In my former life, I was a department head at my previous company.  We were way behind on our biggest project with our biggest client.  We were about to get called out on the carpet.  Moral was down.  Things were looking bleak.  I couldn’t help but feel like Moff Jerjerrod helplessly trying to complete the second Death Star, but that’s where I also drew inspiration.  I thought, “What would Moff Jerjerrod do?”  The next day at an all-hands meeting, I said:

Why don’t we double our effort.

I saved the day.  I was hailed a hero.  That’s a lesson to all you first time managers.  Just tell your people to double their efforts.  It’s one of those things they don’t teach you at business school.

This Moff Jerjerrod figure is the first re-use of the new Imperial Officer buck which debuted with VC270 - Admiral Piett.  It took only 14 numbered releases before Hasbro put the tooling back to use.  My response:

If it were up to me, I would be putting a new Imperial Officer using this sculpt in every wave.  What’s that?  They are.  Oh, it just feels like it’s been a long time because in early 2023, we went 18 months between the Death Star II Vader wave and this wave.  I absolutely love this sculpt and want it put to use several more times.  I want Grand Moff Tarkin (top priority), General Tagge, Chief Bast, Colonel Yularen, Lieutenant Sheckil, General Veers, Lieutenant Renz, Commander Praji, Valin Hess, Major Partagaz…(deep inhale).  Do you think I’m done???

That list was off the top of my head.  If I sat down and put some thought to it, I’m sure I could double that names list.  I’ll be honest, the articulation in this sculpt can do more than we probably need the average Imperial Officer figure to do, but let’s keep that between us.  If Hasbro gets wind of that, we’ll probably start getting Imp Officers without elbows.  Of course, by the time this tooling gets around to the black tunic officers from the Battle of Endor, we’ll be glad that articulation is there.

As for this specific officer, Moff Jerjerrod, Hasbro did the important things that distinguish the sculpt from the aforementioned Admiral Piett.  Most notably, Piett only has a code cylinder in his left chest pocket.  Jerjerrod has a cylinder in each of his chest pockets, and that is reflected here.  This is highly commendable since it somewhat negates the easy tooling reuse that “buck” based figures offer.  I seriously wonder if Hasbro had to tool up an entirely new torso for this, or if they have some engineering tricks to be able slightly modify the tooling between production runs to account for the difference in cylinders and rank badges.  It would be a shame if completely new torso tooling were required for all of the combinations.

By the time of The Empire Strikes Back, being an officer in the Empire was the most stressful job in the galaxy.  Vader would choke you out for any error in judgement, and he wasn’t even the biggest bad in the chain of command.  Moff Jerjerrod was working on Emperor Palpatine’s pet project, and he had the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders.  Actor Michael Pennington perfectly expressed this with his sheepish facial expressions.  While I think the head sculpt is a great likeness to the actor, I don’t think it captures the worried nature of the Death Star commander. It’s almost a defiant expression, which seems to fit the deleted scene where he tries to prevent Vader from entering the Emperor’s throne room.  It’s certainly light years better than the previous Saga Collection Jerjerrod which looks like he’s trying to impersonate uncle Leo eyebrows.  This nit picky expression issue is hardly enough reason for lower this score from the 9 out of 10 that Nomad gave the Admiral Piett figure.  This Moff Jerjerrod is a wonderful entry into the line.  It’s one of my favorite figures of the year.

At the time of this reivew, VC284 - Moff Jerjerrod is in stock on Hasbro Pulse, and Amazon.  It can also be preordered from site sponsor Entertainment Earth HERE.

Now that the business of the review is done, it’s story time.  I asked Mr. Nomad if he cared if I did this Moff Jerjerrod review today.  As you’ve probably noticed, he’s being doing the lion’s share of the new figure reviews lately.  I wanted to make sure he didn’t already start photographing this figure.  But instead of answering me with words, he replied with ambiguous emojis, so I had to kill him.  But he got his revenge.  I actually set up and photographed an Emperor’s Arrival scene for the gallery.  You may notice that in the first diorama shot, I’m using the new Admiral Piett figure as one of the background officers on the far left. Well, in setting up that Emperor’s Arrival shot, I accidentally swapped officer figures:

(click for the full sized image)

I then proceed to photograph the entire base gallery using the Piett figure, and had to reshoot the entire thing using the correct figure.  But I wasn’t about to set up the Emperor’s Arrival a second time (especially since my photo studio set up doesn’t have enough depth to shoot it properly).