Yay!  Another Sandtrooper figure to review!  [I must remember to discuss my pay increase at my next performance review with Chris.] I’m really not going to dwell much on this figure today.  Besides, I wrote enough for 3 figures in yesterday’s 03-50 Clone Trooper review.  If you missed that one, and have some time to kill, read that one instead. 

Sandtroopers, for whatever reason, seem to have had an inordinate number of releases over the years.  And if you ask the über-nerds out there, they’ll tell you that most, if not all, of them are inaccurate.  Typically, Hasbro has simply taken a basic stormtrooper, done a little bit of minor tooling to accommodate some accessories, and called it a day.  But Sandtroopers and Stormtroopers have different armor, markings, and helmets.  Or something like that. I don’t know.  You’d have to ask one of them über-nerds.  Also, I wanted to use a few umlauts today.  I feel that the word “umlaut” should actually have an umlaut in it.  But it doesn’t.  Seems dumb.

The figure is based on the VOTC stormtrooper from 2004.  At the time, people dug that figure.  And back in 2004, when we were idiots, that made sense.  But it didn’t age well.  Chris (and I) have droned on and on about how terrible that figure turned out to be, and morphing it into a fake sandtrooper didn’t help the situation.  The narrow stance, rigid hands, and awkward helmet hurt the figure to begin with, but then things got worse.

Here, Hasbro added the dreaded “back slot” to accommodate the sandtrooper backpack, and also tweaked the belt to accommodate a removable rear canister (which can’t be worn at the same time as the backpack).  There is, of course, the removable black pauldron (not to be confused with a Black Cauldron) denoting this as a corporal.  He comes with a blaster, which can be awkwardly holstered, as well as the Animal Abuse Pole to subjugate some poor dewback.  It’s all topped off with the ubiquitous Saga Collection figure stand.

It’s a frustrating figure on many levels, but still looks good, at least if you don’t get too close.  It’s been surpassed, but shouldn’t be summarily tossed aside too flippantly.  It still works as part of your displays.  If we start with a 7 for a baseline SA figure, it loses a point for the sculpting issues noted (stance/hands/helmet) and loses a second point for the lazy conversion to a sandtrooper.  5/10.