Star Wars: The Black Series: Sandtrooper Commander

 I find myself having difficulty keeping track of the passage of time. Outside of major events, almost everything in my post-2010 life just seems to have happened ‘in the past,’ not because of some effort to diminish the passage of time, but because of a legitimate inability to remember things in a chronological context. While I will never forget the date of my wedding, I do not remember the year I graduated from grad school; I don’t know how long I’ve been teaching college; and while I remember the years of the Blackhawks Stanley Cup wins, and I remember the teams that won between them and the order they won in, I do not remember the years: this amounts to me being able to say that the Hawks won in 2010, and the Bruins won the year after, but I don’t remember the year the Bruins won in. Truly preposterous. 

Something else I can’t remember in terms of the year, but certainly in terms of its magnitude, is when I bought my first Black Series figure, at the urging of my wife. I’ve told that story before. I bring it up because in however many subsequent years there have been, I have purchased many, many Black Series figures, as I warned my wife would happen if I started down that road.


That first figure I bought was an Imperial Sandtrooper, a rank and file soldier with a black shoulder pauldron. I knew at the time that there was an Officer figure with the orange pauldron, because I had seen it and contemplated buying it earlier. By the time I finally broke the Black Series seal, said Officer was out of stores, and already starting to command (get it?) higher and higher prices on the aftermarket than I was willing to spend. As time went on, and the collection grew, I began taking a more serious interest in the Sandtrooper Commander, and I just recently got a real good deal on one. 

I’ve written about the Sandtrooper figure before now, but as this one is something of a personal victory, I thought I’d revisit the figure for a little. The Commander has the same basic characteristics as the other versions of the figure, with the only differences being the obvious shoulder pad and the weathering. Yes, the weathering. All three of the Sandtrooper figures are weathered differently, which I found super impressive when I first noticed. These guys are just repaints, so for them to have that level of different detail between them to me is fairly noteworthy. As I’d mentioned with the Scout Trooper, an effect like weathering makes for a more visually interesting figure, as opposed to a fairly bland white Imperial trooper. And such detail makes sense in the narrative sense of these figures as well: Sandtroopers are the Imperial hostile environment troops, the down and dirty units, not the guys who spend a lot of time polishing their armor for the Emperor’s visit to the Death Star or guys stationed aboard a Star Destroyer, never having to see action. It’s logical that Sandtrooper armor would be a little worse for wear. The weathering makes each of these three seem more like individuals, a little less like guys with different shoulder pads. 

Specific to this figure, the orange on the shoulder is a nice pop of color, a big detail on a figure that is actually noteworthy in general for its little details, and the orange pad of the Commander is the best example of how different one thing can make a figure look from its doppelgangers. Having gotten this version last, and begun with the plain black pauldron trooper, I think I appreciate the color evolution a little more than I would have had I gone through the troopers chronologically.

The shoulder pad still inhibits right arm movement, and head movement to some degree, in terms of how far the figure can turn its head. The backpacks, also fully painted, are not as problematic as I remember thinking they would be, back whenever that was that I got the black pauldron Sandtrooper. The pack plugs in to a hole on the figures’ back, and it is pretty stable. I had thought it would be a piece constantly falling off, dislodging every time the figure was moved or a strong breeze blew through my apartment. There is a small pouch piece that sits over the trooper’s right shoulder, and for the first little while this is stiff and does inhibit head turning and arm movement, but it seems that that is a result of it flexing after having been bent under the figure in the package. After a little time out of the package and over the shoulder, the pouch lays flat and doesn’t get in the way. The backpacks are another nicely detailed touch, another place where, taking it out of the package, I was prepared for a black plastic rectangle only to be surprised by the amount of detail and paint. 

I also have a real appreciation for the heavy blasters these figures come with, and their paint. The rifle butts are painted brown, the straps grey, there are painted details on the barrel and the rest of the weapon. I first noticed this with the Shadow Squadron Trooper, the all black Sandtrooper repaint, and his black cast plastic blaster that is very boring to look at. Various troopers come with other weapons, and some of them are painted silver, the First Order blasters are all painted mainly I think to draw attention to them not being the OT Imperial blasters, and the Clone rifles are detailed and nice as well, but these heavy blasters here are the best looking weapons in the entire line. 

"We couldn't find those droids anywhere, captain..."

This attention to detail is something I’ve truly come to love about the Black Series. Things like the painted blaster, and the different weathering on the troopers is the kind of thing that shouts “for collectors” to me. I’ve seen a lot of shade thrown (after all, you know what Tuesday night in my house means….) at the line in various Internet corners and heard some not so flattering things said on podcasts, but I’ve had nothing but great experiences with it. I’ve read things about people getting figures with apparently pre-kindergarten skill levels of paint applications, but all the figures I own are well done and have no major or noticeable paint issues. I’ve heard, and to be fair, seen in stores, of faces on figures such as Obi-Wan and trooper Han/Luke being all kinds of messed up; and while I have seen a few bad faces or lazy eyes on figures in stores, I’ve never wound up with one, even having bought some online. I may have just gotten lucky, and I don’t have a large number of figures who have important faces since I collect Imperials, but the worst I’ve seen are some uneven pupils and some real lifeless looking faces, not exactly features unheard of on plastic toys. We all have different standards as collectors, be they in terms of what we are willing to accept before something is too much, or whether we collect entire lines or subsets of each. The guy at my comic shop was talking about wanting Rey and Fin and Poe only, and in my head I was screaming “WHAT!? What about all the First Order troopers coming? How could you not want those??” 

"Does anyone know where Logan is?"

But I think the issues people seem to have with the Black Series is that it is essentially a retail price friendly, collectible quality line of figures, thus it has no real degree of ‘collector difficulty’ or because it can be found at mass retail it is somehow not really a collector item or series: that notion of ‘toys’ being sold at stores, and ‘toys’ being things only for children and playing with, not for display or bragging about, both pretty important collector activities. Yes, a number of the figures disappear from stores extra fast, causing us to turn to an online retailer to get them, but that’s not exactly hard to do. There are those among us in the collector community that believe that things mass retail available are bad or not of collectible value, or who have been spoiled for lack of a better word by the Japanese toylines like Revoltech and S.H. Figuarts, who now only accept figures of those calibers on to their shelves, deeming all else crap. Lord knows that I have been very, very critical of toy companies in the past, and can often be found complaining to my wife about them and their decisions; so frequently does this happen that by now, my wife barely even feigns attention to my rants, and I barely am effected by the knowledge that she’s not paying attention to me. But when a company gets something right, I like to think I point those things out as well. And let me say, in case it has not been evident in any of my previous exertions on The Black Series, this is a line where they got it totally right in my estimate.