We interrupt this HasLab Cantina coverage to bring you an unrelated figure review!

“Mandalorian Judge” sounds important.  He should be presiding over crimes that could potentially tear apart the fabric of Mandalorian society.  He should be front and center in deciding the fate of those that might change the course of his people’s history.  Perhaps he should even be deciding whether or not claimants to the tile of Mand’alor had legitimacy.  In reality, he was a referee - and of kids, no less!  And he was a terrible referee.  After mis-judging (see what I did there?) Grogu, he went ahead and reffed a battle royal between a schmuck kid and a baby.  After the kid scored 2 consecutive points, Grogu did a couple of flips and then fired his paintball gun 3 times for the win.  Fans immediately lost their minds, because everyone knows that Rule III, Part A, subpart 2, paragraph 5 clearly states, “child/infant participants in Mando child-games may only fire one training dart per scoring round.  Firing more than one training dart per scoring round shall cause the offending participant to forfeit the duel and be suspended from all team activities for 10 days.”  Immediately following the Judge’s missed call, Paz Vizsla filed a protest with the League office in New York, and submitted tapes of other dubious calls made during the match.  At his post-game press conference, Vizsla stated, “The judge took over the match, and it was an embarrassment.  I know I’m going to get fined for this, but I don’t care.  It was $&@!ing bull$&#!”  He then kicked over a chair, and stormed out.  Din Djarin, Grogu’s dad/coach, said after the match, “It looked good to me.  Grogu is a beast, and he’s just motivated after being snubbed in the All-Star voting.”  For his part, Grogu just cooed and left the arena without comment. 

Oh yeah, the figure.  It’s a repaint of VC314 Mandalorian Fleet Commander..  That is to say, it’s pretty great.  The coloring is interesting, but looks true to the on-screen character.  The members of the Children of the Watch Covert seemed to have armor that was colored in warmer tones, and was a bit haphazard and differed wildly from Mando to Mando.  This contrasts with the members of Bo-Katan’s Resistance, who wore more uniformly colored armor.  The covert looks to be more of a rag-tag bunch.  That’s what happens when you never remove your helmet.  You become gross, and stop caring about things like brushing your teeth, combing your hair, or maintaining some kind of uniformity among your ranks.

Aside from the obvious color palette, there are a couple of signficant differences here.  The Judge does not have a swappable head, just a helmet.  This is fine, since the character never removed his helmet on screen.  He didn’t care about The Way, he just didn’t want to get recognized by some crazed Mando soccer mom while he was minding his business trying to eat a peaceful lunch at Whataburger.  As if to trade off the cost, we lose a swappable head, but gain a soft goods cape.  Nice touch, and accurate to the character’s outfit in the show.

Not much else to say here.  Judge gets the same 9/10 as his Fleet commander pre-paint.  It is notable that both of the characters share “Unidentified” as a first name.  As discussed in an earlier review, Mr. Fleet Commander prefers to go by Undy, while the Judge’s friends (of which he only has a few) call him Raymond Luxury Yacht.