Happy Gerbitz Day!  It’s the morning after the 20th Anniversary of the Episode I Midnight Madness.  We’re glad you could make it after a crazy night of revelry and ribaldry.  Following a week of cramming the POTF2 Flashback figures down your throat, yesterday we shared our stories of the Episode I launch (even though both Chris and I skipped Midnight Madness until the next morning), and followed it up with a review of the Episode I Sneak Preview figure, Mace Windu.  This morning, we begin our official reviews of Episode I figures (and maybe some other items) with a look at the character that is almost literally the face of the film, Sio Bibble, Darth Maul, or, as the kids now know him as, Maul.

I already told my story yesterday, but my search for Darth Maul was what got me into collecting Star Wars as adult.  Chris happens to be a Darth Maul Fanboy.  Darth Maul adorns the cardback artwork.  So it all makes sense that we kick off our Month of Menace (I just made that up.  Just now.  Amazing.) with a gallery and review of the very first Darth Maul figure.  And one other note, we were going to try to bring you at least 2 figure reviews a day, under the premise that the morning review would be our typical format, but we’d throw in an afternoon review that was more brief, and would generally feature a figure that was either obsolete, or at least close to it.  For the next few weeks, however, you can probably predict that while several of the Episode I figures are actually the only, and therefore best, versions of certain characters, a lot of this line is obsolete.  And those that are currently the best available is despite the fact that, for the most part, they don’t really hold up all that well.  Most of these figures will probably get in the 3-5 range for grades, and are either only worth owning for the sake of nostalgia, or because they have some specific accessory or feature that you won’t find anywhere else.  But a few, might still be…OK.  At least until Hasbro quits screwing around and updates some of these. 

As for this Darth Maul (Jedi Duel) figure, it is intended to represent the character as he appears in the Theed Palace Generator room, after he discards his outer robes and ignites his double bladed saber, but before the saber is cut in half (a foreshadowing of something, no?). The figure is pretty basic, but definitely a cut above previous POTF2 figures.  To start, the sculpt is excellent.  The face is a very nice likeness, despite being obscured by the tattoos, which are painted pretty well.  I have one of those earlier samples that had the chin painted a slightly different shade of red than the rest of the face.  This was corrected down the road, and I’m pretty sure I have it somewhere in a bin, but just didn’t feel like digging it out.  Screw you for judging me!  The robes are all plastic, but have some nice texture sculpted in.  Darth Maul has an array of articulation that was a tremendous step forward in 1999.  Besides the typical swivel neck, waist, shoulders, and hips, he also has swivel elbows and wrists (gloves, actually).  While the range of motion of the hips is hindered by the plastic skirt (and again, useless anyway without knees or ankles), the upper body has a poseability that puts all previous figures to shame.  Darth Maul can hold the weapon in a variety of battle poses.  While not nearly as versatile as modern figures, this was a step in that direction, and opened up a whole new world to collectors (and kids, I guess).

Darth Maul comes with a lone accessory: the ignited double-bladed lightsaber.  Obviously it’s the first of its kind in the line, and I remember thinking that this was the coolest figure Hasbro had ever made, even though it took me several weeks after the launch to finally track one down in the wild.  It was my early favorite figure that I owned, and finding it resulted in my first successful “hunt” as a collector.  The figure also comes with a commtech chip which stored a few lines of dialogue, but we’ll get into that more later on.

Overall, based on a 4 being the base score for a 5POA type figure, I’ll give this a 5, because of the extra articulation (even though still woefully inadequate by today’s standards) and for nostalgia.  This was the figure that started my collecting, and I have loved him and squeezed him, and named him George.