Hasbro is on a TVC roll - at least with the figures themselves.  While people will complain until the cows come home about the fact that their local stores have no TVC, or that the hobby is too expensive, or that 6” figures exist, or that the pill color for “Figure X” should have been Pantone 18-3943 but the imbeciles at Hasbro used Pantone 18-3944 and ruined our collective childhoods…nevertheless, the TVC figures themselves have been objectively awesome.  We can nitpick and gripe about this or that imperfection, but we have to take a step back and appreciate the incredible results of 45 years of Star Wars action figure evolution. 

I say this because we just reviewed VC219 Death Watch Mandalorian, and I gave it a “10”.  I have tried to avoid giving 10’s because that’s perfection, and there’s always at least a bit of room for improvement.  But since Hasbro has been killing it for a while now, the nitpicks on a particular figure are so inconsequential as to make scoring a figure less than a 10 a waste of time.  I’ve thought about recalibrating our rating scale, but that would require a lot of work to go back and re-do all the figures - an excercise that Chris and I have actually already undertaken starting a couple of years ago.  I probably can speak for Chris when I say that we have neither the time, nor the inclination, to do such a thing.  So that means that with each incremental improvement in figure technology, we begin to squeeze the math to the point where deductions are so miniscule as to have no discernible impact on the enjoyability of a figure. 

This a long-winded way of saying that VC221 Fennec Shand is just as “perfect” as the DW Mando.  In order to accomplish this, Hasbro had a lot more work to do, since the DW Mando was more or less a re-tooled kitbash of an already great figure.  The accessories were simple, and there was no risk with messing up the sculpt or paint on a human face with a helmeted figure.  Fennec Shand not only has a face of a recognizable actress, but the figure includes several interesting accessories and a soft goods skirt.  A lot could have gone wrong here, but perhaps not surprisingly, it didn’t. 

Fennec is another joy to behold.  She sports a fantastic likeness in both the facial sculpt and the Photo Real application.  This is no doubt % a 1:18 scale Ming-Na Wen.  The sculpting on the figure’s outfit is particularly impressive.  Take a moment to look closely at all the details carved into the arms, shoulders, and chest.  It’s pretty amazing.  To allow the figure to enjoy full range of motion of the articulation, Hasbro opted (smartly) for a fabric skirt.  It’s executed very well.  Reminiscent of the styling of the skirt/lower robes Hasbro used for their VC92 The Clone Wars Anakin Skywalker, but much sharper and better tailored.  It also has a bold pattern printed on it, which looks fantastic.  Even the rings painted on the gauntlets look great.

The figure has the full range of current Jedi-Level Articulation (JLA), and this ninja-like warrior assassin certainly deserves it.  Fennec can be posed in a variety of realistic action poses. As mentioned in the DW Mando review, this figure has elbows and knees that allow for articulating past 90 degrees, a must-have feature to achieve the most realistic poses currently possible in a Star Wars action figure of the one true scale.  Ball joint everything, including the most recent hip articulation and rocker ankles seem to be more and more common, so at some point, I wonder if we’ll be looking for the next evolutionary step.

One of the most interesting aspects of the figure was Hasbro’s choice to include a removable pony tail.  The idea here was that we could get the swappable helmet, but since the helmet doesn’t have a the hair sculpted into it, it’s perfectly normal for Fennec to be posed holding it.  We can avoid something weird and jarring, like if this figure were holding her helmet with her disembodied face inside.  Aside from the swappable heads, Fennec comes with a blaster and a sniper rifle, as well as a bottle of spotchka.

So here are my two gripes.  First, the helmet is shy of perfect because instead of having a screen-accurate open visor slot where you can see Fennec’s eyes, Hasbro filled it in completely.  Now, I get the decision, since the choice was made to have the swappable helmet with the aforementioned separate hair braid, so having a set of eyes inside the helmet would be creepy.  The alternative would have been to engineer the helmet to fit over the figure’s head, but that probably would have caused other issues.  It’s a disappointing result, but I can forgive the decision-making process.

The gripe I can’t really forgive is that the sniper rifle is made of an even weaker material than what Hasbro uses to make their Battle Droids.  I will state for the record that using cooked angel hair pasta is a terrible thing to make into action figures and accessories.  Perhaps the weapon needed to be this malleable in order to fit into Fennec’s grasp, but I’m sure they could have done better.

But again, the two gripes together aren’t enough to have a meaningful negative impact on the score here, especially since I can easily forgive one of them.  My only complaint here that remains unaddressed is the underwhelming amount of figures that interact with Fennec.  We need the Pikes, and Krrsantan, Mok Shaiz, and the Mayor’s Majordomo, and a new 8D8, and the two Gamorrean guards, and then, and then, AND THEN…  I give this another 10.