Hasbro has introduced a bunch of “expressions” to bring multipacks to market.  They’ve got uncarded 4-packs, carded 4-packs, uncarded 3 packs, carded 3 packs, a random 7 pack, and carded 2 packs like this Sabine and Chopper.  Frankly, my favorite is the troop builder 4-pack, since I prefer to save a couple of bucks rather than have more cardboard and plastic that I throw in the trash.  But seriously, I do love the TVC look even if I don’t collect it.  This 2-pack “box in a box” expression is probably my least favorite because you’re paying some premium for the carded figures, but they’re hidden inside of a box.  It’s the worst of everything.  Eh, this is just a diversion.  The real thing here are the figures inside.

But before I get to them, here’s a quick look at Hasbro’s offerings of the Spectres that debuted in animated form in Rebels.  As I’m sure you know by now, I have no love for animated figures.  I’m a fan of the concept of creating realistic interpretations of the animated source material so that the resulting sculpts fit in with the rest of my collection instead of looking like a Duplo dump truck rolling around in the middle of your Space Legos.  Actually, are the original “spaceman” Legos still a thing?  I used to love that “universe” as a kid.  It was simpler times, when Lego had 3 modes:  Medieval, Town, and Space.  I don’t know what’s what anymore.  Legos are way too complicated for me now.  I just go with ball-and-cup and pickup sticks.

Bear with me here as I track what we’ve got from Hasbro as far as the Spectres:

From Rebels Season 1/2, we have:
VC318 Kanan Jarrus
Zeb Orrelios

From Rebels Season 4, we have:
The Ghost w/Phantom II
Hera (The Ghost)
Ezra (The Ghost)
Kanan (The Ghost)
Zeb (The Ghost)
Sabine (2-pack w/Chopper) - [this review]
Chopper (2-pack w/Sabine) - [this review]

From Ahsoka, we have:
VC300 Hera Syndulla
VC304 Chopper (C1-10P)
Deluxe Sabine Wren
VC319 Ezra Bridger (Hero of Lothal)

The last is probably debatable.  It’s sourced to a brief hologram image shown in Ahsoka, but presumably the image is from the end of his appearance in the Rebels time-frame before he took his magic Purrgil ride to Peridea, so it’s more like a Season 4-ish Ezra?

Perhaps the most important thing about this 2-pack is that Hasbro “pre-” delivers on completing the crew for the Season 4 Spectres, as these 2 figures will compliment the 4 that will soon arrive on our doorsteps after the Haslab Ghost ships out.  Those 4 figures also come in special “mural” packaging, and as was promised, Hasbro is bringing us the remaining crew in matching card art.  As I previously mentioned, I don’t keep many carded figures, but I’d consider making exceptions for this complete set if it wasn’t cost prohibitive.  I’m looking forward to photographing all 6 together, but it won’t last long as I plan on ripping open the Ghost figures pretty quickly.

As for the figures themselves, they’re very good.  Sabine Wren is tremendous, and is an improvement over the already excellent (with one, uh, “big”, exception) Deluxe Sabine.  That was corrected with a true swappable helmet.  The sculpt is pretty much all new, maybe with a re-used part or two.  The knees bend slightly past 90 degrees, but the elbows are almost able to flex and perform a full bicep curl.  I would say they go past 90 degrees as far as another 45 degrees.  Impressive! 

For accessories, Hasbro ditched the lightsaber (maybe she should have had a Darksaber?  I’m not sure which season that was…) and the Lothcat.  Instead, Sabine gets a jetpack, removable rocket flame, and a wrist shield energy disc.  The articulation is fantastic, except for the continued lack of ball jointed wrists in the lady figures.  The standout here is the paint applications.  They’re among the best I recall seeing on any figure.  This is probably the main reason for the cost of $25 each for two figures in this pack.  I can see this being justified, even if it doesn’t make me happy.  It’s a top notch figure, pulling out almost all the stops and then some.  Oh, and the face sculpt?  I’ve seen people aren’t happy with it, since they say it looks nothing like the cartoon, and the mole is jarring.  But it’s not supposed to look like the cartoon.  It’s a realistic interpretation.  And in this case, as is often when it comes to Filoni characters, they make their way to live action.  As such, there doesn’t have to be much “interpretation” here.  This should be a somewhat de-aged Natasha Liu Bordizzo.  And it works very well, as far as I’m concerned.  This is a great figure, and among my favorites this year.  10/10.

The second figure is Chopper.  He’s a repaint of an existing figure.  The sculpt itself is really nice, aside from the frustrating lack of articulation in the “arms.”  As Chris pointed out in the VC304 review, I agree that it’s puzzling you get a second antenna.  They probably could have it be part of the dome and just articulate by raising, lowering, and tilting, but whatever.  The coloring is different than on the original, looking to match more closer with the appearance in Rebels.  For accessories, Chopper gets the aforementioned alternate antenna, while he lacks the tracking device included with VC304.  This time, not only does Chopper get the Lothcat that was deleted from the Sabine figure, he gets a second one to boot.  They have unique paint applications, and articulated heads. 

Chris gave the first Chopper a 7/10, mostly based on the cost of $17 for a basic figure.  I usually try to avoid the cost of something impacting the final score I give to it.  But I agree with Chris that while I love the Chopper figure, paying full price is a bit of a stretch,  You could argue that he balances the pack with the more expensive Sabine, but in this case it’s even more of a reach.  Chopper costs a whopping $25 when he’s part of this set.  I’ll leave it a 7/10.

Here’s the biggest negative for this set:  As of this writing, both figures only have each other to hang out with on your shelf.  Otherwise they exist in a vacuum.  Fortunately, this will be rectified in a big way when the Ghost arrives.  But even then, we’d have completed the crew and would just need a couple of bad guys to fight, or allies to join.

Overall, I give the set a 9/10.