There aren’t many stinkers in The Vintage Collection.  This figure, in and of itself, isn’t particularly bad - but the timing and circumstances of its release make it difficult to get behind.

First of all, (probably) through no fault of Hasbro’s, the original release of this character was given the wrong name on the TVC packaging.  It seems likely that Hasbro was given the name “Clone Captain Ballast” in good faith by LFL when the product was being designed, but by the time the relevant episode of The Bad Batch aired, the character had the name “Clone Captain Howzer.”  Many collectors were annoyed by this mixup.  This resulted in outrage from approximately 4 people that demanded Hasbro re-issue the figure with the proper name, and 3 of them were Eminem, Marshall Mathers, and Slim Shady.

While Hasbro worked on figuring out a way to make those 4 collectors happy, they were also developing an all new clone trooper buck.  When VC210 Clone Captain Ballast was first released as part of the The Bad Batch Figure 4-Pack, most of us were already worn out by the overuse of the VC45 clone sculpt that just wouldn’t die.  Sure enough, we’ve already gotten VC269 Clone Trooper (Phase II), and yet here we are again, with yet one more release of VC45.

The figure?  Uninspired, at least at this point.  I couldn’t find any discernible differences between Ballast and Howzer.  If you look closely, you may find that some of the weathering is a bit different, but it doesn’t appear intentional, and is merely a byproduct of the manufacturing process. The one change, which is a step back if you care for such things, is that this time around, Howzer has a date stamp on his thigh, whereas Ballast had none.

So between the general lack of interest in correcting the cardback, and the general dislike for the VC45 sculpt, this release of Clone Captain Howzer has very little going for him.  It’s possible that at 1 per case, and with collectors sleeping on it, Howzer could one day turn out to be one of the rarer TVC 2.0 figures out there.  Frankly, the character was much more intriguing on screen, and deserves better than this.

The original release from the 4-pack set earned a baseline 7/10 score from the expert panel of Banthaskull figure graders.  Given the aforementioned issues, I will go ahead and drop it to a 6.  Let us all pray to the Star Wars gods that Hasbro has now melted down the VC45 tooling, and repurposed it to serve as something beneficial to humanity, like some new teeth for Steve Buscemi.