It has been said that the day before the start of C2E2 my
wife and I visited our local comic shop. The shop carries a lot of figures, and
occasionally they get Black Series stuff.
This trip, they had some figures from the newest wave, the Jango Fett wave I’ll
call it, and I grabbed two of them. The first one was the Frist Order
Flametrooper.
The Flametrooper is a very different trooper design than the
standard First Order trooper and the Snowtrooper. The helmet is like a cross
between the Snowtrooper and the First Order Pilot helmets, and the armor
returns to the Imperial practice of having two different leg designs. That’s
kind of just a neat detail I think, nothing of any importance. The feet on the
Flametrooper are nice and stable, which had been a complaint of mine with the
standard First Order troopers, although in the subsequent months I’ve found
that posing the standard guys just right alleviates the foot stability issue. This
figure comes with a backpack and pretty substantial flamethrower.
The backpack is nicely detailed although less so than that
of the Imperial Sandtroopers. The presence of a piece like the backpack is a
true bonus to the figure appearance wise. It is a pair of fuel tanks for the
flamethrower, like the old fashioned dual scuba air tank set up. The detailing
on it is mainly minor, a bit of paint here and there but the effect is good, as
those small paint apps make it stand out as a part of the figure, a recognized
piece of equipment and not simply a block of plastic that sticks on the back.
It connects via a round peg, and sits on top of a little ridge-type piece just
above the troopers’ butt, a variation of that cylindrical appendage on the back
of all First Order and Imperial troopers. The pack smooshes that ridge a little
bit, and I initially thought the pack was supposed to rest on top of that
piece, but the tanks hang too low for that arrangement and there is no slot or
anything on them for that ridge to fit in or clip on to.
The flamethrower itself is nice and detailed, with some nice
white paint in places to make it stand out. I’d mentioned a while back that I
really appreciate the paint apps on some of the Black Series guns, and this one is kind of like the Clone rifles in
that it adds a bit of one other color, nothing as drastic as the Sandtrooper
rifles, and it makes the weapon really stand out. The flamethrower is nice and
long too, but the First Order trooper arms make it hard to have him hold it
with two hands. So, he holds it slightly off to the side while standing askew. It
is long enough that there is a concern over bending, and I’ve found myself
paranoidly staring at the weapon to try and determine if it’s bent or warped at
all, the way that sometimes swords . A tiny flexible hose runs from the
backpack and connects to the handle of the flamethrower.
I’m really surprised that a Flametrooper was even produced.
This guy is proof of the idea that if a character gets a few seconds of
screentime in a Star Wars movie, they will get a toy at some point. For the
First Order Flametrooper, that point came very early. I understand the desire
to get as many The Force Awakens figures
out as quickly as possible, and The Black
Series basically switched over completely to TFA characters for the last six months or so, and I’d say they
covered the First Order end of things pretty well. Just as with the Snowtroopers,
I can see this Flametrooper being totally skippable in peoples’ collections,
but I think he’s pretty good. 
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