Congrats to me ol’ pal Chris on his Patriots returning to the Super Bowl after a long and painful wait of seven years, filled with horror and suffering.

In honor of Chris, I shall review a figure that shares the same first letter as that of his team.  The last time we got a figure depicting Padmé in this outfit was in 2008.  During this iteration of The Legacy Collection [Blue packaging], the well-received Evolutions line of 3 packs was in full swing.  One of those was entitled “The Padmé Amidala Legacy.”  This set consisted of a figure from each of the prequel films.  From TPM, the figure was subtitled “Queen of Naboo”, and is sourced to the scene where she was discussing the political options for Naboo with Senator Palpatine, who seemed like a righteous dude.  From ROTS, we have “Mother of Heroes,” which is one of the more oddly subtitled figures in the line.  This one is cool because it’s a two-fer.  The base figure wears the nightgown from the scenes in her Coruscant apartment where she cries a lot, while it comes with a robe accessory that transforms her outfit into the one she wore when she gave birth to Luke and Leia.  The other figure is from AOTC, is called “Senator of Naboo”, and has her wearing the white jumpsuit from Geonosis along with some accessories.

It’s been almost 18 years since that set was released, and this is the first time the look has been updated.  There was a (decent for it’s time) figure that came out in [trigger warning] The Black Series 3.75” line, but that one featured the torn shirt caused by the Nexu in the Arena.  As Padmé falls under the #makethemains umbrella, I am perfectly happy to get this figure redone.  It’s long overdue, and the early returns were exciting based on the imagery.

So here we go. Out of the package, this is a 10/10.  It’s one of the best looking figures I’ve seen.  The sculpt and Photo Real application to the face is astonishing.  This is a miniature Natalie Portman/Senator Amidala figure if there ever was one.  Few likenesses have been done this well at this scale.  Even the detailing of the hair of her bun is excellent.  The outfit seems perfect, as is the sculpting of the base figure. 

Upon close inspection, there are few items that are less than ideal.  As we have unfortunately come to expect, lady figures tend to lack ball jointed wrists.  This is a bummer, but not a surprise.  While the elbows thankfully flex well past 90 degrees, the same cannot be said for the knees. But even worse are the ankles.  While the articulation is, of course, of the “rocker” variety, they do not perform dorsiflexion in any meaningful way for posing:

Worse than when elbows and knees don’t go past 90, the inability for the foot to have adequate range of motion may be the biggest inhibitor to posing an action figure in a way that is currently possible when the technology is properly applied.  In this modern day with “barbell” hips, ball jointed knees, and rocker ankles, you should be able to display a figure into a wide variety near-lifelike action poses.  When the knees don’t go past 90, and the ankles don’t flex, it’s a problem.

Thank you for listening to my TED Talk.

All that is to say this figure was disappointing to pose.  I wasn’t able to coax a lot out of it that was particularly dynamic, especially for an action hero figure like Arena Padmé.  No, she’s not a Jedi, but she needs to do much more than just stand there and look good, especially during her time on Geonosis.  I also wasn’t able to balance the figure on a single foot, like many of Hasbro’s figures are able to accomplish:

While it seems that ball jointed wrists for lady figures may be just out of reach for the time being, this is most definitely not the case for getting the full range of motion out of ball jointed elbows, knees, and ankles.  Recent female figures have suffered this same problem, such as VC295 Morgan Elsbeth and VC364 Asajj “Assy J” Ventress.  It’s frustrating when such range of motion is reduced on a figure, because it doesn’t appear to me (without any true insight into the design process) that this would cost anything more to accomplish.  In the case of Padmé‘s ankles, it seems that the ankle is not able to overcome the sculpting of her boots’ uppers.  Lame.

As for accessories, Padmé comes with a removable shawl.  It’s sculpted nicely out of a pliable plastic.  The shawl is designed to fall in such a way that it barely impacts the range of motion of the arms and upper body.  It’s easily removable, to give Padmé a few display options.  You can see from the gallery that the TLC figure had a soft goods cape.  It was fine for 2008, but that wouldn’t cut it today.  Hasbro has done a very nice job with capes, cloaks, and shawls lately, so I have no doubt that a contemporary soft goods effort would have been excellent.  Nevertheless, I’m not complaining about the plastic cape.  The only thing it can’t do, is perform action movement, which a wired soft goods cape could - even though it’s a rarity in the 3.75” line.  When Padmé is displayed racing through the Geonosian droid foundry, a dynamic cape would have been a very nice touch. 

She comes with a pair of blasters.  The smaller pistol fits well in her left hand, and fits snugly in the holster on her right hip.  She comes with a long-barelled blaster as well (for some reason), but it won’t fit in the holster, so it’s just extra.  She can’t really simultaneously wield both very convincingly, because the left hand isn’t sculpted well enough to grip either blaster. 

That brings me to another bummer about this figure.  When she wears this outfit for the first time, it’s on Tatooine at Shmi’s funeral - which is depicted in our photo gallery above.  In the scene, she is wearing the shawl while carrying a head scarf in her right hand.  The TLC figure came with a plastic version of this head covering.  So technically that photo isn’t screen accurate (and one of the characters is, of course, missing).  After that scene, we never see the head covering again.  Nevertheless, this figure was probably the one opportunity Hasbro had to include that accessory.  I guess if you have the Evolutions set, you can just use that one, but that’s not ideal.

I have to make an extra call for a “slashed” arena Padmé figure.  We need it to go with our pending Gunship Haslabs.  The TBS375 version of this main character just doesn’t cut it 13 years later.

I’m compelled to give this figure an 8/10.  It’s a 10/10 for sculpt and looks incredible.  But the frustrating articulation (and a bit of the head scarf missing) bring it down.  For $20 in 2026, these figures should be darn near perfect, maximizing the range of motion and posing potential, and including relevant on-screen accessories - not including a random spare blaster that she can’t hold well like we were living in 1998.  Chris gave Asajj a 7/10.  This looks so good that I have to bump the score up here, but the negatives are similarly frustrating.

To bring it all home, I will lift a quote from Chris’s review of the aforementioned Ventress figure:

It occurs to me that there are primarily two types of collectors. There are those whose principal concern is that the figure looks good. Does it look like the character on screen, and can it be posed in some sort of basic pose beyond a 5POA figure? If that’s you, this figure is a home run…

And there are those collectors for whom dynamic posing is critical…That’s the camp I’m in. It’s who I am as a collector, and it’s why I’m disappointed…

Well said, Chris.  You should have your own website.