Man, I love a new regular wave of Black Series figures. No exclusives to chase, no carbonite or credit collection goofiness, just a straight up easy to pre-order wave of new characters in my favorite action figure format of six inch scaled, super-articulated goodness. We are working our way through this wave and today it’s Bo Katan’s sidekick Koska Reeves! Well, if that isn’t the Quacta calling the Stifling slimy…
Koska looks especially nice here with her bright blue armor contrasting the orange highlights on the box. I don’t see how you could leave it on the shelf.
Koska comes with two blaster pistols, a helmet, and a jet pack. The pistols and pack, like most of this figure itself is re-used from Bo-Katan. The pistols have decent detail, but the silvery plastic doesn’t show them off too well. She has two guns, but one holster and as far as I could tell on the show uses one pistol, so they gave us a spare. The pack detail is easier to see with its darker silver plastic and clean paint hits. The pack attaches with a single peg and I find that I miss the stabilizing smaller detents in the back that other Mandos have to center the pack.
The helmet is unique to this figure and also has good detail, but is a little overlarge to accommodate the removeable feature, though it is a little looser than most helmets of this type. I think it would be better if they moved to swappable heads over removeable helmets since it is tough to keep the helmet proportional and still fit over a proportional human head. Like Bo-Katan, Koska’s helmet range finder is hinged so she can use it to scan for Imps.
The body aside from the belt is re-used from Bo-Katan, which is fairly effective, but there are some armor and jumpsuit details that are different between the characters and different builds between the two actresses that might bug you depending on how detail oriented you are. In general, I would prefer a new sculpt for unique characters and one detail that stands out to me is Koska doesn’t have armor on her boot shins in the show, but has them here.
I like the likeness a lot and feel like it captures the vibe of the character really well. I especially like the fine detail of the little wisps of hair hanging over her ears that won’t stay in the pony tail and will probably keep the helmet off when displaying her. The articulation is pretty good and I especially like how the ball joints in the head and neck allow for some really expressive tilt action. The swivel hinge knees here almost work for me getting a little over 90 degrees bend and don’t look too awkward when fully bent. Double knees would be better.
Paint is good too with some weathering here and there with darker splotches and silver chips. There could always be more, but this is good for mass market. I do wish there was a wash on the belt or perhaps it was cast in a darker plastic. The face printing is solid and the detail hits on the armor are clean. Overall I like the figure quite a bit and so far the small details that are wrong here don’t bug me too much, but they do add to the general feeling I’ve been having lately that this line is not quite as prestigious as it once was and costs are being cut a little too finely.
