At last we have the mighty Chewbacca.  Well, not really “at last”.  I mean, he arrived in the first wave of Solo toys, so it’s not like we were really waiting that long.  In fact, we weren’t waiting all.  Chewbacca is here, pretty much immediately upon launch of the Solo line, so he’s basically been here the whole time.  Just relax, everybody, it’s really not that big of a deal.  Seriously.  You folks are an excitable bunch.

So there’s not that much to get excited about here.  This figure is very similar to the TLJ version, with some slight changes.  The most noticeable changes are the head sculpt, which has a less aggressive look than he had for TLJ, and, most importantly, he the fur on his torso is sculpted to accommodate a double bandolier.  The bandolier is a removable piece, but the fur is matted to give a kind of “hat head,” or rather “hat chest,” kind of look.  (It’s best to just leave it on.).  The sculpt is pretty nice.  The articulation is very basic, of course.  The head does actually turn a bit, which is somewhat unusual for Chewbacca figures due to the long sculpted hair.  The feet are well-balanced, so the figure stands assuredly.

The paint applications are decent, with the figure painted in various tones, almost looking like he has a reverse farmer’s tan.  The pattern is pretty consistent with the look of the TLJ figure, although lighter, in general.  Apparently Chewbacca’s fur gets darker with age.

Notable is that this is a rare (maybe only?) Chewbacca figure that doesn’t come with his iconic crossbow.  Either the included rifle is scene-specific for something we’ll see in Solo, or he just lost access to his weapon of choice due to the events in the film.  Unfortunately for the figure, the hand and weapon weren’t designed well enough to fit together comfortably.  Chewbacca’s right hand is closed fairly tightly, so it’s necessary to stretch out the fingers to allow for a good hold on the weapon grip.  The plastic happens to be particularly hard, so while trying to accomplish this, I think I damaged the plastic and almost snapped Chewie’s fingers clean off the hand.  The left hand was worse, so I didn’t bother.

Generally, it can be tough to review a figure prior to witnessing the associated media.  We know Chewbacca so well, and based on trailers, we assume his appearance is as typical as it has been from The Clone Wars through The Last Jedi.  We know that in wave 2 of the two-packs, there will be a rather miserable looking prisoner Chewbacca, which may be the most different of any figure of the character we’ve seen to date.  But until the film comes out, we’ll rate this figure as a standard 4.  It’s nothing to write home about, but is the only Chewbacca with a double bandolier,  With no word on an SA version in the foreseeable future, this should warrant your consideration for purchase, despite a very “meh” score of a baseline 4.

This figure is compatible with the Force Link 2.0 activator, however, at the time of this review, the activator has not received the necessary firmware update from Hasbro.  Once this is updated, we will revisit this figure and include the relevant phrases and sounds in this review.