We brought you a terrible Chewbacca yesterday, so we’ll make it up to you by presenting a Chewbacca today that is not terrible.  The one thing that the two figures have in common is that they are both very scene specific.  Chewbacca really doesn’t change his wardrobe throughout the Saga.  I mean, he basically never changes his pants!  Those things have to be a science experiment at this point.  But anyway, unless I missed something, the only time Chewbacca wears a headset is during the trip from Tatooine to what’s left of Alderaan in A New Hope.  He wears the headset in the cockpit, but for whatever reason, Han doesn’t.  I guess Chewbacca is busy communicating with L3-37. 

So Hasbro decided to take advantage of the VOTC Chewbacca sculpt again to recreate this scene.  By my count, and I may be a little off, Hasbro has used the 2004 Chewbacca sculpt no less than 392 times.  And of course, they’re using it gain for the upcoming VC141 Chewbacca figure.  Frankly, that’s not a bad thing.  My only real complaints about the sculpt at this point 15 years after its introduction are the lack of ball jointed hips and wrists, and also that the sculpted hair on the hands looks odd unless they are positioned perfectly to replicate the effect of gravity.  Other than that bit of very modern articulation, the sculpt is tremendous, and Hasbro has done right by refreshing it constantly over the years.  If they could do the same with some other core characters like Darth Vader or the Stormtrooper (both of which have been tantalizingly close to definitive) then Hasbro would do well to pump out those same figures several times over the next decade.

So you’ve seen this basic figure before, but there are two notable aspects.  The first, of course, is the headset.  The microphone that curves from about the ear to the mouth is removable, via a plug in the side of the head.  It looks good when affixed properly.  It is attached to a cable, which in turn is connected to a small “control box” or whatnot that clips to Chewbacca’s bandolier.  I guess this is cool because it gives Chewbacca mobility with the headset, as opposed to it being connected to the Falcon dashboard.  In the film, it’s hard to tell, but it looks like the cable goes behind Chewbacca.  The clip doesn’t reach that easily to the bandolier behind the figure’s back, so perhaps there’s a very slight bit of artistic license here.  In any case, when the mouthpiece/clip is removed from the figure, you get two undesirable artifacts.  There’s the aforementioned hole in the left side of Chewbacca’s head.  I guess you could pretend it is his ear.  But worse, is that the part of the headset that fits over Chewie’s head is permanently sculpted/painted to his head.  So it looks silly by itself.  The unfortunate thing about this is that the figure is limited to performing as that very short scene specific version of Chewbacca.  It probably would only have taken a very small bit of additional engineering to get a completely removable headset, which could give you a standard Chewbacca “two-fer”, making this figure much more desirable.  As it is, we’ve had plenty of chances at this sculpt, so you likely have the regular Chewie anyway.

The other issue is that Hasbro included the wrong headsculpt.  In A New Hope, Chewie has slicked back hair.  Later, in ESB and ROTJ, he opted for the more casual parted style.  Hasbro had the ANH head sculpt available to them already, so they could have adapted that one to have the headset for this figure.  So technically, it’s not accurate to the film.  But if you can overlook that, it’s a nice figure.

Interestingly, maybe a year prior to the release of this figure, Hasbro had issued the awesome BMF Millennium Falcon in the Legacy Collection (Blue) line and included a Chewie figure and a Han with headset figure.  That Chewie has the proper ANH headsculpt, but it lacks the headset.  That would have been a perfect time to issue this figure with the correct hair.  But sometimes Hasbro does silly things.  I forgive them.

Other than the wrong head and the half removable headset, this figure is very good, and has aged well.  I give it a 7.  It could have been an easy 8 or 9 if they fixed these issues.  But as it is, it will work well in your Falcon cockpit.

Build-A-Droid 

Chewbacca (First Release) contains the left leg for the astromech R3-A2.  This droid can be spotted in Echo Base.  Specifically, it was in the background just before Major Bren Derlin had to inform Princess Leia that the blast doors needed to close for the night, with Luke still outside.  Source:  Empire Strikes Back.

OR

Chewbacca (Carry Forward) contains the body of BG-J38.  This worker drone droid served as Jabba the Hutt’s personal dejarik and hologames droid.  Source:  Return of the Jedi