Ah, the many lives of Teebo.  Ewok.  Hunter.  Rebel.  Heisman Trophy winner.  First round draft pick.  NFL bust.  That’s right.  If Hasbro is going to keep giving us Teebo figures, I’m going to keep making Tim Tebow jokes.  This is the second release of this particular sculpt.  The first came in 2012’s Ewok Pack (linked above).  That set, as a Toys R Us exclusive, wasn’t easy for some to track down, and now it fetches over $200 on the secondary market. Teebo was the star of that set, so rereleasing that figure makes a lot of sense, especially since it crosses off another Original 96 from the list.  Teebo debuted as a 77-back in 1984.

As we have often noted about Ewok figures in general, it’s not effective to cram them with a bunch of articulation.  The range of motion of the short limbs is so compromised that ball joints don’t offer a tremendous amount of additional posing options.  This Teedbo release leverages the VC55 - Logray sculpt, which probably packs as much articulation as we can expect in a tiny figure.  The ball jointed hips and elbows combined with the swivel wrists, waist and ankles provide enough posing options to give the figure sufficient expression to break the “wooden soldier” appearance of limited articulation figures.  If anything, it goes to show the evils of 5POA.  It doesn’t take much extra articulation to create a figure that doesn’t break the illusion.

One thing to note about that 2012 Ewok Pack is that the back of the box shows something that is a bit of a cruelty to fans of the line.  It showed an incredible head sculpt for Teebo that completely captured the spirit of the character:

(click for the full sized image)

Hasbro NAILED it, and then Lucasfilm snatched it away.  They determined the expression was too “angry”.  The Ewoks were to be LFL’s cute and fuzzy bunnies, and nothing should suggest that they could be ill tempered.  The neutral head sculpt you see on this figure is what replaced that PERFECT earlier rendition.  When this Teebo release was announced, fans were hoping Hasbro could rescue that original sculpt.  Alas it wasn’t in the cards, but for this offering, the nose and outlines of the eyes and mouth are darker.  This does render a more accurate appearance, as does the darker shade of gray for the fur.

What impresses about this Teebo is the massive accessory count to include two cowls.  Why two?  I probably should know, but I don’t.  I’m not a very big Ewok historian.  You see, Return of the Jedi came along when I was at the exact right age so that I was young enough that the walking teddy bears didn’t ruin the movie for me, but I was old enough to sense that it was a tad corny.  So I never embraced the inhabitants of Bright Tree Village as characters.  I accepted them and moved on.  Beside the two cowls, this Teebo comes packed with a stone axe, two drumsticks, a necklace, two sashes and a knife. That’s impressive.  I will say that I find the plastic of the cowls a little gummy and rubbery compared to the 2012 version.  I’m a little worried they will break down in time.

All in all, this is a nice release a pack refresh, especially considering the Original 96 status.  Hasbro did enough deco improvement to warrant picking it up if you already own the original.  I gave the 2012 release an 8 out of 10 score, so I’m carrying that forward here.