ATTN HASBRO:  The New Han Solo Has A Widely Adopted Nickname And Its Not Good

My Star Wars fan universe is governed by rules. It's good to have rules. Without them, you'd live in a world shaped by the arbitrary, striving for chaos and anarchy. The next thing you know, you'll be campaigning for kitschy figures. No, sir. It's not good. That's why I have rules. One of which is that for a piece of Star Wars media to become a cultural touchstone, I must hear it used as a reference in a sports context. Until then, it remains strictly in the nerd-sphere and might as well be across the event horizon of a black hole for the public consciousness at large. So when I heard Scott Van Pelt utter, "this is the way," on Sports Center, I knew undoubtedly that The Mandalorian had broken out. Along these lines, I don't consider a figure to have a nickname if it's only used within my closest circle of friends. I have to see it used independently outside of that sphere for it to be official. As far as I'm concerned, VC372 - Han Solo now has an official nickname.

Figures get nicknames for a myriad of reasons. I would say the most common reason is to identify a variant. In the vintage era you have things like the "red bar" R5-D4 and the "hollow cheeks" Tusken Raider. The modern era has things like "tan vest" Luke, "half circles" Fett and "brown stripe" Bly (keep it together, children, on that last one). Sometimes the nicknames are used to differentiate sculpts of the same character within a tight contemporary window. An example would be the name "antenna" Clone to differentiate figures based on the ROTS 41 - Clone Trooper versus the ROTS 06 - Clone Trooper. And when that is used to described the preferred sculpt, it becomes a "good" nickname. All too often, however, figures get hung with a nickname as a pejorative. The most widely know example is the "monkey face" Leia followed closely by the "screaming" Mace Windu and "He-Man" Luke Skywalker. The new Han Solo has one of these negative nicknames. I have seen it referred to in many circles (to include here in the comments) as "cankles" Han Solo. This is not good especially considering the prominence of the character.

For the few of you who don't know, "cankle" is used to describe someone whose calf does not taper into their ankle, but instead is a contiguous cylinder terminating at the foot. The phrase was popularized, but not coined by the movie Shallow Hal. Over time, it has been generalized to mean anything that doesn't taper when expected. In this case, it refers to Han's wrists which are as wide, if not wider, than his hands. This is obviously jarring as it defies well understood human anatomy. It looks like Han't sleeves terminate in two coffee cans into which his hands plug. That's not the only problem with the figure, obviously. The overall head isn't quite right, but I believe it was Rum Sleg who demonstrated that this is mostly due to the big hair. Additionally, the vest is a tad too large.

The reason I'm writing this is that for the most part, the figure is outstanding. It has only a few, fairly correctible flaws. It would be a shame if such an important character had its latest and greatest figure forever be saddled with a negative designation. "Cankle" Han should be relegated to a footnote (perhaps for the 50th?). New forearms, new hair (or perhaps a deeper recess on the head), and a smaller vest turns this narrow miss into an all-timer. DEW IT. To give you an indication of how much of a miss this figure represents, it's currently part of the BOGOHO sale for in-stock items at Entertainment Earth. Not even a $15 price point can get me to order more of this Han Solo, and I usually buy cases (plural) of the OT mains. VC372 is frustratingly close to perfect, but it doesn't need to stay that way. It seems like only a minimal budget commitment could elevate this figure to legendary status.

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