Finn begins The Force Awakens as a Stormtrooper, so I don’t think anyone was surprised to see a Finn Stormtrooper variant in this line. One of the first things I did when I got my Force Friday figures was swap heads to see how Finn’s head looked on the trooper body. It worked pretty well, so I am a little surprised at how much of this figure is new tooling. Let’s take a look at Finn!
I’m usually not much of one for variants in the line, but years of Kenner/Hasbro training has made me tolerant of costume variations with Star Wars figures. Maybe “tolerant” isn’t the word.
I actually like and look forward to variants of Star Wars characters down to scene-specific details. Finn is probably my favorite character in the new movie, but I wasn’t dying for this figure because I thought I already had it with a simple head swap, but Hasbro did add a little more value here.
Accessories
Finn comes with the standard two Stormtrooper blasters we have seen before and a removable helmet. The blasters are nothing to write home about, but they are necessary and competently made. I still love the little holster feature so much.
The helmet is pretty great. It’s slightly larger than the helmets on the standard trooper, but that actually looks more proportionately correct to my eye. It’s cast in a soft material, but the sculpt detail and paint are sharp and it looks great on or off.
I’d say Hasbro is 2 for 2 on removable helmets for this wave. Remember how I’m a little nutty about variants? Well, I think I would like a clean Finn helmet without the blood mark for scenes where he wasn’t bloody.
That’s probably just me, though. Even though he doesn’t use them in the movie, it might have been cool to include the riot control gear with this figure as well.
Sculpt
As I said earlier, I was surprised to see that this figure is not a complete redo of the original Hasbro First Order Stormtrooper. It appears to me that this is an all-new torso because it’s clearly a little thicker and shorter than the original figure. The end result is that it looks more like actor John Boyega did wearing the armor than the standard figure with a head swap would.
One thing I wish they had changed is the cruddy elbow articulation, but that’s the same as the original First Order Stormtrooper. The head sculpt looks very similar to the Jakku Finn from wave 1, but the details, like his hair, are slightly sharper than the detail on my Jakku Finn. The expression is slightly different around the mouth as well.
I would have liked a new head sculpt with more of the stressed-out, hyperventilating Finn.
Articulation
Articulation is standard Black Series with the following:
- Swivel/hinged neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, ankles and wrists
- Ball-and-socket neck and mid-torso
- Double-hinged knees
- Swivel thigh
The main downside is that his elbows don’t get the 90-degree bend I’m looking for.
Paint
Paint is minimal with the figure mostly cast in the white plastic.
On one hand, I think it would have been good to dirty up the armor a bit since he’s a little scuffed up when he gets the blood marking on his helmet, but on the other hand, I like that it can double somewhat as a cleaned-up armor.
The paint on the face is simple, but applied cleanly with no slop.
Overall
While not a figure I was desperate to get, I actually liked this version of Finn more than I thought I would. It might be fun to grab another and clean the blood marks off to add a little height variation to my First Order Trooper corps.
