Ah, The Power of the Force 2.  1995 was a great time to be alive if you were a Star Wars toy fanatic since your childhood days. Unless, like me, you were completely oblivious to it all because you had just graduated from being institutionalized for 4 years, with little meaningful connection to pop culture, and then spending the next 5 years either in the wastes of West Texas, or in Europe, where the single most important pop culture event was the breakup of Take That.  I got involved in buying POTF2 figures after I was sucked in to collecting by The Phantom Menace in 1999, and used Ebay, along with the Great Toys R Us Warehouse Blowout Bonanza of 2000, to backfill and complete my collection.  So I missed all the speculation, fruitless hunting, variation tracking, and general agita that accompanied trying to collect POTF2 in real time.  Nevertheless, my favorite Hasbro format for selling figures was the Cinema Scene.  This type of format would be reimagined over the years in various toy lines, including Evolutions, Battle Packs, and TVC Special packs.  You got 3 figures and usually some kind of extra piece, like the Emperor’s throne, or a deluxe environmental figure stand.  The figures were often unique to that set, and provided an opportunity to quickly expand upon some popular scenes on your shelf, a concept that is severely lacking in today’s formats.  This is a review of the POTF2 Purchase of the Droids Cinema Scene.  The set contained 3 unique figures, which at the time were kind of fun, but do they still maintain any sort of value over 20 years later?

The star of the set at the time was Uncle Owen.  I don’t know if anyone really thought this was particularly good even at the time, but it was the first time Owen Lars was realized in action figure form.  It is amazing today, that after all this time, Hasbro has still not updated this figure for A New Hope.  Yes, we have an AOTC version from The Legacy Collection that is quite good, and then we have a slightly older version from an EU comic pack that is set between trilogies.  But we still rely on this 1997 version of Owen for our displays.  We have no choice really.  Sure, you can use one of the other Owens and pretend that he’s a good ANH version, but you would be very incorrect to do that.  We are not here to use our imaginations to do Hasbro’s job for them.  They owe us a new, proper, modern update to ANH Owen Lars, AND THEY KNOW IT!  So in the meantime, we’ve got this nonsense.  It’s standard POTF2 fare.  It’s a figure with an outdated sculpt, a marginal paint job, and pre-posed limbs.  But you can’t avoid having one in your collection if you are interested in any displays of the Lars Homestead during good ol’ 0 BBY.  Or is it 1 BBY?  I dont’ know, I don’t have time for this conversation right now.  You probably have this figure, and you probably hate that you must have it.  You want to run over it with your car, but you can’t.  Not yet anyway, as we wait for Hasbro to rescue us from the very pit of despair from whence they sent us in the first place.

C-3PO was decent back at the time, as it was an improved sculpt over the slightly muscular version that debuted when the line launched.  This version is very dirty, perhaps a little too much around the eyes, as the dirt effect pretty much completely covers his photoreceptors, so it’s not that great of a look.  Otherwise, the Tatooine sand/dirt weathering is pretty decent.  The figure is standard 5POA, while also sculpted in a bit of an exaggerated robot pose.  Later incarnations would have him be a little more “relaxed”, even before adding articulation points.  But besides the weathering, this C-3PO has one particular feature which, I believe (I could be wrong), is the only version that has a restraining bolt.  So this version works specifically for the time after him being captured by the Jawas, and then right before Luke takes him out in the landspeeder to find R2-D2.  During that whole time, C-3PO is wearing the restraining bolt.  Then inexplicably, it’s gone by the next time we get a good look, which is when Ben and Luke help C-3PO up off the ground after the Tusken Raider attack.  This figure, while definitely dated, still holds at least some minor value in your collection

Luke is terrible.  Yeah, at the time it was one of the first Luke figures that was slimmed down more realistically after the first few He-Man versions, but not only does he have a pre-posed walking stance (including a flexed foot), but he has no accessories.  His binoculars are molded to his tunic, which isn’t really helpful if he needed them to not find R2-D2 at night, or to help miss the Tusken Raider standing right in front of him.  Even today, we are still searching for a basic farmboy Luke figure that satisfies our modern expectations.  While we still don’t have a definitive version, we have many that are far better than this one.  This figure is obsolete, and really serves no purpose in your modern displays.

We need a return to more multipacks, as single carded releases alone aren’t going to generate much momentum behind that world-building theme we keep talking about.  And hopefully Hasbro is already on track for this, as we know that in 2019, we’re getting a Skiff Guards 3-pack (including the first ever Vedain!) as well as Jabba’s Adventure set, an environment from Jabba’s palace that includes two (repacked) figures.  More multipack formats will get consumers on board with world-building, and should do wonders for spreading faith in the longer-term success of the one true scale.

So this set gets a 3.  Luke is completely useless.  Owen is still necessary for relevant displays, but you’ll hate it until Hasbro comes through with an update.  Owen was likely the most desirable at the time of release, but C-3PO, while not a great sculpt by any stretch, has pretty decent dirt and grime deco, AND has the all important restraining bolt, so from a certain point of view, he’s the best figure here.  While it has been surpassed by a multitude of modern C-3PO’s, this one manages to avoid obsolescence, and probably deserves a place in your Tatooine dioramas.