Original Review by Chris, 10/22/14

This was an important update and while Hasbro didn’t completely swing in miss, they did foul out to the catcher.  The Freeze Frame Death Star Trooper was very difficult to find at brick and mortar retail to the point where some collectors didn’t even realize that it was released to stores.  Many think it was a Fan Club exclusives because that is how it was later released via phone order.  I can personally testify that it was released in brick and mortar stores because I bought several at K-Mart.  That POTF2 release was an oddly pre-posed 6 POA figure that was standard for the time, but was hopelessly outdated by 2007.  There was pent up demand for an update to the Death Star Trooper (or Imperial Navy Commander) and all Hasbro had to do was deliver a passable version to reap retail success.  Unfortunately the figure was not a successful execution and poor sales followed.

The biggest problem with this figure is so obvious that fans were already calling it a failure before it even arrived in stores.  The bulbous swollen appearing knees had many collectors tossing barbs such as “the arthritic trooper” at the figure.  I’ve long assumed that the concept here was to represent the way the pant material bunches just before it gets tucked into the boot on such a uniform.  I have a feeling that the hand sculpted prototype would show a more subtle interpretation, but Hasbro choose a larger ball joint to make production easier.  The shoulder joints are also jarringly bulky.  What we may be looking at here is an early attempt by Hasbro to fully incorporate ball joints into a figure,  This figure was originally slotted for the 2006 Saga Collection and was bumped into the 30th Anniversary Collection.  Hasbro often works their way through new figure technologies perfecting it as the go, and that may be what we’re looking at here.

The swollen appearing joints are not the end of the problems with this figure.  A close second in the fail category is the size of the figure.  It’s enormous and towers over most of it’s contemporaries.  It stands nearly as tall as the 500th Darth Vader.  If Vader’s height is 6’8” that scales this figure to around 6’6”.  Unless Grand Moff Tarkin was trying to sneak some ringers onto the Death Star basket ball team, army building this trooper ends up looking a tad silly.  Another problem is that many figures had the paint apps applied to the eyes so that it looks like the eyes are rolling back in the head. The 30th Anniversary Collection featured some of the most graceful paint applications we have seen, so it’s hard to explain these occasional areas of sloppiness.  Again, could this be because this is actually a 2006 figure?

This figure ended up peg warming pretty heavily.  Despite this, Hasbro gave it a second crack in the Saga Legends line were the sales were equally as sluggish.  One thing that irritates me with Hasbro is that I sometimes get the impression that their analysis is skin deep.  I think they blamed the character for the slow sales instead of the fact that the figure is heavily flawed.  When a definitive version of the character was finally released as the 2012 Imperial Navy Commander, it was essentially short packed despite the fact that fans were clamoring to finally army build this character.  It was released at one per case in only one per case in favor of some of the absolutely most asinine carry forward figures that Hasbro could have selected.  We were about to get a second crack at that Imperial Navy Commander in the Black Series, but it was inexplicably nixed at the last moment.  Yet Dack was released in the Black Series at two per case even though the only demand for that figure is on a Vintage Collection card.  Pull your head out Hasbro.

I’ve derailed to my soap box long enough and need to get back to this 2007 offering.  Despite being super articulated, the score of the figure is a 5 out of 10.  You could afford to have one or two in your display for variety, but you certainly don’t want to army built it, which is a shame since the head is neutral enough that you could have done so without looking like you had an army of clones.