I’m finishing my old wizard week with Hasbro’s Amazon Exclusive Black Series Deluxe Emperor Palpatine figure. This is not the first Black Series Palpatine, the original came out fairly early in the line and it had a lot of issues that I ended up trying to address with custom parts and painting. Does this figure address those issues? Let’s take a look!
Palpatine comes in an over-sized version of the now standard black series red and black box that features the figure and extra heads in an open window. The illustrations on these boxes are always good, but Palpatine illustration looks especially cool to me.
The set comes with the figure, two extra lightning hands, a cane, two extra heads, and Palpatine’s iconic throne.
The hands are a great idea, I just don’t love the execution as much as I want to. They are cast in translucent blue plastic and the hand pieces are painted Palpatine’s pasty skin color.
There is a bit of a muddling of the paint and sculpting between the tips of his fingers and the lightning part that looks a little weird. The paint gets darker toward the ends of the fingers and there is a thickness of sculpt that makes me think a bit more of roots growing from his fingertips than lightning when you focus on them. I think they work when not the focal point of the photo.
The three portraits are excellent with a smile, a snarl, and a neutral face, all three recognizeable from the film. The paint highlights the cracks and crevices in his face admirably and captures his cadaverous pallor well.
The craziest thing about the neutral portrait is I think it’s a repaint of the original figure’s head (see comparison below). It’s an insane advertisement for their new paint technique because this new one is light years better than the old.
The cane looks a little bit thick to me, but it has the requisite detail and is cast in a dark, shiny plastic that acceptably mimics the cane material. I wish it were a teeny tiny bit longer because I found it to be just a little short most times I was setting up poses with this figure.
The throne has a good shape and scale and I especially like all the little control pad details that I don’t think I ever really noticed before looking at this toy. The one complaint I have is that the plastic arrived a little bit messy and dirty on my throne and the finish is somewhat marred.
The sculpting is really mostly visible for the face and the hands since the figure is mostly covered in soft goods. There is a visible plastic sash and the brooch/clasp thing that closes the robe at the neck.
The body underneath does seem a little bit too straight-backed and broad shouldered and I felt like I had to use the ab and knee joints to get a proper stooped posture for Palpatine. I didn’t notice at first, but it’s almost all re-used from the original figure.
The hands are appropriate, with a cane holder right and a finger-wagging left hand in addition to his sparkle fingers, he’s pretty well set. I suppose a nice inclusion would have been some neutral hands that could just rest on the arm rests, but it’s not a glaring omission.
The soft goods dominate this figure and your feelings toward them will probably determine your opinion on this figure. I think these are some of the best soft goods I’ve seen from Hasbro, but I have some quibbles.
The hood placement actually feels pretty good to me on this one. That is something they struggle with and I think this is the best I’ve seen from Hasbro in that regard. It looks to me like they sewed it down in a couple of places to make it sit better.
On the other hand I don’t care for the sleeves much. There is an attempt to make the oversized robe sleeves, but the seem along the bottom keeps the sleeves from sitting properly and they often look awkward with the excess material from the sleeve seam popping out.
Articulation is normal for the Black Series with mostly swivel/hinge joints and double jointed elbows and knees. It all works well and gets him in sitting and standing poses fine.
Paint is really about the heads and the hands since he’s mostly cast in black plastic that’s covered by robes and they do a nice job with that sort of gray, cadaverous skin tone of Palpatine’s.
I don’t love figure re-dos, I’d rather get a new character, but this was one I felt like warranted another look. The original figure was an odd mix of soft goods and a hard plastic skirt, so if you had a throne, you had to cut off that skirt and get new soft goods to make him sit and I really felt like I wanted a throne for him to sit on. The paint on that original figure was also really bad, especially in light of the modern photo-real process.
I ended up repainting my original Palpatine figure’s face and buying some new soft goods from Rickhor409 and a 3D printed throne somewhere and I don’t feel like I need them any longer. Well, the Rickhor robes are a nicer. This figure addressed my paint issues with the original and improved paint and soft goods execution. Making him a deluxe figure and including the throne and lightning and extra heads finishes him off nicely.
I do wish they had done the original figure in all stiff plastic robe sculpt. Sure, it would be a traffic cone, but between that one and this, we’d have the best of both worlds. Maybe if they make a Phantom Menace version, they could go all plastic to switch it up a bit.
