The Heavy Mando from Hasbro was a pretty cool figure but I had a couple quibbles with it, so when Bandai showed theirs that addressed some of my issues, I had to pounce on it. Let’s take a look!
The packaging is in the usual Star Wars Figuarts style, except this is a little bigger than normal due to the bulk of the character.
The figure comes with a removeable jet pack, a heavy blaster, three sets of hands (open, grip, and fist), a vibroblade, three blast effects and a stand.
The stand is a fairly standard Figuarts clear stand, but it does have some clips designed to work around the Heavy’s jet pack. I did need to tighten up the joints with a screwdriver for the stand to support the figure’s weight.
The vibroblade is one of the things I missed on the Hasbro figure, so I’m glad to have it here. The tiny little techno-greeblie details of the nice are so sharply rendered here and the paint has great metallic quality to it as well.
The gun also has super-sharp detail and fine metallic paint and attaches to the pack via a flexible hose piece. The hose has a bit of ball and socket where it attaches to the pack and a swivel where it attaches to the gun. the gun can also attach to the pack on a peg on the right side. The hose is flexible, but I did notice that it would sometimes make the gun pop off the peg since the peg is pretty small and not very tight. The blast effect has three pegs that attach into holes on each barrel. One thing the gun is missing from the show, is the strap that goes around his shoulder. I can see why they might drop it as I didn’t really notice it until this last rewatch.
The jet pack blast effects attach securely into the holes in the pack via pegs and have neat transition from yellow to white which represents the white hot glow of his jets in the show.
Finally there is a little black piece of plastic that fits in-between the pack and the back armor. Without out it there is a little bit of a gap between the pack and the the back. It doesn’t seem strictly necessary to me, but it does seem a little more stable with it.
Sculpting is pretty great on this guy. The detail in the armor from seams to wear and tear is really lovely. I did initially feel like the head is just a tad bit undersized for the size of the body, but after re-watching the episode with that in mind, it is a lot closer than I initially thought.
He’s about the same size as the Hasbro Heavy Mando, but the armor detail is a lot closer to the actual screen used costume than the Hasbro figure. You can see it mainly in the helmet shape, the larger size of the pack, and the flamethrower hose attaches to the sleeve rather than the pack.
The paint is also very nice on this figure. The tech details get nice clean hits and the weathering is nice and subtle and brings out the battle damage detail in the sculpting. I think they could have gone a little heavier on the wash, especially with the yellow parts. My daughter said this guy looked like Boba Fett combined with a dump truck and I can’t disagree and think the bright yellow could use a little more grime.
Articulation is a little fiddly, but mostly functional. The shoulders have a ball and socket inside that extends out to a swivel/hinge so there is some butterfly pectoral forward movement and a slight shrug. The shoulder pads are on double hinges in the shoulder and attach at a ball and socket. The ball and socket is a little loose on the left shoulder, so it pops off a lot. By a lot, I mean pretty much any time you look at it.
The heavy has the following articulation:
- Ball and socket in the pecs, neck, head, waist, and mid-torso
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Double hinged elbows and knees
- Bicep and thigh swivels
The hips surprising have a little less forward movement than the Hasbro figure and were actually stuck at first on my figure, but he can still sit. The ankles don’t get a lot of backward tilt, so I found him occasionally challenging to balance with the weight of the pack.
Overall, I like this figure more than the Hasbro figure, which was already quite nice. The Hasbro figure does have the advantage of a lower price and feels overall like a more sturdy and well-balanced toy, but the more accurate sculpting and fun accessories puts this guy over the top as long as I forget how much I paid for him. Which I did.
