What The Term “World Building” Means To Bantha Skull

World-building is the reason why we love the 3.75" scale and the reason it is the best scale for Star Wars. Star Wars figures in a vacuum cannot tell the full story of that fantastical universe far, far away. In fact, in isolation, they can be boring. (How's that 6" Galen Erso selling?) World-building might mean different things from collector to collector, so we at Bantha Skull are going to explain what it means to us. You may or may not agree, but I have a feeling a lot of our dedicated readers will.





This one is so important, that it could really be numbers 1, 2, and 3 by itself. In order to effectively world-build, the items must be compatible with one another. Compatibility is comprised of many criteria, such as scale, relative scaling, and aesthetic. Aesthetic likewise encompasses many factors. The figures must share the same sculpt styling, paint styling, and articulation. Figures that are sculpted to match their appearances in animated media are a no-go. Figures with paint styling like the early Comic Pack figures which utilized paint applications that matched their depictions straight out of the pages of comic books are also world-building fails. A lack of proper modern articulation is also a key to displaying figures in poses that capture the essence of what we can see on screen, rather than standing awkwardly like a mannequin. All of these things need to be consistent across a collection of figures to effectively world-build without breaking the fantasy. The most painful thing for Chris is the number of POTF2 Cantina Aliens that stick out like a sore thumb in his display. For Bret, it's the massive number of animated-styled figures that don't fit into his display.

We don't support The Black Series here due to them being the wrong scale. We don't support the notion that any POTF2 figures are "good enough" as their scaling is off relative to more modern figures as is their inconsistent sculpting and poor articulation. We ABSOLUTELY don't support stylized figures because they don't fit in with movie-based figures. It's why we don't support gimmick decos like Carbonized or the Credit Collection. All of these things are ANTI-world-building, and we will thoroughly boo anyone who advocates for them!

In bullet form, Bantha Skull will never support:

5POA figures

Kitsch stylized figures (i.e. Clone Wars)

Gimmicky paint decorations

Other scales

This is stating the obvious. Figures need have other figures or items that they can interact with to recreate the world. A lone figure from a source or a scene is no better than the aforementioned kitsch paint jobs. There is nothing that it can interact with. The Knight of Ren from the image above is a shining example. It doesn't have a single companion figure. In hindsight, it would have been better for Hasbro to have tooled a different figure that had more counterparts in the line.





This one mostly concerns environment pieces, playsets, etc. Things need to be able to interact with one another if they share on-screen context. The items should have a "shared toy universe", and designed with an awareness of previous items in the line. An example of this is when Hasbro modified the railing of the Sail Barge to be compatible with the deck cannons that came with the Nikto Gunner and Vizam. One painful missed opportunity was when the Carbon Freeze Chamber did not have a place to plug in the console from the TLC Ugnaught. Likewise, if the claw mechanism ever gets released, it must assimilate seamlessly with that Carbon Freeze Chamber.

If figures/toys do not meet all of these criteria, then we do not support them.

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