Carson Teva seemed to kind of come from out of nowhere, starting off as what looked to be a cameo for fans of Paul Sun-Hyung Lee.  However, he morphed into a “glue guy”, becoming the glue that was holding together various portions of the Filoniverse.  He would arrive on screen at various opportune times to ensure the storylines moved forward and stayed on track.  He became a bit of a fan favorite, and in turn, climbed the community want list.

Hasbro likely could have cheated out on this figure.  They have an excellent (but already dated) OT-style X-Wing buck with VC158 Luke Skywalker (X-Wing Pilot), and I would have assumed they tweaked this sculpt.  After all, they used it for the X-Wing Pilot 4-pack recently.  But it appears they did the right thing and gave us an all new figure.  Importantly, this upgrades the hips and ankles. But Hasbro obviously heard the uproar from collectors who trashed the VC337 Grand Admiral Thrawn figure for lacking a dad bod.  Well, they made sure to give Teva that treatment, so Gen Xers everywhere should be proud.

The figure is excellent.  As mentioned, it’s all new (as far as I can tell).  It has a more muted orange jumpsuit when compared to VC158.  The bomber jacket (at least the body) is removable, which gives the figure more depth than if it were sculpted on.  I was impressed that the white bib is also separately sculpted, and then briefly had my mind blown when I realized the Luke figure also had a separate bib.  Neat! 

It’s got everything you’d want as far as articulation, including new-style hips, rocker ankles, and ball-jointed wrists.  The range of motion of the head/neck seems particularly impressive, as he can look up and down further than most figures are able to achieve.  The elbows can go well past 90, although the knees sadly stop right at 90.  I feel this is just a constant oversight, and my armchair QB mind can’t figure out how it costs anything to improve this range on a figure.

Teva’s patches on his jacket are present, and that’s neat since they were designed by Lee himself.  While they are tricky to see at this scale, he has the rancor patch (originally meant to be his dog, but changed for filming to a rancor) as well as a pair of red and blue birds (representing an homage to the South Korean flag) and an Aurebesh “E” and “Y” (representing the East York district of Toronto, where he lived).  The firebird patch on his left shoulder seems to be sculpted on to his sleeve, and not just a traditional tampo.

The face sculpt and paint applications are excellent.  It may not be the greatest likeness Hasbro has ever done, but it’s still pretty great.  And they did will with the salt and pepper look.

For accessories, Teva comes with his flight helmet and rifle.  The Flight helmet is notable to me in that it appears Hasbro is improving the transparency of the plastic, so that Teva’s eye are visible through the visor much more clearly than I have noticed in the past.  Perhaps this was also the case with the recent pilot 4-pack, but it stood out to me here.  Teva also comes with his rifle, which he used most prominently when he and Trapper John, M.D. rescued Din Djarin and Grogu from the ice spiders.

I do have one complaint:  While I think this figure is pretty great and I see Hasbro went all out, I believe it suffers from not being Teva’s primary outfit.  It seems that most of his appearances are in his flight suit without the bomber jacket.  I think the accessories end up being a bit anachronistic, because I don’t believe he is ever seen with his jacket at the same time as his helmet or rifle.  It’s even a little extra annoying because the body of the jacket is removable, but it would leave the figure with the sleeves.  I’m sure it’s far from cost effective, but including swap out orange flight suit arms would have been incredible, and pushed this figure to a 10.  Also, there was a scene where Teva was in the cockpit, and apparently the chin strap was left off the helmet, because for whatever reason, Lee said it made his beard look weird.  So I wonder if somehow as part of some exclusive, we could get an Teva figure sans jacket, and a helmet sans chinstrap.  I’m not advocating this take up a slot in the main line, but finding a way to squeeze this into an appropriate opportunity would be pretty cool.

The figure is outstanding, and should please many collectors.  I’ll give it a 9, dinging it for not being the primary outfit and it likely being the one and only Carson Teva figure we ever get.