This Wuher is a fascinating case study.  This POTF2 CommTech release is fatally flawed in the same way the Vintage Collection Leia Boushh is fatally flawed.  Both have permanently sculpted accessories in one of their hands.  Whereas the Leia has a permanently sculpted thermal detonator in one hand, Wuher has a massive white glass sculpted in his right paw.  What makes Wuher worse is that with no other articulation, the arm might as well be frozen sticking straight out because any other pose would give the impression that Wuher is pouring one out to his dead homies.  At least Leia can be posed with the thermal detonator in other positions.  Where this gets fascinating is that upon re-release in an Original Trilogy Collection Screen Scene, Hasbro corrected this fatal flaw and removed the glass.  But at the same time they introduced a new fatal flaw with one of the worst decos in the line’s history.  The re-release looks as if Wuher just stepped out of a Soviet-era coal mine, and the five o’clock shadow is painted as a collection of individual hairs that would be the relative diameter of those fat Crayola magic markers you had as a kid.  It’s quite comical.  It’s as if Hasbro were impersonating Elizabeth Hurley from Bedazzled, and for everything they fixed, they would break a new thing.  It leaves us in a world where we not only have no passable Wuher figures, but it’s almost impossible to decide which of the two existing versions is the less terrible.

So this was released as a Fan Club exclusive back when The Star Wars had an official fan club that got exclusive figures.  What a crazy time “back then” was.  The bitter pill was that as an exclusive, the figure came in at $13 (plus shipping) which was nearly double the $7 MSRP of the time.  To make up for this extreme price premium, Hasbro included what constituted a big accessory:  a slightly undersized droid detector so that Chalmun could keep “their kind” out of his establishment.  Chalmun must have been an odd cat.  He would allow all manner of butt-headed aliens into his bar.  He would allow Jawas into his bar, and by most accounts Jawas are filthy.  But prissy protocol droids are straight out.  [Editor’s Note:  According to a short story in A Certain Point of View, Wuher is the one who hates droids due to his family being killed by battle droids during The Clone Wars.  It may or may not have been confirmed that the droid detector was installed by Wuher and not Chalmun.]  Even though it’s undersized and inaccurate to the actual prop which was embedded into the wall, it’s a nice inclusion.

If you ignore the aforementioned attached glass, this sculpt is quite impressive.  The likeness to the actor behind Wuher, Ted Barnett, is very well executed for the time.  In profile, the head sculpt has a slight lower class Briton underbite, and you can almost hear the cockney accent that was sadly over-dubbed in the final edit.  Just looking at this figure, I know he speaks English, but I also know I can’t understand a word he says.  If he were in a documentary, I’d have to put subtitles on.  The paint applications seem to be a tick above the standard POTF2 fare.  It’s doesn’t have the “plastic fantastic” look of so many figures of the era.  There is a (very) slight wash to accentuate the sculpted folds of the tunic.  The boots are painted a different shade of brown than the pants which gives a bit of pop to the entirely earth-colored wardrobe.  Finally, the two-tone head and facial hair give a much better impression of a five o’clock shadow than the unfortunate re-release.

Choosing between this figure and the OTC re-release is like having to choose between being punched in the groin or kicked in the groin.  Both are terrible.  You have to pick your poison.  I would say that in any pose where the right hand can be obscured behind the bar, or when Wuher is serving a pint, this is the better figure.  In all other poses, the OTC release is better.  Still you need this figure for the droid detector.  With patience, you can find it on Ebay for around the original MSRP of $13, which isn’t bad for a 20 year-old figure.  Wuher needs, and deserves, a definitive resculpt. When we were getting 40 to 60 figures a year, I would say it was a high, or even critical, priority.  In the current state where we get so few new figures a year, I can’t give it anything more than medium priority.  There are bigger fish to fry.