FINALLY! If you’ve read my Star Wars rants on here before, you know I’m a huge Rebels fan and have been dying to complete the Ghost Crew. Zeb has been a rumored release for what seems like years, so it is so nice to finally get him and add him to the crew. Let’s take a look at Black Series Zeb!
This is my first look at the new packaging and I have to say it’s pretty nice. It’s got the same depth to it as a regular black series box, but the side with the character portrait is slanted and there’s an extra window on the top.
It feels pretty bizarre to have a black series figure without the classic black engraving-style character art that I loved, but this is pretty nice too and I’m looking forward to building the mural with the rest of the Rebels figures.
Zeb comes with his Bo-Rifle, the weapon of the Lasan High Honor Guard, and two energy effects. The Rifle can transform from gun to staff mode, just as it does on the show, by extending the main barrel and two smaller extensions on each end. The energy effect plug tightly into the extensions and do a good job representing the shock-prod feature of the Bo-Rifle.
The blaster mode has a pretty thin handle and it’s a little tricky to get Zeb to hold it. He has a trigger finger but the trigger on the gun mode is pretty soft plastic and his hands don’t quite grip it. You can get him to hold the rifle better with two hands, though you really have to stretch out the left grip a lot to get him to hold it.
Staff mode is also a little tricky to get posed properly due to the relative thickness of the main barrel and the grip sections. Two handed poses are tougher than single hand poses, but both can be done.
The gun can be attached to the back via pegs when not in use, which is a great feature. The character does this often on the show, but I honestly wasn’t expecting that here. The two holes are slightly closer together than the distance between the two pegs on the collapsed weapon, so I felt like I was bending the pegs a bit to get both on there, but it stays on fine with just one peg.
Sculpting on Zeb is quite beautiful. He’s definitely got all the features of the cartoon version, but there is a lot of detail packed in there like battle damage on the armor, muscle striations, and veins that make him feel a bit more realistic.
The facial expression is perfect annoyed Zeb. It looks like Chopper or Ezra has just done something to piss him off. I would have loved a couple alternate heads because Zeb can also be effusively cheerful too, but annoyed works for fighting too, so I think that’s a great choice.
When Zeb was announced as a deluxe figure I was a little concerned because he doesn’t really stand much taller than Kanan, but the relative scale is pretty good. I think he might be slightly too tall for my taste, but it’s pretty close.
Articulation is pretty good. It is mostly Standard Black Series fare with a few tweaks here and there. Zeb has:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, mid-leg, and feet
- Double hinged knees
- Ball and socket waist, neck, and head
- Thigh swivel
There is an extra swivel/hinge to accommodate Zeb’s bird leg design and helps stabilize his stances. It is kind of odd how tight some of the detents in the hinges are in the feet and knees and how very smooth they are at that bird leg and shoulders and elbows.
The right hand hinges up/down and the left in/out. I did have a little trouble with getting him into staff holding poses because the angles of the hands were fighting eachother and he can’t really reach across the body. The waist gets an impressive range of motion and I like the expressive posing you get with the barbell ball joints connecting the head and neck.
The paint is good with nice color separation on the clothing details and stripes and a cool fade effect on the inside of his arms where the purple is lighter. I also like that they did a light dry brush to bring out his sideburns and goatee details and there is some nice subtle shading around the facial features.
I have a couple nitpicks about how fiddly his rifle is, but overall I love this figure. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time, so the potential for disappointment was very real, but this guy exceeded my expectations. Completing a team like this is so satisfying, and the Rebels crew looks so fantastic together, now I just need a couple of their villains like Kallus and The Grand Inquisitor for them to fight!
