Professor Huyang first appeared in a Season 5 story arc of The Clone Wars, during which he trained several younglings on how to build their lightsabers.  He then proved to be fairly adept at hand-to-hand combat, defeating some pirates that were part of Hondo Ohnaka’s gang, despite missing his arms which had been previously blown off.  Much later, Huyang came into the service of Ahsoka Tano, and accompanied her on her journey to find Ezra Bridger and Grand Admiral Thrawn. He is voiced by actor David Tenant, most known for his starring role for a few seasons in Doctor Who.

This figure was one I’ve actually wanted since I first saw in TCW, but kind of forgot about him over the years until he reappeared in Ahsoka.  I was happy when he was first announced, and have been looking forward to him.  Now that I have him in hand, I’m…underwhelmed.

To start with, when you see the TVC package, the difference in the coloring of the plating between the figure and the cardback image is obvious.  On screen, which is captured in the film-out, Huyang has a dull, but decidedly silver plating.  The figure looks to be somewhat beige or light brown, almost like it was intended to be a very dull bronze.  While it’s a bit hard to tell, it almost seems like this is the coloring he had in the cartoon.  When in the bubble and staring at you adjacent to the cardback image, the difference is a bit upsetting.  Usually my first inkling of whether or not we have a good figure is if it matches the cardback image - either in coloring, deco, accessories, or articulation.  Red flags immediately go up when the coloring is this far off from the character’s appearance in the source material.  I might not be as annoyed if the card had TCW as the source, but this is definitely off from his appearance in Ahsoka.

Okay, so once you get beyond the coloring, you check out the rest of the figure.  The articulation is outstanding, among the best for a humanoid droid I’ve seen.  It’s right up there with the recent HK-87.  Huyang has all the modern articulation you could expect from a droid figure, with the exception of hinged wrists.  He’s got rocker ankles and a ball jointed waist, along with the rest of typical articulation.  He’s highly poseable, which is good considering he’s a lot more dynamic than a protocol droid.  The balance is also excellent, as you can see from image 17 above.

For accessories, Huyang has a removable back pack, which is actually where is 3rd and 4th arms are “stowed.”  The backpack as two removable “retracted” arms, which are sculpted as folded away.  These are removable and can be replaced with “extended” arms, which are included.  And along from the weird paint color, here is where we have another disappointing aspect of this release: The arms are not articulated.  While they do swivel forward and back, the “elbows” and “wrists” of these extra arms are not articulated, so you have limited poseability here.  This is the same complaint I have with Chopper’s extended arms (besides the fact that you can’t remove them), which reduces the fun factor of the figure.

Also included is an unpainted data pad, and a training lightsaber hilt.  In Part 3 of Ahsoka, Huyang is onboard Ahoska’s T-6 training Sabine Wren.  Here, you see his extra arms on full display.  All four arms are holding these hilts, which have holographic blades that register “hits” from Sabine’s weapon, so he can determine the accuracy of her attacks.  The fact that the figure comes with one of these is cool, but also not cool that he doesn’t come with 4.  It wouldn’t matter anyway, I guess, since the extra arms wouldn’t be able to wield the hilts anyway. 

The figure is decent enough, thanks to the awesome sculpt and articulation, but the inaccurate coloring, the shortcut on the extra arms, and the half-hearted attempt with the single training hilt make me feel we lost out on something that should have been much better.  I feel that the same type of silver paint apps that were put on the recent Jango Fett’s armor should have been used here.  Along with articulated extra arms and a few more hilts, this could have been a home run.  Instead, it’s a double.  This is a good figure for sure, but the shortcomings are frustrating.  I’m giving it an 8/10.