Sure, Baby Yoda may have garnered the lion’s share of buzz, merch, and cultural impact from The Mandalorian, but we celebrate Greef Karga in this household. Because he’s a legend, Mando! He’s definitely my most quoted character from season 1 and a figure I’ve been looking forward too quite a bit. Let’s take a look at the Black Series Greef Karga!
Greef comes in the new kicker ramp box and now that we are a few waves in, I’m really starting to enjoy the photo-real desaturated portraits with that film-specific pop of color.
Greef comes with two blasters that fit securely in holsters attached at the waist and that’s it. The blasters have a little paint on the handles for the grip, but it is pretty off-center on one of mine. I don’t think he neccessarily needs more stuff as a character, but maybe a couple Beskar ingots would have been cool since that is how he shared in Mando’s success and they did save his life.
Sculpting on Greef is really good with great proportions and scale and I especially like all the varied costume texture details. Unfortunately, the costume is mostly brown, so some of that detail does get a little lost. I think the likeness is pretty decent, but this is one of those times where the face printing hurts it a bit more than helps as the skin tone seems too light, too glossy, and the mustache just doesn’t register as strongly as it should.
He scales great with the rest of the season 1 crew and I do feel the need to yell “MANDO!” whenever I see the figure. Compulsion to quote a character’s lines back to the figure is always the sign of a successful job to me.
Articulation is pretty solid and Greef features:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, hips, wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles
- Ball and socket waist, neck, and head
- Swivel thighs
- Butterfly hinged pecs
The elbows and knees only get 90 degree bends, but I really liked the range of motion in the head and neck as it allows for some pretty expressive posing. His shirt is a soft overlay, so his shoulders get a good range of motion too. The half cape is also a soft plastic piece, but it can get in the way a bit.
Paint isn’t great. As I mentioned, I think the face printing is pretty glossy and doesn’t emphasize his ‘stache enough and the guns could probably use some metallic paint. The costume is the right colors, but everything feels a little too clean. He could use a wash or light dry brush to bring out some of those sexy costume details.
Overall Greef is a solid figure, but the likeness feels a bit off to me. I have seen people hit him with a matte finish spray and it improves the figure quite a bit, so I may give that a shot.
