I was looking forward to a day off, but Chris told me via smoke signal (his current preferred method of communication since he “lives” in the tundra and lacks electricity and running water) that it was a no go, and I needed to do something or else there would be cauliflower.  I’m pretty sure he meant something else, but I think it was windy.  Nevertheless, I dislike cauliflower, so the point was made.  I wasn’t about to eat any of that crap, so I decided it would be best for me to do a thing for today.

Lacking any ideas for an engaging topic, I sifted through my archives to see what packaged images I had in the queue, and this one caught my eye.  Probably for no other reason than I had just included it as an entry in the FACED! test the other day.  Otherwise it would probably just be a Saturday Shmaturday review. But we’ve got to get going on filling in the blanks in our reviews if we want to complete this before the Knicks win a title.  Well, since I put it that way, I think we have plenty of time.

As we’ve often discussed, the “Blue” Saga line was kind of a mess, filled with weird gimmicks, action features, and wildly pre-posed figures.  But every once in a while you’ll find a nice one in there, and this is one of them.  I’m not saying it’s anywhere close to TVC quality, but it does have some value.

This was Bail Organa’s first figure - and the only one in this particular outfit.  It’s a terrific sculpt, with intricate details woven into the fabrics of the overcoat and the tunic.  The face has a pretty decent likeness to Jimmy Smits, and while not up to modern FACE! standards, the paint on the hair, eyes, and goatee are very well done, at least on my samples. (I have two of these for some reason.)  The most obvious detractor from this figure is the weak articulation.  It’s got 8POA: neck, waist, shoulders, hips, and wrists - all swivel/flat plane.  Even though he has a pliable plastic lower tunic, it still restricts the movement of the leg articulation, but it’s hardly noticeable as you won’t be able to do any action poses as it is lacking knees and ankles.  The figure is effectively a statue, more or less permanently posed in a standing position, with his right arm flexed at the elbow as he casually holds back the right side of his open coat.

Included is an environmental piece (or maybe it’s a figure?) representing a projector from Palpatine’s office, displaying a hologram of Obi-Wan Kenobi.  The hologram is a separately sculpted piece which is securely plugged into the projector, and I’ve never had any interest in testing out if it is removable.  There is a foot peg on the base/floor, as well as a tab which presumably was available to connect to other pieces, but there’s nothing else to interact with that I’m aware of.  This was a bit of a frustrating aspect of the ROTS bases.  They were cool, in theory, in that they seemed to be sculpted and painted to represent the “floor” where the character spent time on screen.  But the bases didn’t connect to each other well, even though they had tabs and hooks and puzzle piece doohickies.  There was potential here, but it just didn’t land. 

The hologram is particularly cool, though.  It is sculpted with “transmission lines”, to indicate some static or mild disruption in the communication stream.  I don’t recall Hasbro doing this with any other hologram/holograph figure or accessory.  Obi-Wan is posed with his lightsaber in a defensive pose, representing the few frames of film in which he was initially attacked by a droideka while presenting his Jango Fett findings to Palpatine and the Loyalist Committee.  Setting up the figures for the last shot above made me really wish we had a Chancellor’s office displayset.

The figure looks great, but has poor articulation.  The projector also looks great, but lacks display flexibility which could have been next level awesome if Obi-Wan was removable and there were interchangeable holograms available somewhere, like with Palpatine (who had no accessories at all) or Ask Aak (who had a large rifle for some reason.). There’s definitely value here, even if the whole thing is dated, and both the figure and the projector will still hold up in a display.  6/10.