If you’ve been following these reviews in real time, I made a very noncommittal, non-binding suggestion last week that we would be reviewing the Commtech Admiral Motti figure today.  As has just been legally established before the court of geekdom, no guarantees were made, so you can’t sue me.  I have that Commtech Motti carded, but after an exhaustive search of my collection, I realized that I do not own that exact figure loose.  I have the re-release from The Saga Collection Death Star Briefing set, which did not come with the Commtech chip.  No chip to photograph means no review.  With time dwindling on a Saturday evening, I had to pivot to something quickly, thus this POTF2 Garindan review.  Now, if you’re reading this in the future, this entire paragraph makes absolutely no sense and has been a waste of time.  Take THAT, future man.  O’DOYLE RULES!

The point of these Sunday Funday reviews is more about the story and the time in the hobby than it is about the figures themselves.  It makes about as much sense to “review” a 24 year old action figure as it does to review a 24 year old computer.  These new Pentium chips really put the 486 to shame, and this 800x600 resolution is a revelation.  In this case however, the deficiencies of the figure are the story to me personally.  Sometimes a particularly bad or lacking figure can be a catalyst for change.  The excessively bulky POTF2 Rebel Fleet Trooper was reportedly what inspired the Kenner division of Hasbro to finally put and end to the “steroid” era of Star Wars figures once and for all.  I’m not saying that this Garindan figure created a similar shift within the industry, but it lead to a personal revelation that 5 or 6 POA is definitely not okay, as the one and only Randy is fond of saying.

This was a figure I could not wait to get.  As I’ve mentioned 100 times previously, Garindan was something I’ve wanted since I was a wee lad.  I couldn’t fathom how Kenner bypassed this source during the vintage era, and I was a very cute little cherub of a kid.  It was very wrong of Kenner to do that to me.  Despite years of anticipatory build up, I started forgetting about this POTF2 release almost as soon as I opened it.  I posed it standing in the proximity of my cantina display, and never gave it much thought thereafter.

Certain characters have iconic poses.  For the Tusken Raider, it’s two arms raised holding the gaffi stick above its head.  For any character with a rifle, it’s the vaunted two-handed-weapon-grip (THWG).  For Jedi characters it’s some sort of address with the lightsaber, usually also two handed.  When a figure can’t achieve that pose, it’s frustrating.  For Garindan, that pose is obviously holding the communicator up to his snout so he can dime out the location of the droids.  The droids the empire is looking for and the droids for which the empire will look.  Thanks to a combination of limited articulation and the fact that this figure is encased in a plastic sarcophagus, it falls well short of that pose.  The permanently sculpted communicator stops at about half way to the desired destination.  Even if the communicator arrived at its preferred location, the wrist can not rotate to complete the pose.

This Garindan can’t do much else either.  There’s little point to engaging the hip articulation because the figure will topple.  The left hand likewise raises only a few degrees due to the same enshrouding plastic cape.  That hand can also hold the included blaster, but it has the dreaded “twisty grip” where it rotates in the figure’s hand never to be posed pointing straight ahead.  This is something that plagued a great many vintage Kenner figures as well.  Again, this is the figure that made me realize we need more out of modern action figures.  It’s hard to call something lacking all dynamism an “action figure”.  This figure is a lowly 2 out of 10.  Thankfully we got a better version with the Saga Collection release (linked above), but will still need a true definitive Garindan figure.