Talk about Dog Faced Leia, amirite?  I remember having this when I was kid.  I generally was pretty good about taking care of my figures relative to the many barbaric kids out there.  In fact, there was definitely something wrong with me because I used to have a bunch of those space-themed Lego sets, and I kept all the boxes.  I’d mix and match all the pieces to make a huge moon base and a bunch of ships.  There would be occasions when I had to break it all down and put it away.  A normal kid would probably just put all the pieces in a rubbermaid tub or something.  Not me.  I would break my creation down into a pile of bricks, bust out the instruction manuals to all the sets I owned, and rebuild each one properly.  Then I would break those down, and put the pieces in their corresponding boxes.  So it’s perhaps understandable that I distinctly remember losing Leia’s blaster pistol and being very upset about that.  Most of the time, I would give her one of the imperial blasters from another figure.  This would help explain why I lost a lot of sleep for several years because I had misplaced Hrchek Kal Fas’s blaster, until I found it again, and it was glorious.

This figure is very white, so like the other figures in this set, it’s kind of cool to see a pristine example of an almost Kenner figure.  The vinyl cape is obviously also in perfect shape, and not ripped the arm holes like most of the ones I remember.  Leia’s face is, of course, terrible.  Again, it’s a nice facsimile of the original, and a throwback to days when articulation and sculpting weren’t that important.  We knew this was Leia, and that was good enough.  In fact, Kenner probably could have packed a bar of soap in the card bubble and it would have made for a nice Leia figure. The hand is sculpted just like the original, and it pretty much can’t hold the blaster.  In the images above, the weapon is balanced precariously in her hand, and would fall at the slightest provocation, such as the flap of a butterfly’s wings in the Serengeti.  My stormtrooper had a similar problem, just not quite as bad. 

But here’s where there’s a breakdown in the nostalgia thing.  In an attempt to recreate the Kenner figure, the hand can’t hold the weapon.  It’s a case of form over function.  I get what the goal is with these retro figures, but to paraphase my colleague, Chris, I’m not in favor of reproducing bad figures.  I think this Leia release supports my assertion that these are better left in the packaging, because that’s the real draw if you’re into these.