Editor’s Note:  This figure is a straight repack of the Legacy Collection (Blue) BD32 Spacetrooper.  As such the text below is lifted from that review.  The droid part(s) included with this release are different.

It was MANY years into my Star Wars fandom before I ever knew that there were Imperial Spacetroopers patrolling the exterior of the Death Star.  I don’t remember if it was the release of this figure in 2008 that informed me of this fact, or if I found out some other way.  There are two of them that can be seen very briefly in the shot in which the Millennium Falcon, caught in a tractor beam, slowly flies past a pair of XX-9 Heavy Turbolasers and approaches the hanger: 

There they are.  That’s it. Five seconds of glory.

They were never seen again, although according to Wookieepedia, there was an intent to use them in Rogue One, they just didn’t make the final cut.  For A New Hope, George Lucas had Joe Johnston, who was then the effects illustrator and designer for the miniature and optical effects unit, suit up to play a spacetrooper for the Falcon approach shot.  Apparently there was a second suit for another actor, but it was stolen.  (I believe the suit is currently in a bin somewhere in CJ’s house, but he doesn’t know for sure.)  So Johnson filmed his role for both troopers, which appear near each other thanks to the miracle of 1977 special effects. 

In Legends (old EU), the spacetrooper was a class of specialized Imperial soldier known as the Zero-G Assault Trooper.  Such troopers had various types of armor and weaponry over the course of time, but most commonly were fairly heavily armed and armored, and were capable of attacking, breaching, and commandeering capital ships during battle.  Hasbro made a Spacetrooper of the more heavily armored type, such as TLC (red) BD58 Spacetrooper which had reviewed previously.  That figure was a resculpt upgrade over a POTF2 era figure.  In 2008, Hasbro released the Spacetrooper you see here in this gallery.  It remains the only Spacetrooper that is canon, since it did appear on film.

As for the figure, it was released in the 2008 Legacy Collection (Blue) Wave 5, along with 2 other stormtrooper-ish figures (Luke and Han in disguise).  All three of these figures were repacked in the first wave of The Legacy Collection (Red) in 2009, so had another chance at them.  This is based on the 2004 VOTC Stormtrooper mold, which as we all know, was cool at the time, but should be burned and its ashes launched into space.  This, and all other stormtrooper molds are likely to be marginalized, or even rendered obsolete, when the TVC Rogue One trooper debuts later this year.  But until then, here’s a quick review.  The figure looks nice, but the base mold has seen better days.  The figure’s legs are annoyingly close together when at rest.  The lack of ball jointed hips limits the posability of a character that should pretty much be at we here at Banthaskull call JLA (Jedi-level articulation).  Stormtroopers should have ball jointed everything, and ultimately should also have rocker ankles.  The boots are little pointy looking, so they look more like dress shoes.  The figure isn’t balanced particularly well, so it might be a bit tricky to get it to stand upright.  The upper body articulation is pretty good.  While it lacks ball jointed wrists, it does have a ball jointed waist.  The hands, as Chris won’t shut up about, are annoyingly rigid, and don’t conform too well to the included E-11 Blaster.  There’s some other nonsense, like “ab dots”, but I have neither the time, nor the inclination, to explain myself to you people.  (Sorry, I was flipping channels last night and came across that scene.)

The rebreather backpack fits onto the figure nicely, and with no need for a hole to have been carved into the back of the armor.  There is a flexible hose that attaches/detaches to both the rebreather backpack and the “chin” of the helmet.  One thing that bothers me is that the black body glove is open at the neck, which would expose his skin to the vacuum of space.  The neck is left uncovered, and painted the figure’s skin color.  He probably wouldn’t last very long in space this way, so we’ll have to pretend he’s wearing some other type of airtight neck wrap.  The E-11 blaster fits pretty well in the holster.  I was never a fan of these stormtrooper holsters, as the blasters typically have to be stowed with the grip facing forward, which is just a bit odd for a standard trooper.  As mentioned, the hard plastic hands have no give, and are sculpted in such a tight gripping position, that it’s nearly impossible to jam the barrel of the blaster into the supporting left hand to get a proper THWG.  It can be done with some patience, but I’m glad Hasbro has seemingly moved on from this type of plastic for figure hands.  The Spacetrooper also comes with a unique large blaster, which is designed in such a way that it can convincingly be gripped by two hands.  The left hand actually holds onto this weapon chainsaw-style, for a very solid THWG.  A neat detail is that there is an embossed Imperial logo on the stock, along with a compass and a thing that tells time.

The removable helmet on a stormtrooper is something at which many old schoolers would cringe.  Fortunately, there is not a Jango Fett clone face underneath, as there was in the Imperial Engineer we reviewed earlier this week.  The head sculpt looks like it could pass for Joe Johnston.  A community Q&A by Galactic Hunter posted on 6/11/2008 asked Hasbro if the figure was designed to reflect Johnston’s likeness.  Hasbro’s was a wink-wink, nudge-nudge response, “While we couldn’t do Joe Johnston’s likeness, there may be some coincidental resemblance.”  Well, okay then.  So this is obviously a figure of Schmoe Flonston.

Other than the hole in the chin for the air hose, this figure can pass for a regular stormtrooper (“ab dots”, blah blah) if you had wanted to army build either standard stormtroopers or the spacetropers at the time.  I only picked up 2, one for each Schmoe Flonston we see in the film.  Despite the aged sculpt, it’s a good looking figure that was nicely converted into this particular imperial variation.  I’m going to give it a 6.  I can’t call it definitive, because the underlying mold is toast, but for purposes of having a couple in the background of your Death Star diorama, these are close enough to definitive.

Build-A-Droid 

Spacetrooper contains the right arm and flame effect of L8-L9.  This prototype combat droid participated in a multi-gladiator fight-to-the-death in the arena pits of the planet Rattatak.  L8-L9 was destroyed by another gladiator named Asajj Ventress.  Source:  Clone Wars (non canon).