Star Wars: The Black Series Boba Fett (Prototype)

 Not many Star Wars fans need any introduction to Boba Fett, Exhibit A in any argument that deals with the development of an utter icon that began its life as a throwaway. 

So, now that that introduction is out of the way, the design for Boba Fett was originally supposed to serve as armor for some kind of super Stormtrooper, a commando of sorts. Designed by total legend Ralph McQuarrie, Boba Fett underwent some design changes and ended up as the cool, silent bounty hunter everyone loves, and then later was saddled with backstory that was unnecessary by the prequel movie Episode II: Attack of the Clones. This figure, one of the ever-puzzling Walgreens exclusives of recent years, is a representation of Boba Fett in that prototype Stormtrooper-ish armor.

The figure itself is a good Boba Fett, a simple white repaint of the Black Series Boba Fett without any major differences. The cape is cloth, which is one of those ever so delightful touches the Black Series throws in from time to time, and gives the figure a noticeable difference in textures. Unlike the plastic cape a figure like Captain Phasma comes with, the cloth versions give a sense of depth to the look of the toy, probably because they are moving and not static parts. There is a separation between plastic figure and cloth cape; there does not appear to be a visible separation between plastic figure and plastic cape. Boba Fett is outfitted with his trademark EE-3 blaster (thank you, Star Wars Battlefront for teaching me what it was called) and jetpack, as well as a secondary blaster pistol that can store in a thigh holster. The jetpack plugs very snuggly onto the back, and the blaster rifle fits perfectly into the hand. 

Boba Fett has the full range of motion for a Black Series figure: shoulder, hip, elbow, knee, wrist, waist, neck and ankle joints allow for all manner of poses and stances. There isn’t anything that really gets in the way of moving any of these parts, save for maybe the shoulder pads that prevent him from striking any really extreme arm poses, but I can’t honestly believe that that is an issue. 

If the figure has any shortcomings, it may be that it is just a repaint of the original Boba Fett, and not really the prototype or concept design of the character. The actual McQuarrie concept was different in the helmet mostly, with similarities to the final design that can clearly be seen in it. Had Hasbro really tried to make a true concept Fett, the helmet changes would have been the largest difference, requiring a new head mold, but the rest of the figure could probably have been left alone. Being a store exclusive figure, something like a head remold may have been too much investment, but then, one wonders why it’d be too much to redesign a part, but somehow not too much to produce a figure specifically for a single store. We’ve seen this happen more and more in the intervening years now since ProtoFett’s release, and we have also seen more Walgreens exclusive figures. It could be that, at the time, giving an exclusive to a drug store was an experiment for Hasbro, and so they didn’t want to invest a whole lot in case the deal didn’t work out for them. More recently, Walgreens has had exclusives that were completely new figures, or figures that are really well detailed and are far beyond the quality that one would expect from a Walgreens.

The toy aisle at Walgreens is the place you can probably go to find figures that have been gone from more traditional toy carrying stores long after they are not found there any longer. I was at a Walgreens recently that still had figures from the Transformers: Age of Extinction movie line, which ended like three years ago; and I was at a Walgreens shortly before that movie released that still had figures from one of the initial Revenge of the Fallen waves. Still at full price! Full Walgreens price too, which can sometimes be like $18. I never saw this Boba Fett in a store, and wound up getting it from Walgreens’ website with a discount in the winter of 2014. These days, the Walgreens exclusive is more in-store available, which reduces the “will I ever find one?” concerns. I saw entire endcaps of Emperor’s Wrath Darth Vaders, and the newest exclusive, the Titans Return Brainstorm, is apparently in no short supply. How many Marvel Legends Namors and Daredevils and Antmans have I seen, never moving from their shelf space.

Prototype Boba Fett looks good amongst Stormtroopers, and given his conceptual origin as super soldier/commando, that works really, really well. I’ve got mine on a shelf with Imperial Stormtroopers of various types, and Fett looks like just another one of the gang. Given that he is such a distinctive profile, this may sound real strange, but in all white armor as he is, Fett could pass as a Stormtrooper of some type, should you and your display want another, radically different Trooper unit. There is no perfect match amongst the Troopers for what Fett is wearing, but maybe he could be a fill in for some kind of Jump Trooper (from one of the video games, I think I remember . . .) or rapid strike kind of Trooper. It’s a fun idea to play around with, if you’re so inclined. Whatever you choose to do with him, he is a good looking figure, another solid Black Series offering.