HELP!  I need an adult.  I’m so confused by what’s going on with this Legacy Collection mini-series.  I thought the whole point of this 212th Battalion Utapau Clone Trooper was to upgrade this clone unit to the VC45 based ultra-articulated clone body.  This is the most prominent on-screen clone that had yet to be upgraded to that template with the 501st Clone and Shocktrooper having been migrated to this new body during the Vintage Collection.  Making the jump to the superior VC45 body is the only justification for making another 212th Battalion Clone so soon after its last update which came in 2011’s Vintage Colleciton “repaint” wave. 

One of the standout features of the VC45 template is the ball joints at each wrist.  Every subsequent release based on that mold has featured ball joints at both wrists, and at the time of this review, that list is long.  It consists of the Phase II 501st Clone Trooper, the Phase I Clone Lieutenant, the Phase II Shocktrooper, the Phase I Clone Sergeant, the Phase I Clone Pilot, the unfortunate Phase II 41st Elite Corps Coruscant Clone and the very cool Phase II Commander Neyo.  All of them have ball joint articulation on both wrists.  This figure does not.  Only the right wrist is ball jointed.  The left wrist is a standard swivel joint.  Are all of them like this or did the factory mess up on my particular sample (the peg does seem too small for the mold)?  Are these old eyes simply missing a painted over ball joint that won’t free itself?  Did old man nomad break into my house, swap out the left hand, and then reseal the figure as a form of retaliation for the infamous Hrchek Kal Fas blaster incident?  I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT’S GOING ON!

Aside from the mostly upgraded body template, this figure includes a much more battle damaged appearance than the previous Vintage Collection release.  There is heavy distressing of the orange organizational markings.  Several black paint applications are added to simulate battle damage and scarring.  But what is disturbingly becoming common place in recent Hasbro figures, those black paint application look like they were applied with a dot matrix printer.  Of course, this couldn’t be a removable helmet Phase II clone without including the oversized bucket that was tooled nine years ago for a Clone Trooper of a slightly larger scale.  Another difference between this figure and its immediate predecessor is that once that oversized helmet is removed, the underlying head is based on the training clone likeness which was not portrayed by Temuera Morrison. 

If this had the ball jointed left wrist and a property scaled helmet, I could have been compelled to army build this figure when Amazon was clearing out the set for $15.  But as it has been delivered, it feels like another spinning of the wheels update.  6 out of 10. 

At the time of this review, the full Legacy Collection set is still available directly from Amazon

6/10 Bantha Skulls