I would like to meet the person who is responsible for this figure coming with a plastic molded cape, and buy them a nice, big, tall, frosty glass of POISON! Doing the photo galleries is a labor of love.  We love doing them, but there is an element of “chore” to doing these.  Nothing makes the chore show through the veneer of the fun more than a good figure that is undermined by a single design decision that serves to frustratingly limit the pose-ability of a figure.  Long plastic molded capes (or other wardrobe elements) do just that.  Perhaps this can be overcome in the 1:12 scale, but for 1:18, I would like to see them banned harder than lead in paint.

I get that the red lining of Moff Gideon’s cape would probably have been too costly to reproduce in soft goods in 2020.  Even if Hasbro had to lower the on-screen fidelity by having the figure come with an all black soft goods cape, I would have preferred that to what was delivered.  Not only does the plastic cape greatly limit the range of motion of the lower body, but the arms are impacted as well.  I like to pose villain figures in the “hands on hips” power stance, but the elbows are prevented from receding back into the cape for this pose.  What makes these cape-imposed posing restrictions so frustrating is that the figure has all the modern articulation to be otherwise dynamic. 

Even if the cape were soft goods, this still wouldn’t have been a perfect figure.  The grip of the figure’s right hand is somewhat loose, and the included sidearm is relatively tiny.  The resulting interaction between the two does not yield a satisfying positive grip on the blaster.  It’s another case of “resting” in the hand.  Moving over to the positives, hopefully the biggest one jumps out at you from the photographs.  I don’t think a figure at this scale has ever done a better job of capturing the soul of a character.  The likeness to Giancarlo Esposito is uncanny, and the expression, equal parts annoyance and soullessness, perfectly conveys Moff Gideon. At this scale, that is utterly amazing.  The other positive is the aforementioned articulation.  Not only do we have the best of modern articulation, to include rocker ankles, but the range of motion is outstanding.  I think this is the greatest range of motion for ball-jointed wrists thus far in the line.  Again, this makes the limitations of the plastic molded cape all the more frustrating.

The negatives compel me to ding this figure a full two points, and give it an 8 out of 10.  It kills me because the likeness alone could have had this figure in the discussion of “best ever” otherwise. Finally, as the entire planet knows, Giancarlo Esposito played the character Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, so I am contractually required to embed the following: