Accessory packs were a staple of ’80s action figures lines and a absolutely loved gearing up all of my heroes with backpacks, grappling hooks and extra guns for our backyard adventures. This new Amazon exclusive First Order Stormtrooper recalls those days of accessory pack glory with enough gear to equip your Stormtrooper for a variety of oppressive duties. There’s no grappling hook, though. Let’s take a look!
This exclusive set appears to be the standard FO Stormtrooper from the 2015 black series line with the slightly modified Episode VIII helmet that came on the Target Exclusive Executioner Trooper. I had hoped Hasbro would have taken this opportunity to improve the elbow articulation on this figure, but they did not.
The set came packaged in a mailer box, which is kind of nice since it will hopefully reduce shipping damage on the neat window box packaging.
The packaging has an outer slip cover that features a beautiful drawing of Stormtroopers and a graphic on the back that describes the contents and how to equip your troopers. One oddity is that both the front and the back graphics depict a different rifle than what is packaged. The packaged rifle doesn’t have the longer stock.
The inner box has flaps with pill-shaped cut-outs on the flaps, reminiscent of the shapes you see in Imperial lights. The flaps open and close with a velcro seal and open to reveal the figure and all of the accessories. The baton on my set fell out of the packaging, but the rest was in there securely.
The star accessory of this set is definitely the heavy gear straps and backpack. You see a trooper wearing this gear on Jakku when the First Order starts chasing Rey and Finn.
The web gear is flexible plastic, but not rubbery. There is a little ammo pouch that clips on to the web gear straps and stays on really well.
The gear adds bulk and a new profile for the trooper and can be swapped on to different figures if you wish. I could see somebody making a cool new custom bounty hunter with it.
The heavy blaster is a solid chunk of plastic and the stand is removeable. It stands fine on it’s own, but has a removeable stick to help it stand. The irony of that is that the stick is a little too long so it destabilizes the stand on a flat surface. Works nice in dirt, though.
The gun also has a moveable handle piece near the trigger. The gun is pretty cool and works for multiple poses.
The only downside is there is no way to fold up the stand on the gun when the trooper is walking the gun. Figuarts solved this by adding a different piece to represent the folded up weapon.
The arm articulation and the bulk of the gear and weapon does also limit the poseability somewhat.
The binoculars fold in half for storage and look nicely detailed. Mine tended to pop apart when posing, but they popped back together easily.
The arm articulation on the figure prevents him from holding them up to his head, however.
The Trooper also comes with the riot control gear. This is the shield that came with the old Target Exclusive two-pack and the newer baton with the moveable tines that recently came with Finn in First Order Officer disguise.
I think an electricity effect would have been a nice add-on for this, but I’m glad to have another baton.
Overall, I like this set though it feels a little pricey for not a lot of new, though I do like the option to add the ammo pouch and the ability to convert one of my existing troopers to another class. The set is currently available at Amazon.com.
