This set generated some pretty good excitement when it was revealed.  Who doesn’t love a multipack of OT Imperial troops?  Nobody.  I SAID NOBODY!  So do all of our hopes and dreams come true? 

OK, I’m going to give this a shot.  I’m not always the best at the little details, and I welcome corrections and feedback in the comments, but I’m going to try to break down each of these figures and compare them to their predecessors as well as what is on screen.

SANDTROOPER

The Sandtrooper has confounded fans and Hasbro forever.  There are plenty of differences between the Sandtrooper and the Stormtrooper.  Typically, Hasbro tends to either ignore these differences, or make a lame attempt at 1 or 2 of them and leave it at that.  There’s an argument to be made that the differences are just a matter of the complexities and haphazardness of the filming of A New Hope, just like happened with the Cantina.  Usually, I go with this thought process, and dismiss a lot of minor details that I chalk up to filmmaking misses.  One of them is the Rogue One / OT Stormtrooper changes.  They’re the same characters, but 40+ years between the films paved the way for some costuming alterations - intentional or not. 

In this case, I’ve fallen in with team Sandtroopers Are Distinct On Purpose.  They have different armor to handle the specific conditions of the environment to which they are assigned, just like snowtroopers and scout troopers.  Anyway, the real problem is that almost every sandtrooper we see on Tatooine has armor variations from each other - there is a lot that falls short of standardization.  But I feel it’s enough to warrant a separate sculpt by Hasbro, because sandtroopers are not stormtroopers with pauldrons and backpacks.

Some of the more common differences on the sandtrooper armor are the different abdominal plates, the lack of the cylindrical thermal detonator on the back of the belt, a shoulder pauldron, and the backpack.  Each of these is addressed on the figure.  Other differences are not captured properly, such as black ammo pouches on the belt, the diamond shaped left knee plate, and the large ammo pouch not properly attached to the left shoulder instead of being incorrectly attached to the pauldron.  Hasbro missing these changes caused this release to fall short of the main goal - to give us a definitive sandtrooper figure.  Frustratingly, the ammo belt is a different sculpt (to ditch the detonator), but they didn’t add the black pouches. 

Hasbro retooled the VC231 Stormtrooper to give us this partially correct sandtrooper, but did not bother to update to the more desirable barbell hip standard.  Another thing that is starting to get on my nerves are the hinged wrists, which only flex in one pre-determined direction.  It’s high time Hasbro invent true ball jointed wrists.  I mean, we can put a man on the moon, so….

This figure comes with a new type of backpack that has shoulder straps, rather than a plug connector.  Oddly, this stormtrooper has the backpack hole in the torso, so if you choose to drop the backpack, you’re left with one weird looking dude.  On the plus side, you get the E-11 blaster, a T-21 Light Repeating Blaster (new sculpt), and the DLT-19 Heavy Blaster Rifle.  Sadly, it does not include the RT-97C heavy blaster rifle, which if you didn’t know, is partially named after Chris Reiff. 

For the record, this figure does beat out VC112, which is the previous best sandtrooper.  That was a repaint of repaint of VC14, which itself was a repaint of the 2009 TLC Dewback with Imperial Sandtrooper figure.  So it’s about time we get a new and definitive sandtrooper.

I like the figure, but it is still frustrating.  I’m only going to give it an 8/10.  It loses a point for the old hips, as well as for the missing diamond knee plate and black ammo pouches, and the incorrectly positioned shoulder ammo pouch.

SNOWTROOPER COMMANDER

Hasbro recently gave us VC349 Imperial Snowtrooper (Hoth Battle Gear), which Chris gave a 10/10.  He rounded up from a 9.5, ironically because the helmet isn’t round enough on top.  The figure seemed to be a huge hit and great sales success (from what little we can observe), and Hasbro quadrupled down on it by repacking it in the Snowtrooper 4-pack.  We gave that set a 40/40.  (Wait, we didn’t?  The math doesn’t work that way?  Whatever.)

Among several other repack opportunities suggested by Chris HERE, was a Snowtrooper Commander.  Hasbro has taken a few shots at this character, which as far as I can tell is only clearly seen in the speaking with General Veers in the cockpit of an AT-AT.  Most recently, we got it as TBS375 Snowtrooper Commander during the Dark Times, when I was quiet quitting the hobby.

The commander has multiple significant differences in the outfit from a common snowtrooper soldier.  Differences include a solid face shield, officer 2-over-2 rank badge on the chest, reversed shoulder armor, standard stormtrooper forearm armor with different gloves, no backpack, a pistol holster, and moon boots.  Astonishingly, and I can’t emphasize this enough given the hit-or-miss TBS375 era, Hasbro more or less nailed it all back then.  It was truly a remarkable effort of attention to detail, and Hasbro deserves credit.  The figure, of course, hasn’t aged well, as the articulation system is badly outdated, and the plastic kama is limiting.  But it was a figure that made Chris happy.  I can say that there aren’t too many figures from this era that make me happy.  And now Chris can yeet that one into Kiwi Man’s backyard, and enjoy this gem.

Hasbro seemed to go all out to ensure that they re-captured all the aforementioned differences when re-tooling VC349.  The figure is just as awesome as the base buck, and gives us all the right updates so we have what appears to be a truly definitive Snowtrooper Commander.  10/10.

SCOUT TROOPER

This is an update to the version that came with the VC Speeder Bike and Scout Trooper set.  That, in turn was a retool of VC196 Scout Trooper.  That, of course, was just a retool of the 2012 Speeder Bike from the TPM3D line.  Oh, and that was a retool of the 2006 VTSC Biker Scout.

Chris wrote this when he reviewed VC196:

On a side note, Hasbro, please do not think this sculpt is good enough to use for the O96 Scout Trooper.  It is not.  We need a Scout Trooper with modern articulation.  I’m going to be severely disappointed if we see this figure on a Walmart LFL 50th card.  Good enough should not be the bar for making the O96 Biker Scout.

Well, the advice hasn’t changed, because it hasn’t been heeded.  Once again, for the 314th time, Hasbro tweaked this figure whose base sculpt is rooted firmly in 2006.  This time we get the modern barbell hips.  The new parts include the upper legs and barbell thigh pieces, as well as the abdominal/crotch piece.  I believe everything else is the same - INCLUDING THE FARGIN arms/hands.  For the love of all that is holy - Hasbro please make updated arms and hands for this biker scout already!

While it’s the best Biker Scout to date, the 2006 arms and hands is a confounding choice, and makes it difficult to take this figure seriously.  7/10.

THE SET

The Commander is perfect, ironically it’s not a true army builder.  Meanwhile, both real army builders are missing important(?) updates that would make them either screen accurate (sandtrooper) or make them not be from 20 years ago (scout trooper). These two are just problematic enough to not only be frustrating to many collectors, but force us to continue living under the dark cloud of the possibility of single-carded, mass-produced mediocrity.  There are few things more annoying in this particular nook of the hobby as when Hasbro blows an opportunity to deliver a definitive version of a very well known character, gives us something tantalizingly close, and then mass produces it as if this is the final word. 

I implore Hasbro to ensure that they make the above mentioned changes to both the Sandtrooper and Scout Trooper before they think about releasing either of these figures again.  In particular, we need the sandtrooper to be fixed so we can get to making the proper screen accurate variants so we can properly display Foot Patrol 7 around our brand new Landspeeder, Luke, and Obi-Wan, as well as the other (unidentified) squad that investigated Docking Bay 94.  I think we’ve had enough of the incremental changes (Tusken Raider, Battle Droid, etc.) and we just ask for the definitive version that we know is possible.  Enough of this torture!  Some of us are running out of time! 

7.5/10.  I’ll be generous and round to an 8.  But I’m not happy about it.