This review is being published on Veteran’s Day in the United States.  To all our veterans and their families, we say thank you for your service. I would like to say that I held this review of a figure wearing camouflage in commemoration of this day, but the reality is that it’s a byproduct of procrastination.  It was more a case of scrambling to photograph this figure last night when I realized the correlation.

This review is going to start off with a controversial take in 3…2…1:  I’m not bothered by the non-removable helmet in the least. In fact, take it away Icona Pop:

The issue of the non-removable helmet seems to be a point of great consternation with a portion of the community.  I don’t mind it for two reasons, the first and most important is that the aesthetics of the all in one head and helmet sculpt are better.  A plastic helmet over sculpted human hair tends to look oversized at this scale.  The second is that this release is nothing more than VC23 - Luke Skywalker (Endor Capture) with the camouflaged poncho and the new all-in-one helmet/head sculpt.  That means that if I want to display this Endor Luke sans helmet, all I have to do is perform a simple head swap with VC23.

The poncho itself is an upgrade from previous releases.  The camo patten is much clearer and better defined than the muddled appearance from the predecessors. The belt is a black fabric strip to mimc the web belt of the actual on-screen costume.  Previous releases featured a brown holster belt which is wholly inaccurate.  The new camo pattern and belt increase the overall accuracy of the figure.  Oddly, despite ditching the inaccurate holster, the figure still includes the DL-18 blaster.  This is likely a wink to the original Kenner POTF ‘85 release which also included the accessory.  Unfortunately the base VC23 figure was sculpted to interact with a lightsaber, as it should have, and not a blaster.  This means it lacks a floating trigger finger, so this Endor Luke is a bit of a throwback to POTF “2” figures in that it doesn’t really grasp the blaster.  It more rests in the hand. This is hardly a serious concern, however, because Luke didn’t have this sidearm on Endor.

As mentioned earlier, the body of the figure is an exact reuse of the outstanding VC23 - Luke Skywalker (Endor Capture) figure.  At the time of that figure’s release in 2013, it was a revelation.  I believe it was the first use of hinged wrists in the history of the line, and also featured ball jointed hips, which were still a novelty at the time.  It set the standard for posability upon its release.  Fast forward eleven years, and that sculpt is still very good, but it’s no longer an all time great.  We now get thigh swivels and rocker ankles to crank the posing up to 11!  Additionally, the hinged wrists are more recessed on modern figures.  This was something Hasbro actually corrected for the VC175 - Luke Skywalker (Jedi Knight) figure which uses the same arms.  Those arms could also use the “big discs” the current ball jointed elbows utilize to offer superior range of motion. Even though it’s not up to today’s standards in terms of articulation, this is still a highly posable action figure, and can strike many dynamic poses.

Given the quality of newly tooled figures today, I can’t give this figure the perfect score that we gave VC23.  Instead it gets a 9 out of 10. It’s close to definitive, but if Hasbro retooled it to have rocker ankles and perhaps new arms, I would buy it again.