This version of Palpatine was from the final few scenes of ROTS.  I tried to see through the dark footage, but I believe that he changed his robes into this familiar black ensemble after he defeated Mace Windu and anointed Anakin as Darth Vader.  After Anakin leads the 501st into the Jedi Temple, we cut back to Palpatine’s office to see him issue Order 66 to Commander Cody, and it looks at that point that he is wearing this outfit.  He makes two more wardrobe changes to declare the establishment of the First Galactic Empire to the Senate, and then again when he’s in his office as Yoda arrives.  Once his fateful duel is over, he seemingly returns to these black robes when he goes to find Crispy Anakin on Mustafar.  At that point, he pretty much sticks with this outfit for the rest of his life.  It’s almost like he found his comfy pajamas, and said, like so many Walmart shoppers, “Eff it, I have no interest in fashion, convention, decorum, or really maintaining any kind of respect for the basic premise of civilization.  I’m wearing this black Snuggie from here on out.  Sue me.”  He probably wears crocs underneath the robes. 

The point is, this figure not only works for some ROTS scenes, it also works as an ROTJ Emperor.  While it’s been surpassed several times over since its release, for a few years this was probably the best one available.  It was re-issued a few times, and I have a bucket of them, unfortunately. 

The sculpt wasn’t bad for the time.  At first glance, it had almost everything you would want out of an Emperor figure in 2005.  It had nicely detailed robes, a great head sculpt and face paint applications, and a few accessories.  For articulation, the head was ball jointed (which wasn’t common at the time), and could be moved in different poses inside the separately sculpted hood.  The hood itself was removable, which helped with posing, but could definitely look a little odd as it floated on his shoulders.  Those shoulders are ball jointed as well, and the arms have swivel wrists - but unfortunately no elbows.  The lack of elbows wasn’t too egregious, as doing almost anything with the arms creates the “winged” look due to the long sleeves.  There is a swivel waist and feet that rotate within the confines of the “salt shaker” body, but both of these points of articulation are essentially rendered useless by the design of the figure.

If you can get the hood to lie flush with the shoulders and fall over the face well, it looks pretty nice.  The main problem from a ROTJ standpoint is that the figure doesn’t include a cane. So despite this being an easy “two-fer” opportunity, Hasbro opted to go all in on the ROTS vibe, even though he didn’t do anything other than stand around in ROTS while wearing this outfit.  As such, he comes with his lightsaber, which he grips well - in his left hand only.  He can’t hold it in his right hand, because it is sculpted in such a way as to be more appropriate for shooting Dark Side Forcey things.  Inside the opening to the right sleeve, underneath his hand, is a spring-loaded slot.  The figure includes two more accessories:  Sith Lightning and Force Push.  Both are projectiles that can be manually launched via the spring mechanism.  They don’t work all that great, but whatever.  Shooting the “push” effect makes sense, I suppose, but the lighting should not be a projectile.

This is one of those mish-mash concepts that kind of misses the mark for the most part.  The accessories seem to be intended to do ROTS stuff, but he didn’t wear this outfit while doing them.  And he doesn’t have his ROTJ cane, so he can’t really work for that.  So it’s a decent looking figure for its time, but pretty much needed an update right out of the package.  The best part about the figure is the face.  It’s very far from being the worst figure in the ROTS line, but it’s not particularly satisfying either.

4/10.