If you want a figure that balances form and function, you’re going to have to work at it, and I blame YOU.  I was fine with floating holsters despite their lack of screen accuracy.  Solo’s gun belt secures the lower end of the holster to his thigh via a strap. Replicating this on a figure presents an obvious problem:  It limits the range of motion of the legs.  For that reason, Hasbro has often opted to give the illusion of a strapped holster with the strap painted and some times sculpted onto the figure’s thigh, but the holster floats free.  I feel this is an acceptable compromise, but you agitators wouldn’t let it go.  Hasbro listened and offered a hybrid solution that combines both aspects.  The strap is sculpted onto the thigh, but the bottom of the holster plugs into it.  When you need more range of motion at the legs, you unplug the holster, but I’m going to warn you.  The amount of force required to free the holster the first time is going to inflame the customization-phobia some of us have.  It took a long time before I convinced myself this was the design and that the holster wasn’t permanently affixed to thigh.  After you free that “stickiness” form the manufacturing process, it goes much more smoothly.

So if Hasbro managed to combine the best of both worlds, why am I (mildly) complaining?  It’s because I don’t see this as a durable solution.  I foresee a day where some part of my figure’s holster belt gives way as I’m trying to plug the holster back into the leg.  Thanks a lot, jerks.  You couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Moving on from my obsession with the gun belt, we’re left with a figure that is aesthetically off the charts.  In the looks department, I think Fat Amy’s evaluation says it best.  The mad chemical scientists who run the plastics world have zeroed in on the highest and best use of their genius:  action figures.  Ten years ago, these gun belts were so thick (presumably to avoid breakage) that the action figure had to be sculpted with the equivalent of a fifteen inch waist.  That terrible VOTC Han Solo figure that you all think is so fantastic looks like it’s suffering from some sort of wasting disease.  Thanks to the proportional thickness of this figure’s gun belt, young Han Solo actually looks like a real human being.  Where aesthetics and articulation meet, I’m thrilled that the ball jointed wrists allow the figure to realistically grasp the gun belt which is an iconic pose for Han Solo as seen in the last photo. 

The lower body has all the modern articulation you’d come to expect.  I found the ball jointed hips a little difficult to work with when trying to rotate the legs backwards.  It can be done, but this isn’t one of those figures that easily flows form one action pose to the next.  After years of complaining about mismatch joints, Hasbro listened and the hip ball joint is cast in the same exact blue as the rest of the lower body…except that the joint represents the continuation of the blood stripe from the rest of the pants.  As as result, the stripe prematurely ends at the lower hip.  Previous Han Solo figures moved the stripe off center to account for the hip articulation.  I’ll accept this compromise.  If Hasbro cast the joint in red, it would have been have been glaring in other areas.  It Hasbro continued the paint application onto the joint, it would have worn off as the joint was engaged.  It is what it is.  The figure interacts well with the included DL-44 blaster which has a painted grip.  The figure’s trigger finger easily slips into the trigger guard.  Additionally the scope appears to be the correct length for the one used in the movie (because in the obsessive compulsive nerd world, this matters).  I land this figure at a 9 out of 10.  It would be a perfect 10 if the lower body were easier to pose.

If plans aren’t currently afoot to use this figure as the starting point for an all new and definitive Episode IV Han Solo, something is broken at Hasbro.  Another sad thing about this figure is that there are a whole host of other figures it should interact with, like Tobias Becket, L3-37, Dryden Vos, and a Crimson Dawn Qi’ra.  None of them are planed for the super articulated line at this time, and only two of them are planned for the 5POA line.  Heck, we don’t even have a super-articulated Solo Chewbacca.