The weird 2002 (Blue) SAGA lone was hit or miss when it came to figures.  Well, mostly miss.  I remeber liking the figures at the time.  I got all of the first few waves, along with vehicles and sets, during Midnight Madness at the Times Square Toys R Us.  I treated myself my opening (that’s “unboxing” to you kids out there) one figure, more or less, each day until Attack of the Clones came out.  I was intrigued back then over the dynamic poses, the Force blast accessories, and the magnet features.  All of those things wore out their welcome in short order, of course. 

Meanwhile, this figure had none of those things.  It did, however, Suffer from one fatal flaw:  it sucked.

It was proposed in a rather obnoxious manner.  Yeah, you could kinda stretch it to imagine it copying Padmé’s aggressive negotiations during the arena fight (once you saw the film), but it just seemed too unnatural.  The extended right firing arm was actually part of an action feature.  Padmé’s left arm acts as a lever, which causes the firing arm to drop to her side, and then snap back up to the horizontal position.  Great.

The overall sculpt is pretty bad, although the figure does exactly what it was designed to do, and it stands firmly on its own, something that many figures struggle to do, even in recent years.  The face sculpt actually isn’t too bad, although it is somewhat ruined by the cartoonishly large mole on her left cheek.  Aside from the snapping right arm, the figure has only a swivel neck, left arm, waist and 2 hips.  You can really only pose this figure one way.

Padmé’s lever arm is shackled by a metal chain.  The chain itself is cool, however, the ring is not removable.  Well, it might be if you pulled some kind of boil and pop-type trick, but that kind of stuff makes my groin hurt.  So let’s just assume it is permanently attached.  The other end can hang on the “hook” at the top of the included two-piece column.  This is almost an awesome accessory.  It’s nice to have, and an impressive pack-in for a basic figure, but it is dwarfed by the columns that come with the Arena Playset.  One, however, that the Playset only comes with 2 columns, and there 4 in the film.  So this one, while short, is still “necessary” to help fill out that scene.

Anyway, the column is sculpted and painted well.  It “breaks apart” into two pieces.  It looks good, even if it is a little short for a stormtrooper proper column.

And so we get to the overarching problem with the figure, aside from the action feature and bad pose.  The combination of accessories and permanent chain basically make this figure an anachronism.  Padmé was free of her chain long before she acquired the droid blaster.  You can’t accurately place this figure in your displays, unless your perform surgery to remove the chain.  Or, you could omit the blaster, leaving Padmé in a bizarre pose as she reaches aggressively for…nothing while chained to the pillar.

Get the figure for the pillar accessory, or if you’re an animal, get it for the chain.  Otherwise, this is a useless figure.