The pivotal sequence in which the Sith plan to rule the galaxy finally comes to fruition begins with Palpatine revealing his true nature as a Sith Lord to Anakin, carries through with Mace Windu’s ill-conceived attempt to arrest Palpatine in his office, and ends with Anakin de-handing Windu and allowing Palpatine to take control.  Throughout this entire sequence, this is the outfit that Palpatine wears.  I am confused, however, as to Ol’ Sheev’s wardrobe change after he “knights” Darth Vader.  He walks away from Anakin to his desk, the scene cuts to a distraught Yoda on Kashyyyk, and then back to Palpatine slipping on his black bathrobe and then putting his hoodie over his deformed head.  Where did the black robe come from?  He seems to be putting it on over the outfit he had been wearing, but where the heck did it come from?  Was it just sitting on his desk?  Was it balled up under his chair?  If you rewatch the scene, it essentially comes from nowhere, like it’s Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility.  I’m very confused by this.  Regardless, this outfit is key, and this figure represents the only mainline release of Palpatine wearing it.  There is another pre-posed figure with limited articulation that came as part of the silly “Battle Arena” deluxe sets, but you’re a terrible human being if you display that figure.

Due to its uniqueness (ignoring the aforementioned deluxe nonsense figure), this must still hold a place in your collections.  It is one of the figures in most dire need of an update.  I will usually choose “never-before-made” figures over a redo, but being ROTS Palpatine, I’d say it qualifies as for #MakeTheMains. 

The figure is a salt shaker with an action feature - and was initially released as an error, and the “corrected” with another error.  So there’s very little good about it.  But here’s a breakdown.

The body of the figure is just a salt shaker.  It essentially does nothing aside from the arms and neck.  That said, the sculpting itself is pretty nice, with some cool details of the garments carved into the figure, which is brought out by a shiny, almost pearlescent, paint application.  It looks nice if you close both eyes and pretend it’s a different figure.  For articulation, the arms have swivel shoulders, elbows and wrists.  You get the swivel neck, but the good thing is that you get two head sculpts.  You get the Chancellor Palpatine look, and then also the Emperor Palpatine deformed head.

The action feature is from the uni-foot, which when pressed, gives you the right-armed lightsaber slashing motion.  In order to accomplish this, the figure includes swappable hands, similar to those that came with 01 Obi-Wan and 02 Anakin.  This one comes with two pair.  The Chancellor versions have the left being an open hand, with the right permanently attached to a lightsaber.  You can swap these out with a pair or more gnarled Emperor hands, both of which are posed with extended fingers.  Also included are a pair of Sith lightning effects which clip onto the wrists, so you can fry up Mr. Windu.

The real kicker with this figure is that originally it was released with the right Chancellor hand attached to Anakin’s blue lightsaber.  This was highly sought after by collectors at the time.  It was quickly corrected during the initial run with a red lightsaber, and was then carried forward, making the blue saber much more rare.  But here’s the problem:  It wasn’t fully corrected.  While the blade color was fixed and made red, the hilt itself is actually still Anakin/Vader’s.  So while everyone considers it “corrected”, it actually wasn’t.  Chew on that for a while.

So aside from the error issue, the figure is still notable and “desirable” because it’s the only real way to have Palpatine in his “Office Arrest” outfit.  It was even re-released multiple times in the following years, often adding or dropping accessories.  It’s really a bad figure, and would be great to see a proper TVC update someday sooner rather than later.  Like before I die. 

5 Stars
5/10.