Editor’s Note:  This review has been updated with our second look at TVC…

Original Review:  Chris - 03/05/2012 12:39 AM

Here we are again with another standard super articulated figure.  If that sounds negative, that’s unintentional.  That’s a good thing.  Unlike some other up coming figure (COUGH Grand Moff Tarkin), the Clone Wars Anakin Skywalker neatly incorporates soft goods into its design.  However my big problem with the figure is the head.  It doesn’t look like Hayden Christensen.  It doesn’t look like the CGI Anakin Skywalker.  The second issue I have with the figure is the lack of a saber peg hole to clip the unlit hilt to the figure’s belt.  Those two negative take it down a point (from the 8 I give all super articulated figures).  7 out of 10. 

Updated Review:  Bret - 9/04/2018 07:05 AM

This is another excellent figure, and I’m a sucker for the realistic versions of figures from animated source materials.  Mostly because I hate that Hasbro made animated styled figures at all, and I feel there are scores of characters that could have been made this way instead of wasting everyone’s time with the cartoony sculpts.  In fact, I wouldn’t mind if Hasbro made a small subset of main characters in cartoon-form, true to the source material as it were, while making the vast majority in the regular line.  This is what ended up happening with the Genndy Tartakovsky Microseries.  There were a handful of highly stylized figures which I thought were pretty darn cool, and I had no problem buying the lot of them just to have this unique subset.  In the meantime, there were tons of figures sourced from the Microseries that were realistically sculpted, instantly making them compatible with the thousands of other figures in my collection.  So while Hasbro spent a huge amount of resources making TCW animated figures (of which I only bought a few), I have bought every one fo the realistic TCW figures, and wished all of them were made this way.

That brings us to this Anakin figure.  Designated VC92, he is the first character from The Clone Wars to be honored as a carded TVC figure.  I wise choice, since Anakin is the main character.  He was followed by a couple of other TCW figures, but again, there should be dozens of TCW figures, not just a few.  The figure itself has the basic super-articulation plus ball jointed wrists.  Because of this, he can be posed in a number of nice action poses.  Along with the wrists, his slightly long-ish arms allow you to pose Anakin in the cool overhead two-handed lightsaber grip.  The knock here is that he lacks ball-jointed hips, which were not quite standard at this time, but are necessary for Jedi action figures.

The body sculpt is excellent, as is the integration of the soft goods “skirt”.  The figure has a great look to it right out of the package.  The colors and paint applications are very good. But in addition to the lack of ball jointed hips, the other downsides are fairly important.  As Chris pointed out, the head sculpt matches neither the animated look nor Hayden Christiansen.  Also, the figure comes with an unlit hilt, which lacks a peg.  Of course, there’s no need for the peg, because the figure does not have a peg hole in the belt.  These are notable negatives, and need to be accounted for as we grade an otherwise outstanding figure.

Chris gave it a 7, dedicating a point off his then-standard 8.  As many of you know, we’ve since worked to update our scoring system, and the baseline for an SA figure is now a 7.  As such, Chris’s score would logically be a 6.  While that seems a bit low, I’d have to agree that the poor facial likeness, lack of a peg hole for the hilt, and no ball-jointed “Jedi’ hips combine to be enough to be a 6.  It’s a good figure, and I suspect it’s highly unlikely that Hasbro will revisit it, and that’s fine.  I’d call it short of definitive, even though there isn’t a chance in Hoth of it being updated.

Editor’s Note:  After some consideration and good reader feedback, we’ll adjust this figure back up to a 7.

Updated Review:  Bret - 9/17/2020 07:05 AM

Here we have a Clone Wars sourced figure that gets the Photoreal treatment.  It’s fairly underwhelming, and again, questionable about whether it’s worth a second purchase if you already own the original figure.

The face, as usual, looks odd from up close.  But from a safe distance, when you hold the figures side by side, I would have to say the original is a bit better.  Your mileage may vary, as it will depend on the accuracy of the paint apps as far as being centered properly.  A slight shift will make Anakin look cross eyed, or something worse.  I’m not particularly thrilled about the way this one turned out.

Beyond the face, there’s not much to report.  Anything I see in color or finish changes would seem to be chalked up to manufacturing differences, and not really worth discussing.  The one thing I notice that may have been intentional is the lower tunic (skirt) placement.  The new one either has the cloth cut differently, or it’s simply tucked under the belt in a better fashion.  It looks neater, and more correct.

The usual differences exist in the card, with minor changes made to the warnings and labels.  The figure and accessories are laid out differently within the bubble, but everything else is barely significant.

I wish Hasbro had made the correction to the missing lightsaber peg hole in Anakin’s belt, and included a different unlit hilt that had a corresponding peg.  That was a big miss with the original release.  The other complaints, are of course, still in effect, as Hasbro made no changes to the sculpt.

This is a nice figure, and nice that it’s available again at regular price.  If you don’t have it, you should pick one up.  If you have one already, it’s a toss up about whether to “upgrade” with the new version.