If you watched the Last Figure Standing livestream this past Saturday, you heard me say that Tessek would likely be my #1 Vintage Collection figure for 2023.  If you caught that, you might have thought to yourself, “he probably hasn’t opened the new Hera figure yet,” and you would have been correct.  Now that I’ve had a chance to evaluate it, VC300 - General Hera Syndulla is definitely in the running for figure of the year.  I’m blown away by how much I like this figure.

There is only one thing I can even think of to ding this sculpt, and that’s the lack of hinged wrists, which is common on female figures.  In this case, I feel it’s a bit of cost saving excuse on Hasbro’s part because the sleeves or the bomber jacket make the forearms a little thicker than we typically see on female sculpts, and I suspect hinges could have been accommodated here.  And that sums up my complaints with this release.  I don’t consider it a particularly damning issue since this Hera isn’t designed to interact with any long guns, where hinged wrists are much more important.  She comes packed with a rather small pistol (a Blurrg-1120 holdout blaster), which is befitting of a character that is clearly stylized after a World War II bomber pilot.  The figure interacts flawlessly with that blaster whether it’s confidently stowed in the holster, or gripped in hand.  The floating trigger finger easily slips inside the trigger guard, which is all we ask.

Bucking a recent trend for newly tooled figures in 2023, the elbows on this release bend beyond ninety degrees.  Halle-bleeping-lujah.  That range of motion is critical on all figures, but I particularly like it on pistol-wielding figures because it facilitates the Jame Bond “Walther” poses.  The knees stop a tiny fraction short of a ninety degree bend, but this is one of the best functioning examples of the new barbell hips.  By rotating the hip joints upwards, I was able to get this Hera release into kneeling poses despite not being able to get the legs into a true right angle.  I had little difficulty getting this figure into the poses that I envisioned, and there were none that I wanted to achieve that were impossible. Again, that’s due in part to the nature of this release and it’s accessory.  If this were a saber-wielder or a figure that is intended to interact with a rifle, I might feel differently.

The aesthetics of the figure are off the charts.  There is a “wow” factor when you first get this Hera out of the package.  There appears to be a matte spray over most of the figure, so you don’t get any of that jarring shiny plastic that can break the fantasy. It really ups the realism.  The likeness of the figure is highly accurate to its on-screen counterpart, right down to the stoic expression.  There is another aspect of Mary Elizabeth Winstead that has drawn the attention of some in the community.  It’s lead a 1000% increase in the use of a certain pastry emoji.  It’s crass, and we do our best to avoid such subjects, but not mentioning it would be conspicuous by its omission.  I wasn’t looking forward to broaching this subject.  Fortunately, the Middle Aged Kiwi man handled it tastefully in his review, and I can just embed that:

Thank God he did that.  As you know, we Americans have a much more broad sense of humor that tends to be a little too much on the nose.  I probably would have done something tasteless like embed this:

Thankfully, I didn’t have to resort to that, and we can hold our heads a little higher today.  We stayed classy.

After a recent run of new figures that have been just a tick disappointing in one respect or the other, I am thrilled to grant my first 10 out of 10 in a while.