Got Luke? Between Yavin Ceremony, Jedi, Bespin, Trash Compactor, and Snowspeeder pilot, it would be understandable if you had a little Black Series Luke fatigue. I feel it a bit, but I’ve always liked the Dagobah training sequences, and the scene specificity takes me back to the early days of the Star Wars figure line relaunch in the ’90s, so I was glad to grab this set from Target.com. Let’s take a look!
The box is what you would expect from the Black Series, though a bit widerd with a bit of ESB 40th trim to jazz it up a bit. I do love that old style logo.
The set comes with Luke, Yoda, an alternate head for Yoda, two alternate hands for Luke, Yoda’s Cane, the Yoda carrier pack, Luke’s Blaster, and his Lightsaber.
The saber and blaster are what you expect and work well with Luke. I don’t remember him using either when dressed like this, but I like the inclusion.
Yoda’s cane is appropriately tiny and his hands are designed to grip it tightly. The alternate head is sculpted well and does a great job depicting Yoda in force concentration mode.
I also really like the alternate right hand which is a perfect match for the way Mark Hamill holds his hand in that scene where Luke attempts to raise his X-Wing from the swamp. The left hand is flat for balancing on one hand, but the best I could manage without support was a low-key yoga pose. I’m now balance king, but I’m also no slouch at this, so it was a little disappointing I couldn’t get it to work.
The pack is my favorite accessory, probably because I always coveted the vintage pack that came with the Dagobah playset I never got, but always wanted. The pack is a soft plastic and that can make getting the fastening peg into the hole a little tricky. Once it’s in, it stays on securely and looks great on Luke.
I think the sculptors did a great job with the shape and weight of the pack as the cloth wrinkles and slightly crushed shape give you the feel of a real canvas bag.
Yoda fits in there snugly and I think he looks best if you bend his knees before putting him in. Yes, Yoda does have knees! The previous Black Series Yoda had no knee joints and no bicep swivel so the articulation scheme on this one is very welcome.
You can take the robe off pretty easily by sliding the belt off, but is a little trickier to slide it back on. I mainly did it to get a better look at the articulation which includes:
- Ball and socket head
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, hips, ankles, and knees
- Swivel wrists and waist
I feel like this is a good amount of articulation for Yoda and I was able to pose him how I wanted for the most part. The only thing I felt like I was missing was an open hand for when he’s using the force or explaining the force.
The sculpting is very nice on Yoda’s face, though I feel like proportionally his head is a little too big for his body and while I like the smaller build on Yoda, I think his head is slightly too large in relative scale to Luke’s. Still, it’s a vast improvement on the original. The cloak does make Yoda look like a bit of a cloth blob in a neutral pose, but I think it looks better when you move his arms around.
Luke also has good movement with:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles
- Ball and socket mid-torso, head and neck
- Thigh swivels
- Butterfly hinge pecs
The swivel hinges at the knee and elbow get pretty good range of motion with more than a 90 degree bend. I feel like the swivel at the knee is a little redundant and prefer to use the thigh swivel. I’m getting used to the swivel/hinge knee, though I really hope they don’t ditch the thigh swivel because I find that swiveling at the knee just looks weird more often than not. The head gets a lot of great tilt and up and down due to the barbell ball joints connecting the head and neck and the additional ball joint where the neck connects to the body.
I think the sculptor did great work capturing the texture and wrinkly detail of Luke’s uniform and the build looks perfect. The portrait is again excellent, though I recall the solicitation pictures had the hair hanging a bit lower over the forehead and I think it sits a little high here.
Paint is pretty nice with the face printing delivering solid facial details and a nice bit of weathering on Luke’s outfit. I’ve grown used to the darker colored Yoda figures over the past few years, but I do feel like he needs to be a lighter green.
Overall I like the set quite a bit, though it feels a bit over priced at $40.00. I appreciate the effort to make a more scale accurate Yoda and I think these are the best versions of these scene-specific characters I’ve bought yet. I love having Luke carrying Yoda in a backpack on my shelf.
