Another Tartakovsky Clone Wars inspired figure in wave 2 of The Legacy Collection (Blue) is Padmé Amidala as she appeared on the ice planet of Ilum, the location of lightsaber (Kyber) crystals.  In the 2 episode arc starting with Chapter 15, Luminara Unduli takes her padawan Bariss Offee to Ilum.  While Offee was constructing a new lightsaber, the pair were ambushed by Separatist Chameleon droids.  They managed to destroy most of the droids, but Yoda had to go to Ilum to help rescuing them from the cave, which had collapsed on the them during the confrontation. 

Yoda was taken to Ilum by Padmé and her entourage. The restless Padmé struck out into the wintry weather to provide backup for Yoda, but was herself ambushed by some chameleon droids.  She defended herself, and even tricked C-3PO into serving as bait to lure the chameleon droids out of their cloaked positions, by going to retrieve her lost cloak, so she could destroy them.  Get it?  She used her cloak to uncloak the droids.  It’s the cloak circle of life! 

Anyway, fans of the show seemed smitten with Padmé in this “snow bunny” outfit.  In 2007, Hasbro released the Ambush on Ilum battle pack in the TAC line as a Target exclusive, which included the first figure of Padmé in her snow outfit.  The figure was pre-posed in an action shooting stance, and had limited articulation.  The figure sported an amazingly well done removable hooded cloak.  The sculpt itself was a little week, but it was pretty cool at the time.  That set also included an old R2-D2 and the wrong C-3PO, but did also include two different versions of the chameleon droid.  One was fully painted, while the other faded into a clear sculpt, simulating the droid cloaking/uncloaking; a pretty decent attempt by Hasbro. 

About a year later, Hasbro decided to revisit the popular character.  A fully articulated and upgraded figure was released in wave two of the Legacy Collection which was part of the Clone Wars Launch event.  The figure ALMOST completely destroys the earlier battle pack version, but doesn’t actually render it obsolete, but I’ll get to that shortly.  This figure is super articulated, with a sculpt that is very good.  The stance is a little on the wide side, almost as if she’s meant to ride a swoop bike, but the figure can nevertheless be posed in a variety of action positions.  The face is a huge leap forward over the TAC version.  The face is much prettier, and while it isn’t exactly a perfect representation of Natalie Portman, it makes the TAC face look like a circus clown.  And that’s bad because everybody hates clowns, especially Jack Handy. 

For accessories, Padmé has her trusty blaster pistol.  She seems to be able to hold it in her left hand better than her right.  The pistol fits snugly in the working holster, which is a separately sculpted belt piece.  Padmé also comes with a cape that is made of the same material as the TAC version.  It’s pretty awesome, with a fur lining, and a smoothly textured exterior side.  The big difference (besides the blue vs. white coloring) is that this figure has a separate and removable plastic sculpted hood.  It is done well.  The hooded soft goods on the TAC version suffers very slightly from the fur obscuring the face, so that is solved here.  But I am partial to the TAC cloak.  You could mix accessories as I did in image 19 in the gallery above, so you can choose whichever you prefer.  While it may look better, I hate doing Hasbro’s work for them, so I would display it with the intended accessories. Basically, this means that the TAC Padmé does maintain some value, because of the unique hooded cloak, which also has the pom-pom strings that are absent from the plastic hood in the TLC figure.

I give this figure a 7.  It’s very well done, and pretty much is definitive for the character in this outfit.  I would switch accessories, sculpt the torso in such as way as to allow Padmé to perform a two handed firing grip on her pistol, and I’d give ball jointed hips to allow for a more “lady-like” stance.  All of this will likely never happen, given the “Legends” status of the source material.  We’ll call this “close” enough to definitive, but we don’t recommend any action on Hasbro’s part.  You can find this figure to be pretty cheap on Ebay.

Build-A-Droid 

Padmé Amidala contains the left leg for the astromech R7-T1.  R7-T1 was never seen on screen, but was briefly Luke Skywalker’s astromech when he flew an E-Wing fighter during the Black Fleet Crisis.  The droid was mentioned by name in the book Before the Storm.  While it first appeared in visual form with Hasbro’s BAD, the look was made official in other Lucasfilm reference sources.  Of course, all of this was rendered obsolete and relegated to Legends status.  Source:  Legends.