ARC Troopers made their debut in the 2003 Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars microseries.  In addition to an entire subline within the Saga line dedicated to this source (correctly realistically styled, I might add), Hasbro often sprinkled additional characters into the lines over the years.  Aided by the ARC’s also being present in Filoni’s CGI The Clone Wars series, the character became one of the more popular in the collecting community.  One of the most common Clone Wars-era characters in figure-form, Hasbro made numerous versions of the ARC Trooper, often trying different sculpting variations, paint schemes, and accessories.  The first version came from the aforementioned Clone Wars subline in 2003.  It was pretty underarticulated (maybe not so much in 2003), and was erroneously painted with a grey-ish color pattern.  This was soon corrected in subsequent assortments with the blue color scheme.  It was then re-released as an intentional running change in red colors.  The figure sculpt was updated and then repainted numerous times, including this one.  These were painted in blue, red, and even a “shadow” black version.  There were also weathering/battle damage paint variations, along with different versions of the kama and other accessories.  The sculpt was overhauled a few more times, including a yellow version.  The effort culminated in one of the greatest action figures ever created by Hasbro, the 2011 VC45 “Not Fordo (It’s Totally Fordo)” ARC Trooper Commander “two-fer”.

This figure is a repack (or very slight repaint, to be exact) of the one that came in the Target Order 66 2-pack set with Anakin Skywalker.  The sculpt may seem slightly wonky today, but that’s probably because the most recent batch of clone figures in the TVC era have been of the extra skinny variety.  While the new figures are technically more screen accurate to the CGI source material, the older clones of the day seemed more appropriately bulky.  The armor looks like it covers a human body, not a stick figure.  The biggest drawback of this sculpt is that the hips are generally designed in such a way as to have a limited range of motion.  This is further inhibitied by the plastic kama.  More modern clone trooper figures would also have ball jointed wrists, but the figure can still peform a decent THWG (Two Handed Weapon Grip), although it does cause the soft rifle to get a little bendy.  The figure stands well unassisted, has decent posability, and looks great.  The paint is fairly sharp, and also includes some battle damage scuff marks all over the armor.

The kama is removable, but you wouldn’t want to do that as you can see by image #17 in the gallery above.  The kama hangs straight down, as opposed to the wind-whipped versions that came with other ARC figures.  The shoulder pauldron / ammo pouch / shoulder strap combo is also connected to a cable that has a gauntlet which fits on the right wrist.  Not sure exactly what this is meant to be, but it looks cool, darnit.  It’s all removable and the figure looks fine when it’s taken off, unlike the kama.  The helmet is also removable.  It’s a bit squishy and mishapen, but not nearly as bad as the Phase 2 buckets often are.  The head is sculpted as a younger clone trooper (Bodie Taylor).  Finally, the figure comes with a large rifle.  It’s made of a very soft plastic and bends easily. 

Overall, it’s a nice figure, and definitely deserves a place in your Grand Army of the Republic displays.  Perhaps Hasbro could do better today, as they certainly did so with VC45.  Nevertheless, I would suspect that there are a ton more characters to be addressed before Hasbro should do much with the ARC Trooper.  Personally, I would grant an exception if Hasbro could produce the Phase 2 ARC versions of Echo and Fives. In fact, I would like to make a public plea for Hasbro to do just that.  I would appreciate it. 

This figure was repacked in The Legacy Collection (Red) line, as BD26.  The only difference there was the droid part. Either one is worth having in your collection. The figure gets a 7/10.  If the kama was soft goods to improve the hip range of motion, and also didn’t make the figure look weird when removed, it would be an easy 8.

Build-A-Droid 

The ARC Trooper contains the right leg for HK-47.  This murderous and snarky droid terrorized meatbags during the Old Republic Era.  Source:  Knights of the Old Republic.