The weirdly named unnamed “Blue” Saga line ran from 2002-2004, and was intended as the line look to represent figures and toys from Attack of the Clones, but nothing on the packaging indicated this.  It was the first, and only, line look to not have clear branding for the media it was supposed to represent.  In 2019, The Rise of Skywalker one-upped this achievement by not even having its own dedicated line at all.  However, you could argue that in the tradition of the Kenner line, when we got a handful of TROS items in TVC, they were branded as such, and so that sort of counts.

Anyway, the Blue Saga line kind of…sucked.  It was interesting at the time of launch, because it was before we knew better, so it was just part of the evolution of the line.  It was a hodgepodge of new styles and gimmicks.  Long gone were the buff figures of the POTF2 era, but Hasbro also seemed to pass on the collector-friendly details for which most of the EP1 and POTJ offerings were known.  Instead, we got some goofy-looking figures in extreme action poses.  Hasbro introduced a couple of new features that seemed clever at first, but ended becoming annoying or downright frustrating over time, such as the separate lightsaber blades and the magnets.  Also the line was rife with kid-friendly oddities, like button-activated kicking/swinging/quick-draw features that utterly destroyed the aesthetics. And there were a few deluxe items that included things like break-apart figures, play-doh build-a-droids, magnets, sounds, wind-up walking, and general launching/jumping/pumping/stumblin’/bumblin’/fumblin’ foolishness.

One such offering was this Jango Fett (Kamino Showdown).  It’s all kinds of terribleness and ridiculousness.  It was almost saved by the accessories.  Almost.  It had a partner set in the separately offered Obi-Wan Kenobi (Kamino Showdown).  There’s a slight chance that will be reviewed soon, as well, so we won’t talk much about it now.  We don’t want to spoil the future awesomeness.

The Jango figure is horrific, but there was a reason for this.  As a standalone figure, it’s a complete failure.  The sculpt is bad, the articulation is bad, and the accessory interaction is…bad.  It has the extra-long spring-loaded projectile that fires from the jetpack, but does not include a “realistic” regular missile to swap out.  The blasters sit very loosely in the holsters, and even less sturdily in the hands.  It was difficult to get the one gallery shot where he’s doing his signature double-draw, because the earth’s rotation kept knocking the guns out of his hands. You can see the painted head (at least the chin) under the helmet, but said helmet is not removable.  There aren’t any meaningful poses you can make.

But all this was meant to just be a sideshow for the main event.  This Jango has limited articulation, but it is sculpted in such a way as to “feature” the swivel bicep joints so that he can open his arms to reveal the eye-sore magnets embedded on the inside of his forearms, so that he can attach to the included column.

The environmental pieces seem to make the honest effort to represent a portion of the Tipoca City (RIP) landing platform where Jango and Obi-Wan performed their rain dance.  But it also seems over-engineered, and the thing just fails to be an exciting diorama element.  The column consists of two parts.  The upper magnetic part slides into the lower part.  Presumably this is to give display variants (tall, short, whatever), but it would have been better if it attached in a different way to make it look like one continuous column.  There is a “pizza slice” shaped 2-piece platform base.  The curved edge is reminiscent of the edge of the platform, over which the two combatants continue to fight.  The other end is a lever-activated launching platform with two foot-pegs to “lightly” hold the figure’s feet in place.

So the idea is that you place Jango onto the platform, flip the lever, and Jango launches and grabs onto the column, which would mimic a similar part of the on-screen movie fight, where Jango flies up and fires his jetpack rocket from high up on the column.  The feature is a blast, but only if you also consider removing your own toenails with pliers to be a blast.

I put together this video to show off the set, which includes bloopers and a weird audio track that was just randomly playing in the background while I filmed it.

Man, that was awesome.  No, not the video, but the audio of the rare Mike Breen “double-bang”.  Anyway, the figure is definitely trash.  But sadly, the environmental piece is too feature-laden to be a really good part of a modern diorama, but I wouldn’t kill you if you tried.  It’s passable enough to earn this set a 5/10 and an “other value” designation.

For the record, this set was re-released shortly after this one in the Blue Saga Phase 2 packaging.