The Gunship keeps sputtering along as we wallow in The Sleepy Times.  We’re now two weeks away from the end of the campaign.  I’m neither alarmed nor particularly confident, but I do still feel pretty good about the base model funding.  Convincing “future” backers to back now seems to be a lost cause.  Backers gonna back.  They’ll either jump in during the first few days, or they’ll procrastinate until the very end (for almost no legitimate reason other than “they can”).  In the meantime, The Watching of the Growing Grass will continue for about another 10 days.  In the meantime, there has been a lack of announcements or news from Hasbro regarding either the LAAT/i or the Battle of Geonosis theme.  We’ve all suggested multiple times that we didn’t like the pipeline announcements that were part of the routine over the past few years, but would love to see exceptions that could help clarify future product support for things such as a Haslab offering.  To be fair, we did get the somewhat cryptic drawing that was posted on IG a little while back which did give subtle hints as to some of what may be planned.  For me, I’d really like some information regarding a DEBUT item.  While I’m backing 3 Gunships so far, I have to say I’m a bit underwhelmed by the sheer lack of newness of this entire beat so far.  It’s a bit of a challenge for Hasbro, because as we’ve discussed, Geonosis was so well covered in the past, so there aren’t many opportunities for a debut item.  But a Clone forward command post, an Orray w/cart, a Geonosian cannon, and a Separatist Leader or 2 would be a huge shot in the arm for me.  There’s still time…

Since we’ve thankfully completed the ROTS basic line, we’re back to taking random swings at figures that we need to cover.  We’re probably 99% complete for basic figures in our galleries going back to the ROTS line, but we have some work ahead of us to finish off the basic figures from the first decade of the line.  We’ll also need to tackle a LOT of other non-basic figure products.  Our goal is to have a complete database, which includes carded/boxed images.  We work to acquire these pieces slowly over time, but at this pace, we’ll never finish, so we’ll likely need to cut some corners on the packaging, and try to fill those in afterwards whenever possible.  This gives both Chris and I some serious agita, but it may be the only way forward for us.

Today, we’ll take a look at POTF2 Commtech Greedo.  Some of you either have a Cantina in hand, have one in transit, or at least have a tracking number.  I have none of these, so screw you people!  You may already have the new TVC Greedo in hand as well.  In honor of that, we have this Greedo for review.

When POTF2 briefly adopted the Commtech chip format that was already being used for the Episode I line, the figures themselves took some great leaps forward.  The Episode I figures, while generally doing very little in terms of articulation, made most of the previous POTF2 figures look ridiculous in terms of realism, both in sculpting and in paint operations.  The line was trending towards realism since the early “He-Man” days, but this was accelerating at the turn of the millennium.  The difference between the POTF2 commtech figures and their characters’ earlier iterations was astonishing. 

Greedo was updated with an all new figure that had much better proportions and a much more detailed sculpt than the original release.  The right arm is permanently posed with a 90 degree flex at the elbow.  While elbow articulation was still far off from being standard, this pose is far better than the typical straight-armed 5POA nonsense.  There is also waist articulation, which was similarly far from being a standard POA. 

But the big deal with this guy was the hinged knees, which allowed Greedo to sit just as he did in the film.  Along with the cardboard Cantina display that was available around the same time, Greedo could sit in the booth with the companion Han Solo Commtech figure. [Review coming soon!]  And to complete the scene, Hasbro provided an Easter egg, which is a blast mark in the upper right chest, hidden by the vest.  It’s not really useful, because the vest itself is not blasted, and you have to remove it to see the mark.  But it’s nevertheless a neat feature and showed a little extra effort by Hasbro.  In retrospect, it may have been cooler to paint a vest onto the torso, so that if you removed the soft plastic vest, you could reveal the blast mark more properly.  Hasbro did this time of thing later on with removable battle damaged armor for some clone figures.  Another option would have been to use the same tech that Hasbro used on the contemporary Commtech Stormtrooper, which had a hidden blast mark on the chest that revealed itself if you made the figure cold (ice water, or put in the freezer).

It also seemed that Hasbro was moving on from the ridiculous ginormous weapons that plagued the line in early years.  Greedo merely comes with a single blaster, which fits nicely in his closed hand.  Instead of a huge blaster, we get the Commtech chip/stand in exchange.  After a year of Episode I chips, it was cool to finally hear an OT voice coming out of the Commtech reader.  But there is a HUGE downside to this chip from 2000:  It lacks the “Maclunkey” line.  So now I feel that my life is incomplete.

Overall, this figure was a quantum leap beyond the previous Greedos, and it was repainted and re-released a couple of times, until it was more or less rendered obsolete by the excellent VTSC Greedo in 2006.  Some folks preferred this plastic sculpted vest to the felty(pern) soft goods vest, as well as the blast mark in the chest that was dropped.  So for some, this 2000 Commtech Greedo still had a place in their displays.  Personally, I use this figure as a stand in for one of the other Rodians milling about in either the Cantina or the Palace.  As we know, all Rodians look the same.

I’ll give it a 5/10, which is pretty good for a POTF2 figure, especially considering we gave almost all of the 2005 ROTS figures a 5 or less.  This figure does maintain some “other value” due to the blast mark as well as the removable plastic vest.  However, it is currently surprised by the VTSC figure, and looks to be thoroughly crushed by the imminent arrival of the Haslab TVC Greedo.