Boba Fett is back, baby! Between Boba Fett’s return in last year’s The Mandalorian and his upcoming show, The Book of Boba Fett, this is definitely Fett’s time to shine, so it is a little funny that we got a figure from the scene of his original ignominious defeat at the hands of Han Solo. I’m sure this is just the start of an eventual Fett merch deluge, so let’s take a look!
The figure comes in a slightly larger version of the current Black Series style boxes and features art with a green highlight color that matches the rest of the recent Black Series figures from Return of the Jedi.
The figure comes packed with a good amount of accessories including a grappling device, two rifles, a jet tpack with removeable rocket, two jet pack flame effects and a flamethrower effect. All this stuff certainly fills out the package tray, but I wonder if the real reason this figure costs so much more is all the paint hits on the armor.
The grappling device consists of a short piece of string attached on one end to a wrist clip, and on the other a silver grapple arrow. I like the idea of having a play feature where you can tie up Luke just like Fett does in the film, but the string is too short and the clip doesn’t really clip tightly onto the wrist. I do like that the whole thing is removeable and they didn’t mar the sculpting with the play feature.
The guns have nice detail and are cast in a stiff plastic that holds the shape well. I like how the brown wash brings out all that great detail, though I do wish the brown was slightly lighter. The second gun splits apart at a peg and has a neon yellow-green paint application to simulate the effect of Luke cutting it in half, though when he’s holding the cut piece it kind of makes me think he ran into a Xenomorph.
The pack attaches to the back via a peg and has two stabilizing pegs that keep it aligned straight. The jets themselves swivel and you can attach the flame effects easily. I do like that the rocket can be detached for a “fired” look for more play and display options. While the pack has a very detailed chipping paint job, the blue and yellow do stand out to me as somewhat brighter than I’m used to seeing on a Fett pack. The blue especially seems a little over-saturated and there are also a couple missing paint hits on the tubes that stick out of the pack next to the rocket that should be silver, but are a bright blue instead. I think it could definitely use a little brown wash/dusting to make it match the movie prop, but it doesn’t look quite as banana yellow in person than it seems to in a lot of photos I’ve seen.
Finally, the translucent flamethrower attachment hooks onto the gauntlet securely and feels fairly stiff, so I’m hoping it doesn’t droop over time. I really love the way this thing looks when there is good amount of light shining through it.
The helmet was warped out of the package and seems like the sides were perhaps pinched by the plastic tray. Fortunately a little heat fixed that with no problem. The above two photos show the helmet straight out of the box on the left and the picture on the right is after some heat treatment. All I did was heat up some water in the microwave and dunk Fett’s head in there for 25 seconds and the helmet shape righted itself. There is one of those unpainted Temuera Morrison heads under there, so I do wish they had finished the job and painted the head for a removeable helmet feature. I wonder if part of the reason they did not was that Lucasfilm hasn’t really established what Fett looked like under there at the time of Return of the Jedi. I mean, we know he looked like Temuera Morrison, I guess we just don’t know his exact haircut.
Once the helmet is sorted, sculpting is just fantastic on this figure with crisp detail work in the armor and costume. The little cape is sculpted plastic this time around, but thankfully it is a very soft plastic and stays out of the way of movement.
The range finder does hinge down, though the housing for it is not as smoothly integrated into the helmet as I would like. It stands out a little. The articulation addresses some of my grievances from the original black series Fett in that he can hit a decent rifle firing pose and the belt and pouches get out of the way of leg movement. Fett has:
- Ball and socket neck, head, and mid-torso
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, hips, wrists, knees, and ankles
- Bicep, gauntlet, and thigh swivels
- Butterfly hinged pecs
The neck has pretty impressive tilt and decent up and down movement. I’m not a big fan of the swivel/hinge knee articulation, but it gets a little more than a 90 degree bend here. I just don’t like how the knee pads look when you bend the knees on these kind of figures as it doesn’t quite look natural. The elbows also get slightly better than 90 degrees, though they are super tight at first. Thankfully the tubes on the arms seem to be really soft plastic and flex well with arm movement.
In terms of scale, at six inches, he’s a little shorter than the original Black Series Fett, but right in line with ROTJ Han Solo and AOTC Jango Fett, so I’m good with that.
Paint is pretty good with nice battle damage hits on the armor, but I don’t care for the jumpsuit color. It reminds me of Hasbro’s Ghostbuster figures where the body is mostly cast in this biege-gray plastic and the shininess calls attention to itself. I wish the plastic had a more matte finish or some washes and over sprays to dirty it up a bit as overall he feels a little too clean.
Overall, I’d say this figure is an improvement over the original figure in a lot of ways, the chief of which would be playability and poseability. And it should be an improvement since the original figure was seven years ago. This one is just a lot less stiff of a figure that’s a joy to pose and play with, the accessories are fun, and it gets close to import quality with a lower price and higher durability. My main nitpicks are that I wish they went all the way with the unmasked head and he had a bit more weathering, but the good outweighs the bad here by a large margin.
Fortunately my custom unmasked head from Oldboy CTTS works on this figure pretty well with a little blu-tak. I’m not sure the weathering or brighter pack colors bothers me enough to go through with weathering it myself. Probably not.
