This is the third Darth Vader figure within the first 45 basic figures of The Saga Collection, including the two previous which were essentially the same sculpt.  With a little help from our trusty abacus, that tells us that 1 out of every 15 figures was Darth Vader.  Fortunately for the sake of sanity, there were no more for the duration of this line.  But fear not!  The subsequent Thirtieth Anniversary Line featured 6 Darth Vaders out of 75 basic figures, including the initial launch figure, which came with the coin book.  In total, there were 9 out of 149 basic Darth Vader figures during the combined TSC/TAC run, which is 6%.  That’s crazy!  We’ve had only 3 Vaders out of roughly 175 announced TVC basic figures.  You know what that means?  We’re probably due for another TVC Darth Vader.

Anyway, here we have an ROTJ version, which is meant to be from the moments were Vader was turning on Palpatine to save his son from the lightning bolts.  Once again (sigh) we have a repaint/retool of an old figure.  This one was 5 years old at the time, debuting in the POTJ line of 2001.  The figure was pretty decent back then, featuring some translucent parts, and lighting painted on Vader’s clear dome.  This relates is a bit of an improvement, as the translucence is limited to the helmet (not the hands, this time), and the cartoonish lightning is gone.  Instead you can almost see Anakin’s skull through the helmet, which is neat. 

With the POTJ figure, you could pop off Vader’s right hand to simulate the loss after Luke went nuts.  But all you got there was a the peg hole left from the wrist plug, and nothing more.  Now, Hasbro took the extra step of retooling the wrist into a piece of exposed machinery.  Way better than POTJ, but still kind of odd.  The engineering decision seemed to overcome the aesthetics, as this was accomplished by having the exposed metal parts double as the peg for the whole in the hand.  In the film, it didn’t really look like this.  It was all correctly sculpted in the VC115 Darth Vader, which was a fitting end to TVC when it ended in 2012.  (OR DID IT?)

Along with the old sculpt, you get a plastic cape and limited articulation, and a bit of a sculpted action pose.  So overall, it’s not a very good figure, and it amounts to a minimal update to 5 year old figure.  Both were rendered obsolete by VC115, so no need to have this one.  5/10.