Giants 28, Cowboys 20.

Fans who watched The Clone Wars will remember Embo, who had made several appearances in that series.  Dave Filoni has been pretty consistent in bringing his characters and designs forward into live action from their animated roots. Embo would be the latest - along with Rotta the Hutt(let).  Embo exists as an animated figure from the SOTDS line in 2010.  Astonishingly, we have a review of this figure, which can be found here.  (Check out the 2 comments which came much later, because we didn’t have Disqus at the time of publishing around 2010 - one of them made me giggle.) So at that point, I had only watched a few episodes of TCW.  Maybe the movie (which cost next to nothing to make*) and some of the first season. Kid Ahsoka annoyed me, and I wasn’t exactly ensnared by the storytelling.  So I gave up.  As for collecting, I had started by grabbing the first few waves of figures in the TCW line from 2008.  Shortly thereafter, I reduced my purchases to characters that did not already exist in the real line.  But after a while, I gave up completely, because I got tired of the dumbass cartoon aesthetic.  Despite that, there was no denying that many of the figures in that line were pretty excellent as far as action figures go - and many of them seemed to get more attention than the concurrent realistic line.  My next step was to just pick up the occasional figure that I thought could fit in with the realistic figures, such as Cad Bane - and yes, Embo.  I don’t even think I knew much about either character at that point, but they looked kinda cool.  I believe I didn’t decide to revisit the cartoon until several years later.

Here are the two figures side by side.  On the left is the 2010 SOTDS Embo, and on the right is VC406 Embo from 2026.  They are shockingly similar. 

On the one hand, it would seem I was right to think that the animated version would fit in well with the realistic aesthetic.  Other than the bright colors, the actual silhouette is damn near the same.  In fact, the TVC figure has a slimmer waist and thinner legs, which I thought were the most cartoony parts of the original animated styling.  While the 2010 figure lacks rocker ankles, ball jointed wrists, and a ball jointed waist, the rest of the articulation is the contemporary version of JLA.  It even has a soft goods skirt.  There is at least one feature that the 2010 figure has which was not brought forward for 2026, but I’ll get to that shortly.  Of course, I can’t move on without mentioning this:  The 2010 animated Embo has 4 fingers, while the 2026 Embo has 5 fingers.  Images of the animated version show 4, while images of the live action character show 5.  What does that mean?  It means that the cartoony 4 fingers were “updated” for live action with 5 fingers.  And Hasbro opted to go with the 5 fingered version for the realistic figure.  They were very correct to do this.  As you know, I feel Hasbro chose wrongly when they opted for Asajj’s white eyes rather than her “updated” pupiled eyes for the recent 2 pack, but of course, they were going for something a little different there.  I guess it just continues the problem of a fundamental lack of consistency with Hasbro’s choices - which shouldn’t be the case at this point in time with TVC.  This isn’t a guessing game anymore.

As for this figure, it’s quite good, although there were a couple things that annoyed the crap out of me.  First of all, the sculpt is really nice, and is once again (like the Merc Droid) all (or nearly all) new.  There are a lot of details throughout the figure’s outfit.  The clothing and armor are very well executed, with a lot of fabric and stitching details. The shoulder armor and bandolier, together, are a separately sculpted piece, but is glued to the torso.  There is a short plastic “side skirt” which is sculpted together with the belt.  The “turtleneck” piece is actually removable for some reason.  While it intentionally obscures the lower part of the face, you can still see a lot of detail in the headsculpt and breath mask. Embo is well balanced, and easy to pose. 

The paint is also well done, and is in much more muted tones than the animated version, which is how it should be. The Photo Real looks good on the face, with a much more realistic expression than previous. There are a few shiny gunmetal bits here and there, as well as on the right vambrace.  Soft goods skirt works well.

For articulation, Embo gets the full suite of JLA.  The soft plastic side skirt does hamper the range of motion of the right hip, but I didn’t find this too annoying.  Unfortunately, the elbows and knees do not go past 90, so the figure doesn’t quite offer top-tier posing as some other figures, but it still very good.

For accessories, Embo has a pair of swappable hands, which help him grasp the range of available weaponry.  He comes with a bowcaster, which is cast in two pieces.  He also comes with two separate bowcaster parts, which he uses for hand-to-hand combat.  Finally, he comes with his disc-shaped hat.  He uses it like a shield and a ranged weapon, like Captain America. 

My biggest gripes with Embo may or may not be something that people care about.  First of all, he has no place on his body to store the weapons.  Here’s where the 16-year-old animated figure is decidedly better as I had teased at the beginning of this review: it has 2 holsters on the back of the bandolier and a peg hole in the upper back between the shoulder blades.  This allows you to put away the two knife accessories, as well as the rifle.  No such luck with the 2026 figure.  Even more annoying (for me) was the hat.  While it fits pretty well on his head, it is not secure in any meaningful way.  Since I have to constantly handle the figure to pose it for the gallery above, the hat fell off EVERY TIME I touched the figure.  Once you have it posed on display, I’m sure it’s fine.  But it was driving me nuts.  I’m old, and I don’t like to bend down to pick things up anymore.  The animated figure has a peg on the inside of the hat, which fits into a hole on the top of Embo’s head.  In no way, shape, or form am I suggesting that Hasbro should have put a hole in TVC Embo’s head, but I am suggesting that they needed to do something a little better than nothing to secure the hat to Embo’s head.  Also, the 2010 hat has some neat battle damage sculpted into it.  The 2026 hat is pristine.

Overall, I’ll give Embo a 9/10.  I think I’m probably overreacting to the hat, but I do wish he had a place to store his weapons on his outfit.

*This is an old Banthaskull inside joke that I think only Chris and CJ might remember.