When we announced that we’d be sprinkling in these older reviews, we said that the reviews would be more about playing games of “remember when” than actually reviewing the figure.  This one is no exception.  You already know the figure is bunk.  We’ll spend a paragraph on it at the end, but we have bigger fish to fry before we get there.

One’s childhood and adolescence spans at least two decades and maybe three depending on how early or late in the decade you are born.  Certainly when you narrow it down to your self-aware life it’s likely two decades.  As such, every person can lay claim to two decades, but you usually identify with one.  I can lay claim to both the seventies and eighties, but I will forever identify myself as an 80’s kid.  The 80’s were simply awesome.  Want to know why Stranger Things is the most popular thing on the planet?  The 80’s.  Seemingly every other radio station on the dial today has a time block set aside to play 80’s music.  In the 80’s, even the occasional bubble gum pop song would have a bluesy guitar riff that would make the biggest music snob take notice.  I will put every single one of our cheesy glam and hair bands up against your Nickleback and I will win that battle.  [Editor’s note:  What did Guy Fieri ever do to you?]  I will win that battle 99 times out of 100.  Sure the cars were mostly terrible, but then, almost by accident, Buick slapped a beefy turbo V6 in an otherwise boring Regal, painted it black, and pure magic was born.  The eighties were loud, colorful, and gaudy, and they were, as stated earlier, awesome.  Most importantly, the 80’s weren’t trying to be anything.  They just were.  It’s probably the carefree attitude that comes with thinking the entire planet was going to be wiped out at a moment’s notice by global thermonuclear war.  We put thick hot pink laces in our high tops, wore gym shorts over sweat pants, and ruled.

So why am I droning on about the 80’s for a figure that came out in 1996?  I’M GETTING THERE.  In the late 80’s and early 90’s, the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain fell.  We were going to make it after all.  With the threat of nuclear war waning, we had to come to grips with the fact that we had to start trying again, and the 90’s didn’t try to be the 80’s.  The 90’s tried to be a bigger version of the 80’s without really understanding what made the 80’s tick.  Gaudy gave way to garish.  And I call your attention to the photo category banner at the top of this page.  LOOK AT THAT.  It’s not fictionalized or exaggerated.  That is cobbled together from the actual packaging elements on POTF2 products. It’s the thing children of the nineties can use to scare their children straight.  Of course, in the moment we didn’t realize it, and everyone was hoarding POTF2 figures like they were our preciouses.  Here’s the thing:  When POTF2 came out, we were only 10 years removed from the vintage Kenner era.  Think about that.  We are now almost two and a half times more removed from the launch of POTF2 than we were removed from the last Kenner product when POTF2 launched.  Being so close to the vintage era, vintage collecting sensibilities permeated the community.  The “first card” was a big deal for vintage collectors.  You not only wanted the first appearance of a character, you wanted the first version of that card.  For the 12-Back figures, there were three running changes to the card.  Those versions are named the A, B, and C backs in order of release.  12-Back A’s, being the first version of the first releases, command a big premium over the B and C backs even though they’re all 12-backs.  The changes are nothing more than edits to the text on the back.  That’s it, but people to this day pay bucks for that.

That A, B and C designation was merely a naming convention devised by the fans.  The “A”, “B” and “C” does not appear on the card.  When POTF2 launched, the card actually designated its version.  Each card had a serial number that concluded with two decimals.  You can see it just to the left of the “MADE IN CHINA” on the back of the Death Star Gunner card above.  This one ends in .00 which means it’s the first version of the card.  Each subsequent edit or revision to the card incremented those decimals.  The fist change was .01, the second .02, so on and so forth. No matter how minor the change was, be it a change to the photo or a barely noticeable spelling correction, the collectors salivated for the .00 version.  So that brings us to this Death Star Gunner figure (finally).  It was part of the final two waves of the “phase 1” POTF2 orange card look as the line was transitioning to the green card “phase 2” line look.  Those final two waves were released, almost simultaneously, on both the orange and green cards.  They orange card versions were actually somewhat of a transition between the two line looks.  You’ll notice this Death Star Gunner card has a gold Star Wars logo instead of the pewter/chrome Star Wars logo that all previous orange card figures featured (and is the one on that aforementioned photo category banner at the top of the page).  The gold Star Wars logo would carry over to the green line look.  If you are unfamiliar with the green POTF2 line look, you can see it HERE.

So ask yourself, if POTF2 collectors were trying to track down the first version of cards (.00) over minor edits, can you imagine what happened when, in the case of these two waves, the first version represented an entirely different line look? Furthermore some stores were skipping right over the orange carded version and their first shipments came on the green card.  It broke the community.  Collectors were going mental trying track down these “scarcities.”  I was living in Maryland at the time.  Word got to my local collecting community that a Toys R Us off the Jersey turnpike got cases of the orange carded figures.  Some of my friends actually drove up to try their luck.  To New Jersey.  NEW JERSEY!  No one goes to New Jersey.  New Jersey is just that thing you pray to get through as fast as possible on your way to better states.  It’s much like Connecticut in that respect.  [Editor’s Note:  As a New Jersey resident, I cannot refute this.] These figure were retailing for $5 at the time, and the final two waves of orange carded figures were easily fetching $25 on the secondary market (which consisted of message boards and classified ads at the time).  I personally think it was the craziest time I’ve spent in the hobby, and I can remember collectors gathering at the entrance of the storeroom of 24 hour Walmarts to try to intercept the cases before they even got staged in the toy section.  Fast forward to 2019, and I paid $10 for that sample above, and honestly, I probably over paid by a couple of bucks, but I wanted to own it because I’m starting to feel nostalgic for the era.  I HATE the figures, but think fondly back to that time.  If I’m feeling that way, surely others are too which is good news for the multitudes who are sitting on massive POTF2 carded collections.

As for the figure, you know what it is.  It’s basks in bulky 6POA POTF2-ness.  It’s not as buff as the first “He-Man” waves of POTF2, but it definitely has an apex athlete build.  The sculpting details are minimal, and the pants almost look like Spandex.  The accessories are ridiculously oversized, and are grasped by prodigious POTF2 c-grip hands.  But there is one fairly interesting thing to note about it.  Even though we have 3 Death Star Gunners in the history of the line, all three are technically unique.  The 501st Legion’s Costume Reference Library list six versions of the Death Star Gunner Costume.  This POTF2 figure is version 6, with the following identifiable features:

• Armor is similar to a pauldron in design
• Armor finish matches the helmet
• A raised edge travels vertically down the center of the armor, from the neck to the center

The Saga Collection figure appears to be version 5, and the recent Vintage Collection figure is version 1.  So there’s that.  I don’t really care what the score of the figure is, so I’ll give it a three.  If you disagree, I’ll email you my password so you can change it.