So, here’s the thing.  If you’re reading this, you know I hate Hasbro’s decision to make animated-styled figures.  But this figure is particularly annoying.  If you go back in time, even Kenner did animated styling for their action figures that were based on Droids and Ewoks.  It’s not a new thing, of course.  But even back then, they made some logical (perhaps economic) decisions to simply repack existing realistic figures instead of re-doing them in the animated style in a couple of cases.  The Droids A-Wing Pilot and Boba Fett were repacks of earlier figures.  I thought that Hasbro should have taken this approach to the Clone Wars line.  Even if they wanted to do some the alien or human figures in the animation styling, was it necessary to also make the clone troopers this way?  Think of how much more appeal the clones would have had if they were compatible with your other clones from the film lines?  I would have bought them all, in multiples, at the time.  Instead, I got just a handful of figures for my 501st focus collection.  When you look at the last comparison shot, you wonder, was it really necessary for Hasbro to design an all new skinny animated FO stormtrooper instead of just repacking existing versions?  Even going down the 5POA route, they could have re-used existing TFA figures, and I bet they’d be more likely to sell across a wider audience.

Nevertheless, we get an all new, weird looking unrealistically skinny stormtooper, that also happens to be 5POA.  The figure is simply sculpted.  The even simpler paint applications aren’t as quite as sloppy as on the Kaz Xiono figure, but they could be sharper given the low degree of difficulty.  My sample has a bit of a problem standing up, and part of this may be because of the slightly non-neutral stance.  This, of course, is a gripe in and of itself.  Even if you were so inclined to army build these guys, the non-neutral pose makes that a fruitless endeavor.  The figure has a blaster, which is similar to the realistic version.  However, unlike the SA version, there is no “hip slot” to stow the blaster away.  So again, you have to be careful not to lose the thing.  It seems this is especially silly if the figures are aimed at kids.  Kids lose stuff.  It’s what they do.  It’s why they’re not allowed to drive, because they’d keep parking the car in public places and then lose the keys. Who needs that?

The figure is what you’d expect.  If you’re interested in this subline, you should grab one if you can find it as a novelty.  Otherwise, it probably serves little to no purpose in your collection.