Original Review by Chris 8/28/14

Credit:  Carded sample on loan from the collection of Randy S.

By virtue of the Toy Fare Fans’ Choice poll, Hasbro graced us with a Darth Revan from the Knights of the Old Republic in the Thirtieth Anniversary Collection.  Hasbro then did fans a solid by releasing that game’s antagonist, Darth Malak, in the exact same wave.  Hasbro has an annoying habit of separating companion releases by over 365 days.  It was a nice surprise when Hasbro released these two core KOTOR figures contemporaneously.  The figure, however, turned out to be a major disappointment, which left fans upset since this would likely be the one and only Darth Malak figure Hasbro would ever attempt.  Seven years later, that fear is proving to be justified.

Collectors seem to look back on the Thirtieth Anniversary Collection (TAC) with rose colored glasses.  This is probably because the TAC cards are considered the best non-Vintage Collection card ever, the collector coins called back to the legendary POTF ‘85 line, and the Saga Legends line was just as exciting as the mainline.  As far as brick and mortar collecting goes, these were the salad days.  But it wasn’t until the Legacy Collection in 2008 that the figures themselves started to become consistently excellent.  The TAC line had had some really iffy figures with dated articulation even for the time.  This Darh Malak figure has to count among those ranks. The figure was almost immediately hated. 

It starts of with one of the most grotesque and unnecessary play features in this history of the line which completely destroys the aesthetic of the head sculpt.  Malak’s prosthetic jaw can be removed to reveal his missing lower mandible.  You know.  For the kids.  The metal jaw on Malak in the game did not protrude from the normal contour of the face and had roughly the same proportions as an organic jaw.  The removable jaw on the figure looks like a giant metal clamp around Malak’s face as opposed to a prosthetic integrated with it.  It looks absolutely ridiculous.  The figure is more Trap Jaw from He-Man than Darth Malak. What is more maddening is that despite the disproportionate bulk of the jaw, it doesn’t fully cover the battle damage.

Moving down from the most tragic element of the figure, things don’t get much better.  I don’t know where Hasbro found a reference supporting the gold lines on the chest that look like circuit board wiring.  If there is some comic book reference supporting this, I have to plead ignorance.  All I know is that it’s not how the character appeared in the game.  Detailing aside, the articulation is substandard.  The figure features the dreaded swivel elbows which are made worse by how easily the lower arms pop off.  While posing the figure for the photos, there wasn’t one saber pose where I didn’t find myself holding the figure’s lower left arm apart from its body.  Furthermore the restricted arm angles limit those poses.  I originally thought the figure had hinged knees because of how conspicuous the joints are and because mine did not rotate.  It turns out they were simply stuck.  It does feature ball jointed knees after all.

There is very little redeeming about this figure save for the name on the card.  I can only give it a lowly 3 out of 10.  Sadly if you want a Darth Malak figure in your collection this is your only option and it’s likely to stay that way in perpetuity.  The Knights of the Old Republic is too far removed from public consciousness to envision Hasbro being willing to go back to that well. Unfortunately this figure fetches a premium on the secondary market albeit not as steep as its “case mate” Darth Revan,

Updated Review by Bret 10/2/19

Swivel elbows are terrible. No ankles are terrible.  The trap-jaw feature is terrible.  But all of that can’t take away from the fact that this is Darth Malak, and (amazingly) unlike many figures today, it has companion figures in Revan, Bastila Shan, and others.  Chris gave the figure a pretty embarrassing score of 3 out fo 10.  Given our relatively recent standardization to our grading scale, a 3 would make this figure worse than a base of 4 for a 5POA figure.  That seems inappropriate, but given the drawbacks of the figure, it would struggle to get past a 5.  That might be too high, but that’s what we’re giving it.  It’s case mate Revan had ball jointed elbows, but no knees or ankles.  Still, that figure was much better sculpted than Malak.  We gave that a 6.  We’ll give this a somewhat generous 5.  It’s great that Hasbro made these figures, but they really could have done better.  While we await details of the upcoming TVC Revan, it would be interesting if Hasbro follows through with its partner figure, Darth Malak.