As you probably know, I wasn’t really looking forward to this set.  I have fought against our 3.75” action figures sporting any kind of styling other than realistic.  I was never a fan of this approach by Hasbro, but I am much more against it these days, given the paltry quantities of new products we get annually. While the situation has improved pretty significantly over the past 5-7 years, we should all feel that the line still exists on a razor’s edge.  I believe that TVC is only a few missteps away from disaster, so it must be carefully coddled on a constant basis.  Hasbro has to be a helicopter parent for TVC, lest it get left behind by the march of time. 

My strong belief is that there has to be some cohesiveness to the line, and any deviation from what makes TVC 3.75” special (which is up for some debate, unfortunately) puts the line at risk by alienating what few collectors we have left.  At its core, the 3.75” scale is for world building, and I believe the best way to support this is by continuing to provide the things that help flesh out those worlds.  These days, it’s hard to build new worlds when the offerings are as light as they are.  I do find this sad, because back in the day, you could build up a new scene from some new source in a relatively short period of time.  But today is not that day.  It’s not 2009. So any new product that doesn’t fit in with the main 3.75” realistic aesthetic is something we need to avoid.

Recently, I went on a particular rant about figures that are painted/decorated based on comic/animated sources, even though the figures are realistically sculpted.  It makes no difference.  There is no line.  A cartoon figure is a cartoon figure.  There may be different degrees of the severity.  For example, the first figure in the 4-Anakin lineup in the gallery above is from a very stylized sculpt that was available during the times of the Microseries.  At that point, I thought they were neat, because I never felt they were some kind of danger to the health of the main line.  They were a nice little sidebar, and I was confident this sublime was a short-lived homage to this new media that was prevalent - and popular.  Like so many others, I loved the Tartakovsky series, but it was just a means to help set up ROTS.  I wasn’t looking for figures that looked completely out of place from the rest of my collection.  At around the same time, Hasbro introduced a realistically styled line that supported the series, although most of the looks were Hasbro interpretations of what could be going on around the galaxy during the Clone Wars, as most of the figures, their gear, and their outfits were not seen in the series itself.  They were kinda neat at the time, but most of those are rather silly now, and don’t really fit in anywhere in particular in a display, so they end up just being kitschy.  A notable exception was that this line introduced the venerable 03-50 Clone Trooper, which marks the beginning of super articulation, and was regarded as the foundation of the best clone trooper sculpt until it was updated just a few short years ago.

Hasbro has given us plenty of kitsch over the years, but I feel that the percentage of such releases is quietly increasing. Between Kenner colors, comic colors, and subtle animation colors and sculpting, we’re losing out on figures that fit in seamlessly with our world building efforts.  As a buyer, and a completist, I’ve tolerated it up to this point, and have bought this stuff anyway.  But I did draw the line with the Kenner X-Wing, and as I wrote the other day, any time a hard core collector “breaks”, it’s bad for Hasbro and bad for the future of the line.

So that brings me (finally) to this set.  I’ll say this up front:  The set is great for what it set out to do.  The figures are (mostly) well-sculpted and well-decorated, come with solid accessories, and exist in a unique and eye-catching package.  It nails the “nostalgia”, does a great job of representing the on-screen characters, and provides us with modern figures to display in what one of, if not the, iconic fight scene of the entire Microseries.

The Good: 

You’ve basically seen Anakin before.  It’s a retool of the newest sculpt that we’ve gotten a few times already, most recently in the Cody 2-pack from Walmart that just shipped.  This time around, the figure has new arms a new slashed right thigh, and some tattered soft goods.  The headsculpt is new, although we probably should be looking at it as a pre-pack of the upcoming AOTC Anakin.  I believe it’s the same, but I could be wrong.  He comes with a lightsaber, a hilt, and a swappable Force-push hand.  He’s highly posable, and looks great.

You’ve also basically seen Asajj before.  She’s a retool of VC364.  The figure has new upper arms, torso, and headsculpt (featuring her gritted teeth expression).  The belt is new, and this time it is one piece with plastic tabards.  The soft goods skirt is slightly longer, hiding her feet.  The previous release had the tabard also being soft goods.  For accessories, Asajj comes with a pair of hilts that plug into her belt nicely, a pair of lit sabers, and then a double-bladed version.  The good news here is that the hilts of all the saber variants are much more streamlined and (ironically) realistic, which look much better than the overly chunky hilts that came with VC364.  And with the completed double-blade accessory, there is no more futzing around with trying to connect the hilts together.

The Maybe Not So Good:
First of all, regardless of the animated stuff which I’m about to get into, there’s a frustrating decision regarding the hilts.  For both figures, Hasbro opted for the dull, plastic-y silver for the unlit hilts, but went with the shiny metallic paint on the ignited hilts.  Naturally, the latter look great.  But I have no idea why the unlit hilts were done this way.  They look terrible.  It was an unfortunate decision that definitely impacts the overall effort.

Aside from that (you guessed it), it’s the animated coloring and styling.  Anakin’s Jedi garb is a different color for this figure, rather than more closely matching his AOTC outfit.  The sculpt is realistic enough except for a couple of points.  The torn sleeves look like he’s wearing something from The Flintstones, rather than a realistic fabric rip.  And his mechanical arm is way too cartoonish for my tastes.

For Asajj, she’s got plastic tabards, instead of soft-goods like VC364.  They had done an amazing job with that figure, so I don’t know why they opted for plastic this time, unless it was a conscious decision to look more cartoony.  (Mission accomplished.)  From a sculpting standpoint, she suffers from the same problem that VC364 had, which was that the ankles and feet aren’t really don’t well, and action poses are a challenge.  As Chris had stated in his review, this is particularly unfortunate for one of the most dynamic characters in the Star Wars universe.  I guess the good news is that the longer skirt hides the feet this time.  If you want poses, the skirt seems to do most of the work, helping balance the figure when it ends up supporting the weight.

Of course, the main thing with Asajj is the white irises.  Now here’s where I will attempt to meet some other collectors in the middle with regard to comic/animated coloring.  I agree with many of you that the white eyes are more striking and maybe even preferable to the irises she had in the TCW series.  I think there’s little debate that she looks better this way.  I believe someone commented that the Microseries version of Asajj is how we were first introduced, and how we best remember her.  I don’t disagree.  And given what Hasbro was going for, it’s probably the right choice for this set.  However, the problem is that this isn’t canon.  Her appearance in TCW and Bad Batch is canon - as well as being newer and updated.  That makes it proper for her to have irises - even if it isn’t as cool.

The issue that is highlighted by Asajj’s eyes is that it reminds me of the super-articulation debate that keeps popping up.  Some collectors say that Hasbro shouldn’t invest in super-articulated joints for characters that just stand there, that somehow saving on joint tooling for less nimble characters would save us money and give us more figures.  This train of thought, of course, is immediately destroyed by the 8D8 debacle.  In no way, shape, or form, should we trust Hasbro to decide when and where we get super articulation.  Similarly, I don’t trust Hasbro to choose when we get animated eyes and when we get regular eyes.  All TVC figures should be super-articulated and realistically sculpted and painted.  To do anything else, jeopardizes the line by fracturing it into sub-lines.  When Hasbro seemingly tried to ask us about this at SDCC, they needed to be firmly set straight. 

One note about the packaging.  It’s cool and all, but it depicts a TV/VCR combo.  By late 2003, DVD’s had more or less supplanted the VCR, so I think this is a bit anachronistic.  Cute, but it misses the mark.  In fact, I have the Microseries on DVD, and got it as soon as it was released.  No tapes.

Bottom line - it is a nice set, but I can’t give it a top score.  It has some issues otherwise - and we even gave the earlier Asajj 7/10. I’ll add a point for fixing the sabers, but then take a point for the animated styling. For Anakin, we gave the similar sculpt a 9/10, but the cartoony sleeves and mechanical hand drop it to an 8/10.  These figures fall into a similar category as the 212th battalion Clones.  It’s like uncanny valley stuff.  It’s good, but just looks weird to me.  I’ll give it an 8/10 for the set.