Following on the heels of the absolutely fabulous Princess Leia Organa figure, I was hoping for a much better effort from Hasbro with the next super-articulated figure from the Walmart Black Series line.  It’s better, but only insofar as, say, the Giants are better than the Browns.  I mean, the Browns are knows to be garbage, but the Giants had higher hopes of success going in.  They have more talent and a stronger organization from top to bottom.  But the product on the field really isn’t that much better.  If you’re not a fan of either team, you’re going to steer clear from all their games.

In this analogy, Leia is the Browns.  The GM (Hasbro) chose the wrong player (outfit) in the draft, and then spent free agent money (articulation) on unnecessary positions (joints), instead of where it really would have counted (accessories).  They’re playing in the NFL (super articulated collector line) when they would really have better success in the Arena League (5POA line).  Han Solo is the Giants.  The GM (also Hasbro - probably someone should check if there’s a conflict of interest here) had a team with a solid pedigree (playoff team year prior, outstanding defense) and came from a major market (Han Solo from OT lore), but overspent in the wrong places in free agency (bough too much Just For Men hair color treatment).

Okay, so enough of that.  I was just trying to keep things somewhat entertaining as we go into more detail on a figure that is okay, but still doesn’t meet the expectations we have for the collector line.  Also, it’s not a nearly perfect analogy.  The Giants shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same paragraph as the Browns for any reason.

The sculpt is pretty good.  The outfit, which is very Hoth-like, of course, is done nicely.  There are plenty of details, folds, and textures throughout.  The body of the jacket is sculpted as separate piece, but is not removable.  This is fine, since it would leave behind the baseball shirt effect (different colored sleeves from the body).  But as you can see by image 13 above, there is some rogue coloring inside the shoulder joint that can be off-putting.  The face sculpt, in my opinion, is actually pretty good.  There is some character to it, a droll Harrison Ford look, like he’d rather be anywhere but in this movie.  Unfortunately, the eyes are kind of ridiculous, which ruin what might be an otherwise really good face.  Also, the hair is a light brown, which makes it look like he spent too much time trying to hide his age, and everyone knows it.  His hair should have just been a salt and peppery gray.

The pistol is nicely done - it has that somewhat strange “dot-matrix” paint application on it, which I guess gives it a little depth.  The figure holds it well, including the separate trigger finger.  The weapons fits snugly in the separately sculpted holster.  The holster itself is loose, and plugs into the right hip, which is different that the later Black Series offerings of Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor, where the holster is glued to the hip.  In all cases, the holster is attached to the belt, so it cannot be completely removed.

The joints and articulation are okay.  It’s definitely got enough articulation, but the outfit and holster hamper the legs a bit, and the waist/chest articulation is more or less neutralized.  The figure can be posed in a small variety of decent positions, but nothing too dynamic or dramatic.  I guess this is fine for this older version of Han Solo.  He’s an aging action hero, but he’s not a Jedi or trained warrior or anything crazy like that.

Like the Leia figure in the wave, it seems Hasbro made an odd selection for the character’s outfit.  Perhaps because they had made a “regular” Han Solo in the 5POA line, Hasbro thought it would be a good idea to mix it up and put a different outfit on this figure, even though it is seen very minimally on screen.  I guess we’d have been complaining about the same character/outfit being sold simultaneously in two different line, like we complained recently about nearly identical Rose figures in both lines.  Oh well, you can’t please everyone all the time.  Or anyone at any time.  Or something like that.

The figure does it’s job in some areas (sculpt) but is lacking in others (poor eye paint, poor hair color, limited lower body movement range).  It’s not a bad figure; far superior to its wave-mate, Leia, but inferior to the figures from the later Rogue One waves.  As a 7 is our baseline for an SA figure, I’m going to knock this one down a bit to a 6.  Worth a look, but it’s not going to blow anyone away.  Hasbro could have done better.