Last week my box of Star Wars Black Series Wave 5 finally arrived from Entertainment Earth. With all the trips I’ve made to Walgreens in the past month, I’ve been tempted by Jedi Luke and Chewbacca many, many times (had I seen Darth Vader, I would have bought him). I held firm though and patiently waited until my pre-order arrived…well, maybe patiently isn’t the right word to use. Each day this week we’ll look at one of the figures – starting with Darth Vader.
Package Bio: After Darth Vader and Luke join forces to defeat the Emperor, Vader asks Luke to help him remove the mask that covers his face.
“Just for once, let me look on you with my own eyes.”
Thoughts: Let’s get the ‘negative’ out of the way first – the helmet isn’t perfect and when Hasbro makes a version without the unmasking feature (maybe an Episode IV version) it’ll be more screen accurate. With that said, I can now gush about how awesome this figure is.
This is the figure from the wave that I couldn’t wait to tear open and I was not disappoint. Minor mask quibbles aside, Darth’s awesome. The sculpt is quite good and features articulation as the ankles, knee, hips, waist, shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck. His helmet is removable, which makes me think back to how big of a deal it was when that first 3 3/4″ figure had a removable helmet. Darth Vader has both a cloth skirt and cape – which is quite full and connects at the neck with real chain. Vader’s lightsaber, his only accessory, features a removable blade. There are no spots for him to hang the hilt on his belt.
Look, the 6″ Star Wars line is firing on all cylinders and hasn’t had a miss yet (distribution / case packs excluded). Darth Vader is such a definitive character, I’m surprised it took five waves for him to be released, but he’s here now and he’s my favorite Black Series figure yet. I’m particularly impressed with how well the soft goods cape works – capes just don’t work this well at the 3 3/4″ scale.
Summary: I can already tell that Vader’s going to be one of those figures that takes up residency on my desk as I can see myself sitting in a teleconference just futzing with him. I may have had to wait five waves, but it was well worth it as this first 6″ Black series Vader is among the best of the line. He should be starting to hit stores (online and real life). I ordered mine from Entertainment Earth.
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