Grievous’ bodyguards seemed like they were somewhat formidable, as demonstrated by the fact that they held their own for at least a little while against Anakin and Obi-Wan on the bridge of the Invisible Hand.  So they were more advanced than most of the battle droids we’ve seen, with perhaps the exception of the Commando Droids from TCW, which I’d actually like to see in TVC.  In the legends entry for these guys on Wookieepedia, it lists color variants as black, alabaster, blue, and the “rare” gray.  They seem all over the place on screen in ROTS, which I just chalked up to their paint finishes being severely worn and battle damaged making their original paint coat barely recognizable.  Hasbro gave us something resembling white, gray, and blue, but not black - which I don’t think was in the film at all.

As we’ve mentioned recently, the last couple of waves of the ROTS line were hastily cobbled together due to the heavy consumer demand at the time.  This figure, like the others that were unplanned, is a straight repaint.  In this case, it’s a repaint of ROTS 08 Grievous’s Bodyguard.  While not thrilling by any stretch, it was a relatively “smart” repaint, as it added some variation to our collections.

Hasbro, as is often the case, has also gone a little wild on the naming of this character.  It’s either a Hasbro problem, or perhaps they were led astray by Lucasfilm.  Either way, it’s a bit of a mess.  For the original release of ROTS 08, the figure was named “Grievous’s Bodyguard”, while this one, for reasons, was named “Grievous’ Bodyguard.”  Technically, both apostrophe uses are correct, but the format used for ROTS 08 is more widely accepted.  (Why am I writing this?  I feel this should be an entire feature from CJ.)  The character was also released (as an inferior sculpt) with the kid-friendly “battle arena” 2-packs - also part of the ROTS line.  That figure was simply called “Bodyguard”, which is about the most generic name for a Star Wars figure I can think of.  Perhaps someday we’ll get “Soldier” or “Guy” in TVC.  Then when the character was upgraded as VC18 , it was called “MagnaGuard.”  So there’s still opportunities for Hasbro to release this again as “IG-100 Droid”, “Bluey”, and “Droid with a Shmata.”

In researching this background, I stumbled across the fact that the two droids that fought Anakin and Obi-Wan on the Invisible Hand were designated as IG-101 and IG-102.  I could find no explanation as to why these two were #1 and #2 in the IG-100 line of battle droids.  I assume they might literally be the 1st and 2nd droids off the assembly line.  But in the “Legends” section of Wookieepedia, I found this gem:

In the Revenge of the Sith novelization, IG-101 is said to lose an arm and a leg rather than his head. He is also mentioned making improbable threats to Kenobi regarding his staff and Kenobi’s bodily orifices.

This.  This is why I do this job.

The figure itself isn’t terrible, and is identical to ROTS 08 aside from the coloring.  I gave that one a 5/10, so it gets the same here.

5 Stars
5/10 Banthaskulls.