In previous years, Star Wars toys released on “Force Friday” have focused on a single film. The Black Series figures available in stores (to varying degrees of availability) for this “Triple Force Friday” featured characters from the upcoming Star Wars movie (The Rise of Skywalker), TV show (The Mandalorian), and videogame (Jedi Fallen Order). Today we’re going to take a look at the two Black Series figures from the upcoming Mandalorian TV show, the titular Mandalorian himself and a new Jawa. Let’s take a look!
Both figures come in the familiar Black Series packaging and it’s interesting to me to note how high those numbers on the side of the box are getting. This collection has come a long way in a few short years.
The Jawa is an interesting pull for a black series figure. I haven’t seen them in any promotional material yet, so I wonder how significant a role the red-eye Jawas play on the show.
The Jawa comes with a blunderbuss looking copper gun and blaster attached by plastic chord to the bandoleer. Both weapons look nice and are re-issues of the weapons from the original Black Series Jawa. The weapon with a chord has a holster. It’s a little weird because the barrel of the gun ends up being a little soft and the chord a little too stiff so the chord sometimes look a little awkward and doesn’t hang naturally.
The figure for the most part is that original Jawa except they didn’t include the lower plastic robe piece from the original and have added a cloth robe. The robe is fairly effective for my taste. The material reminds me of the robes they used on the Black Series Tusken raider and have a nice texture to them that matches decently, if not exactly to the sculpted hood.
I think I would have preferred a straight up cloth hood, but this hybrid works for me.
I do like that the Jawa can now sit and the leg articulation is more useable, though it’s not as nicely engineered as later Series figures. The Jawa has the following articulation:
- Swivel/hinge neck, shoulders, knees, elbows, ankles, and wrists
- Swivel waist and thighs
The knees and elbows don’t bend quite as much as I would like, getting less than a 90 degree bend for both.
I also wish the wrists moved up/down instead of in/out at the hinges so the figure held the rifles more naturally. The thickness of the robe arms makes it so the Jawa can’t really reach across the body and get a good two-handed rifle firing pose.
The paint is pretty minimal, but there is a nice wash on the straps that gives it a grimy feel and the hood paint matches the color of the robe pretty well.
I would guess this character was chosen because they could re-use a lot of parts, but overall I like the final look and the cloth robe improves on the original figure for my taste even though it doesn’t go quite as far as I would like. I also just like the look of a couple of these guys in this color and I’m super curious to see them on screen.
The Mandalorian comes with a blaster pistol and a blaster rifle. Both weapons are cast in a fairly sturdy plastic and hold their shape well. I was glad to see that the rifle in particular is stiff plastic, because long weapons like that look particularly bad when cast in bendy plastic.
The long rifle has a weird tuning fork barrel, but is so damn cool to me because it’s a straight up reference to the animated first appearance of Boba Fett but translated to a more realistic style.
The gun has a peg that can fit into the figure’s shoulder strap and a hole in the figure’s back, so it can hang like the weapon hangs on the character’s back in the promo material we’ve seen so far.
Since the strap is a separate soft plastic piece from the torso the holes don’t always line up, but the gun holds okay in the strap without being pegged into the body. I’m noticing that the more I hang the rifle on the back peg, I’m getting a little damage on the rifle’s peg.
The pistol fits in the hip holster and I love that both of his weapons can be stored.
The sculpting on this guy is fantastic. It’s highly detailed and matches the source material well from what I’ve seen so far. The articulation is well integrated into the sculpt and the figure has very good range of motion. The articulation includes:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Ball and socket neck, head, and mid-torso
- Swivel thighs and gauntlets
- Double hinged knees
- Butterfly hinged pecs
Thankfully, the Mandalorian seems to be designed in mind for a rifle firing pose. The elbows and wrists work together to bring the gun up on the figure’s shoulder. The neck is a separate piece that sinks into the body with a ball and socket joint. The head connects with another ball and socket and this allows for a very smooth and subtle movement. Almost too smoothly as I’ve heard some complain of looseness, but mine holds poses fine.
The only articulation piece that didn’t move as well as I would like is the hips. The armor shape does butt up against the inside of the hip slightly.
Paint is good on this figure. The details are sharp and there is some cool metallic silver battle damage here and there. The helmet has a little bit of dirty wear paint application, but that doesn’t quite match up with the wear on the helmet that I’ve seen online. It doesn’t help that I have a huge photograph of the Mando’s bucket in front of me as I type this. I could have done without the brown marks on the helmet and I think a general wash overall would help this guy out a lot.
One paint issue I did notice is that his glove finger paint is rubbing off onto the rifle handle. This could be due to the general stiffness of the hand piece.
The Mandalorian was probably my most anticipated figure from this wave as the show is probably the new Star Wars thing I’m most excited about right now and nitpicks aside, he turned out really well and met my expectations.
