This review has been published on a Sunday.  A “Sunday fun day” if you will.  We’re taking advantage of a slower day to wax nostalgic about a figure (really the line) nearly a quarter century after its release.  Shadows of the Empire was a multimedia blitz the likes of which are typically reserved for theatrical releases.  The story of Shadows of the Empire was told in a novel, in comics, and in a Nintendo 64 video game.  It’s quite possibly the most nineties-est thing there is.  Another interesting aspect is that I’m not entirely sure what the primary piece of media is.  With theatrical releases, the movie is the primary source and the novelization, comics, video games, etc. are all secondary.  The answer to the question of, “Is Shadows of the Empire a book, comic or video game?,” might very well be “yes,” particularly based on whom you ask.  Of course, Kenner-bro seized on the opportunity to release a toy line decked out in this nifty looking purple theme.  I’m not saying that sarcastically.  I like these cards and boxes.

The SOTE subset consisted of five figures.  This Leia in Boushh Disguise figure is the only one of the five that actually crosses over to the movies, and therein lies a problem.  The Star Wars action figure revival wasn’t even a year old when Kenner-bro switched gears go take advantage of the presumed buzz surrounding Shadows of the Empire.  At this point in the “modern” Star Wars line, we were still missing core and staple characters.  We had no Emperor (boy if I had a nickel), Jawas, Tusken Raiders, Bib Fortuna, Admiral Ackbar, etc., etc.  We didn’t have a Luke Bespin, Luke Hoth, or Lando Skiff.  Yet resources were being diverted toward characters that were new, lesser known, or new spins on known characters.  Even though the line lacked the aforementioned primary variations of Luke, we were getting a very neat, but unknown Luke in Imperial Disguise figure.  Lando, as is tradition, got the shaft entirely.  This lack of familiarity with the characters combined with more urgently needed OT figures might have been the reason for the subset’s poor retail performance.  Purple carded SOTE figures shipped in the same exact case as some orange carded POTF2 figures, which did have huge demand at the time.  The end result was walking into Toys R Us and seeing nothing but purple carded leftovers stretching all the way down the pegs (and 90% of them seemed to be Prince Xizor).  At least the color coding made scanning the pegs a quick task.

One last note before moving on to the figure, the file cards on the back of these POTF2 era figures listed the character heights in meters.  This was before Google was invented.  They might as well have listed the height in Viking runes.  That’s probably because no attempt at relative scales between the figures was made at time, and Kenner-bro didn’t want us being able to easily fact check them.

So for the figure that is the subject of this review, it was the star of the SOTE subset (because of its movie cross-over appeal), but today it has all the demand and appeal of steamed broccoli.  As an action figure, it’s nonsense in 2020.  Leia comes across as monstrous in proportions.  Kenner had the NFL Starting Lineup license at the time.  It’s entirely possible that the body of this figure is a retool of the Starting Lineup Stan Humphries figure. The face is…well…wow.  The POTF2 era wasn’t kind to any of the actors, but it was downright cruel to Carrie Fisher in the early going.  Apparently Kenner-bro confused Ms. Fisher with an East German olympic swimmer who never met a pair of tweezers she liked.  The figure, of course, has a permanently sculpted thermal detonator in the left hand, and an annoying plastic cape that falls off constantly.  Thank God neither of those things exist in 2020.  The consolation prize is that my sample only has marginal difficulty standing.  The size 14 EEE boots probably help to that end.

There is no “display” reason to own this figure.  It has been beaten into obsolescence by the two sculpts and three releases of Leia in Boushh Disguise that have followed in the past 24 years, but I do like the “time capsule” aspect of the weird purple cards.  I’m happy to own the carded sample above.  I got it for $3 at a comic book store last year.  That’s insane.  Two decades later I got the figure for less than its original MSRP.