Should We Have Seen The POTF2 “Buff” Era Coming?

During yesterday's discussion about Power of the Jedi, we talked about the stunning aesthetic change it ushered. The figures appeared radically different from their Episode I and POTF2 predecessors. Much greater effort went into sculpting the garments more realistically. Previously, figures looked like they were wearing head to toe spandex. The human proportions became much more human, and perhaps most significantly, much closer attention was paid to the relative scaling between the figures. No longer did we have Leia figures staring eye to eye with Vader (only a slight exaggeration). For these reasons (especially the last one), I consider POTJ to be the start of the modern line.

That fact that this quantum leap forward in realism roughly coincided with Hasbro's decision to close the Kenner Cincinnati offices and merge the product lines, seems a little too coincidental. From the time of its acquisition in 1991 until its closure in 2000, Kenner operated out of its home base as a subsidiary. This time period includes the entire POTF2 run. I have no direct information on how this relationship worked, but in my past business dealings, the parent company would provide broad stroke direction, but wouldn't micromanage (too much). So it begs the question of whether or not the early "He-Man" proportions of the POTF2 figures were a Kenner aesthetic independent of Hasbro. I think the answer is undoubtedly yes, and Kenner was trending in this direction with Star Wars (and their other toy lines) long before the company was sold. I think one vintage Kenner Star Wars figure clearly demonstrates this.

After the episode based vintage Kenner Star Wars line ended, it forked into three separate product lines. Movie figures went to the original Power of the Force line (the good one). Then there were two lines for the Ewoks and Droids cartoons. The Star Wars line as whole was canceled before the Droids line completed its run. As a result, the produced figures come from the first half of season one. One of those figures was of the wannabe pilot, Jann Tosh:


You will notice that the character is certainly cut, but you wouldn't call him hulking. I feel like Tosh's look had to have been inspired by Joachim from The Wrath of Khan:


Again, he's cut, but not hulking. So how did Kenner translate Tosh's normally athletic physique into an action figure?


It's certainly not as bad an exaggeration as we see with POTF2, but it's trending in that direction. Some of the telltales are there such as the bulging biceps, broad shoulders, and the typical body builder v-shaped torso, which was a calling card of the early POTF2 figures. I think it's fairly clear that these two figures share a common visual language:


It's important to note that the "2" in "Power of the Force 2" is a fan designation. Kenner never positioned it as a sequel to the 1985 line. Rather it was a continuation. I think that had Kenner never been sold, and had the line never ended, they would have landed on the "He-Man" figures in 1995 anyway. That is the direction in which they were already trending. In addition to this Jann, the Thal Joben figure was also much more muscular than his on-screen counterpart. I didn't cite that figure because he didn't have that distinctive POTF2 v-cut.

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