Saturday Shmaturday is back, with another throwback review of some figures that serve no purpose 25 years later.  Nevertheless, we are here to preserve history, so take notes for the test later.

We recently reviewed the figures and toys from POTJ that have survived the past 25 years and have earned a place in our modern collections.  These two figures…did not.  They’re not really terrible, as they are reflective of their era, and were quite good at the time, if not groundbreaking. 

The real draw at the time was the difficulty in finding this set.  At the time of release, it was not an easy acquisition, at least it wasn’t for me.  I was a very active hunter at the time, and searched all over for this thing, and remember getting antsy because I was afraid I had somehow missed it and was going to have to resort to paying 5 times the price on Ebay.  Even though we had about 8 million Vaders and Mauls already up to that point, I needed these two to keep my collection complete.  Eventually, I found the set at KB Toys.  I was reluctant to open it, because maybe someone would pay ME 5 times the price on Ebay, but of course that never happened.  Shortly afterwards, both figures were repacked, and this set ended up getting put into storage, having never been opened, until about 2 weeks ago.  A check of Ebay reveals that this set has not appreciated in value whatsoever.  Good thing I had kept it mint in package for 25 years!

The figures themselves are nothing special now, but at the time, they weren’t bad.  Maul was the least interesting of the two.  One could argue it was a bit of a step backward from previous releases.  The figure looked a lot like the original EP1 figure (the one that got me into collecting in the first place).  Other Maul figures had soft goods or more accessories to help add newness.  In the case of this figure, it was the first Maul to have ball jointed shoulders.  It had a swivel right elbow, but only had 7 POA in total.  It was painted nicely (without the pink chin nonsense that was prevalent early on).  It came with a lightsaber, which had one removable blade so that you could pose him with two different weapon configurations.  But the lack of articulation, even with the ball jointed shoulders, provided little to no opportunity for interesting poses.  Having the left hand open didn’t help the situation, meaning he could only hold the lightsaber in his right hand.  But he could wave hello. 

Vader was probably one of the best EP IV versions available by that time.  The sculpt was quite nice, although it also had only 7 POA.  With only a swivel left elbow to elevate it from the standard 6POA, it didn’t even have the ball jointed shoulders that Maul sported.  To make up for that, Vader has a soft goods cape, which is nice.  Like Maul, Vader is very limited in his posing potential.  Essentially he’s designed to perform a two-handed weapon grip with his arms extended forward, in a sort of probing stance for a duel.  He’s got a standard lightsaber, with a fixed blade.

While the figures were nice looking, they offered very little to move the needle on action figure advancements.  However, the big draw for the set was the large stepped stand.  It represented the apex of Hasbro’s display stand technology.  It is unique to this set, so even though the figures were released later on, this was the only place to get the stand.  I have no idea why it’s got the steps, other than Hasbro needed a way to get Maul and Vader to be the same height.  I’m not really sure what they were going for with this set, as it’s obviously anachronistic (or it was at the time, before the EU resurrected Maul).  There was also no continuation with similar sets in a sub line, so it’s kind of just a unique one-shot deal.

Each figure was re-released 3 times (at least).  Both were in the blue SAGA main line, as well as an encore in the blue SAGA Hall of Fame sub-line.  Vader was then part of OTC, while Maul made another appearance in a battle pack during the ROTS line. 

The set is a bit of an oddball, and there’s very little reason to go out of your way to pick it up now, unless you’re a completist, or you really love the strange figure stand.