is quite a bit more appealing.
Commander Pyre is the main First Order villain in the Disney XD series, Star Wars: Resistance. He got a 3.75 inch figure, but I’m glad to see resistance branching out into the super-articulated Black Series line as I enjoy the show quite a bit and I feel like Resistance has got a bit of short shrift in the merch department. I suppose that’s a side effect of near constant production of Star Wars, the merchandise can’t keep up.
Pyre is basically a gold FO Stormtrooper, so I wasn’t expecting much more than a repaint of the FO Stormtrooper mold we’ve seen since 2015.
Thankfully Hasbro took this opportunity to fix my main complaint about that figure, the elbows that didn’t have much range of motion.
It looks like Pyre is mostly a repaint of that older figure, but they re-did the arms so that the elbows get more than a 90 degree bend. The rest of the articulation works pretty well, but that small arm tweak has added to the poseability and my personal enjoyment of the figure immeasurably. I hope if they make more FO troopers in the future they use this arm design.
He comes with typical FO blaster rifle and pistol, both of which can attach to the socket on the leg. The paint is a decently shiny gold which doesn’t quite match the almost C-3P0 shiny gold from the show, but is pretty nice.
I’m hoping this signals more Resistance figures in the Black Series but I’m keeping my expectations in check since this is logistically the most simple Resistance character to release in this style. I would love to see this character show up at Disneyland too.
The MSE droid is a neat little accessory that I know a lot of fans have wanted for a while.
It’s tough to judge scale on these types of droids, but it feels about the right size to me. The accessory is fairly simple, but the droid does have simple wheels, so you can roll him away from roaring Wookiees as needed.
The MSE does get a nice, grungy weathering paint job, which surprised me a little as I’m used to the Death Star clean version. Maybe they pick up a bit of wear and tear on Batu or this model has been around for 30 years. Built to last!
At any rate, it’s fairly subtle and doesn’t ruin the accessory for me. I had a MSE that came with Revoltech Threepio, so I wasn’t dying for this figure, but I hope that Hasbro puts it out again some time in a way that’s more accessible to more fans than a pricey, exclusive set.
While the MSE droid seems like a no-brainer accessory, the Mountain Trooper feels a little out of the blue.
The design is reminiscent of the Imperial Scarif Troopers from Rogue One, but in the updated First Order style. I like the design quite a bit, and I’m intrigued by where it comes from.
Is it an Episode IX design or something intended for Galaxy’s Edge that we haven’t seen at the park yet? I have no clue, but the figure looks really neat.
The armor has some sharp details that are highlighted by panel lining paint and some weathering effects. It looks to me like this figure does re-use the lower torso of the Rogue One Scarif Trooper, but the upper armor and boots are unique.
There is a bit of an odd warping on the feet where they are curved instead of sitting flat, but that doesn’t seem to get in the way of posing.
The rifle is pretty cool. I like how it is clearly a modification of the standard E-11 style blaster but with a longer stock and extended barrel. They also gave the gun a bit of a metallic dry brush that gives it a nice finished look.
Normally I like to build a little squad when Hasbro makes a new trooper figure, but that’s not really feasible when they are released in a pack like this. Since I don’t know what this trooper is from, I’m less annoyed by this than I would normally be, but if it does actually get some screen time somewhere I hope a single carded version is made available. I could see another version with different pauldron colors being a possibility.
This set is a bit of a mixed bag for me, but there’s a lot more good than bad. The Kylo is completely irrelevant for my needs and redundant in light of the other two Kylos I have, but the other three are very nice and the MSE in particular feels overdue.
At first there was a fear that the only way to get these was to go to Disneyland, but we have heard that they will be online in July. I also bought my figures at the Disney store outside of the park itself, so if you are local to Anaheim, you don’t need to buy admission to the park to pick these up.
