Star Wars: The Black Series Praetorian Guards

 November was the busiest month in the lifespan of the Coffin. Not sure if December can match it, but there are some pressing matters of The Last Jedi releasing very soon, and there being some figures from said toyline that need to be dealt with, preferably before seeing the movie.

One of these figures is the First Order Praetorian Guard, already touched on in the Elite Guards Exclusive four pack, and presented here in two additional parts, one of them an exclusive. To date, there have been three versions of the Praetorian Guard released, and only one of them has been released to mass retail. At first glance, the differences are merely found in the accessories each one carries; but upon further inspection, all three have different helmets, as well as different accessories. Beyond that, they are the same figures.

The general, mass retail-available Guard comes with a glaive style weapon. It can be held in one or both hands, although the difficulty with bending the arms on this figure makes two-handing the part bend the shaft of it. This is a scary situation, as the shaft is soft plastic, similar to the shaft of the weapon the First Order Execution comes with, and so slight bending is unavoidable. The staff is also too short to reach the floor in front of the figure.  The Guard has a helmet that is something like a fencer’s mask, kind of but not really. Another issue with this figure in general is that the hands are closed a little bit too much, making inserting the weapons cause extra force be applied to the fingers and, specifically, thumb, which causes concerns of breaking the hand. The shaft is too large to simply slip into the open top of the hand, and the fingers all flex too much to offer any resistance to the piece. Essentially, the fingers need to be pulled away from the palm a little bit with a fingernail as the shaft of the weapon is being inserted, and then a similar fingernail adjustment of the thumb is needed to finish off the operation.

This is something that effects all three of the Guard figures, as is their terrible elbow joint. Neither of these figures can bend at the elbow with any degree of ease, as there is a moving armor segment that seems to be directly over the elbow joint. Bending the elbow causes it to conflict with that single armor part, which adds so much resistance that it stokes fears of breaking the elbow at the joint. Apparently, and to not any real great improvement, the forearm can be pulled slightly away from the rest of the arm, and this will provide just enough of a gap that the elbow can bend a little. But again, it doesn’t do much. There are photos online of this figure two-handing a weapon directly in front of itself, something that requires 90-degree elbow bends, but there has been no success in getting any of these three copies of it to do anything even close to that. This severely limits the posing these figures can do.  In the case of the standard retail version, this lack of arm movement and the shortness of the staff of its weapon means that the weapon can really only be held slightly bent in two hands, or perpendicular to the ground, with arm flat against the body, or straight out ahead of the figure, hovering off the floor at the bottom. Out of these limited choices, the best looking is the one that bends the plastic. Not much of a win there.

Both of these versions of the Guard have a full plastic skirt, not the cloth one of the four pack version, which gets in the way of leg posing. The legs can move outward to the sides pretty well, but forward and backward motion is impeded. The helmets are slightly different, the retail version coming to more of a point at the face while the Amazon exclusive is a bit rounder, but the differences are not apparent unless one is looking closely. Nothing as radical as the helmet of the four pack version, at least. It makes you wonder if these Guards are not all “just” guards, the way the Imperial Guards were, but rather if they are different characters underneath, differentiated by their helmets and weapons because they have different specialties or combat styles. Part of the fun of waiting for the next Star Wars movie is that this kind of guessing is allowed: we don’t know yet, so they could be anything. They could also be simply background decorations. Who can say?

The other version of the Guard, the Amazon exclusive one, comes with two weapons: a long bladed pike and a rather interesting sword which looks to be made up of three individual metallic rods, or like a cat-o-nine-tails all stiffened out and bundled together. And only three tails, but details. The sheer length of the pike allows the Guard to wield it with two hands better than the regular version, and the figure does look kinda good just standing there with the butt of the staff resting on the ground. This figure has more of a medieval knight styled helmet, and it is probably the best of the three. It is similar enough to the mass retail helmet that, at least on quick glance, the two look the same. It is nice having some difference between them, as otherwise, there really is no discernible difference between exclusive and regular.

But the Amazon Guard has the best accessories. Not only because there are two accessories, but because they are of higher quality. The sword does have an unusual design, and it makes one wonder if there is some in-movie reason for this that has just, until now, been hidden from the public. It is also generally thought-provoking, as one wonders why a three-part blade would be needed, or what its advantages would be. The piece is not a sword in a blade sense, as it does not at all look like the kind of slashing or cutting instrument; rather it looks like a bludgeoning or piercing tool, like a collection of lead pipes brought together to a point that may then be sharpened. The pike, or heavy blade as the package calls it, looks cool as well, having a lot of detailing on the weapon. The hilt is molded and there are ridged on the shaft; it’s not just a plastic stick with a blade at the top. In fairness, the regular Guard has a molded weapon as well, with a nice long blade at the top. These are definitely some top-tier sword kiosk at the mall collectors’ pieces here.

You can see the helmet differences in this picture a bit. The Amazon Guard on the left and the standard retail Guard on the right. Even in person, the differences are easily overlooked if you don't already know that the helmets are different. But then, when you see them, you wonder how you could have missed such different heads before.

So, which one(s) to add to a collection. Frankly, army building or having multiple troopers is not something that the Coffin shies away from, provided there is difference enough to warrant rebuying. With the Praetorian Guards, there is not enough difference to really make these two feel necessary. At least between these two and the Elite Guard version, there are more than what amounts to be different weapons, and so that Guard feels different enough from these two to warrant the other. But here, they are just too similar. There is a bitterness felt by owning both, when in truth, the Amazon exclusive Guard is the better of the two, and the one that would be recommended if you we really looking for a Praetorian Guard to add to your line up, but only wanted one. Honestly, it is the two accessories that push that one over the top. By itself, the mass retail version is fine, but next to the Amazon exclusive, it just seems dull. It may be a case of, having obtained the Amazon one first, and thus experiencing the best version of the figure before the standard one, the well was poisoned, but the Amazon Guard is better than the four pack Guard as well, so this must not be a simple case of sequential preference. These two are the same figure, minor details notwithstanding, but the accessories of the Amazon version offer more. It may be the case that the standard Guard is too much like the Amazon one, thus making it feel redundant. In truth, the standard Guard was purchased at a comic shop, having been the first and only example of it found in the wild, and so it cost a few dollars more than it would have at a big box retailer, and that may be adding to a general feeling of blah concerning the figure. There is also the fact that this is a new design, from a yet-unseen movie, and it is clearly trying to evoke the Imperial Guard that has been known for like 35 years at this point, but is different enough that it presents a total unknown. The Brand doesn’t let this stop anything though, as the Praetorian Guard is popping up on all manner of marketing things for The Last Jedi. In two weeks, we will know more about the characters that these figures represent, and who knows what the reaction will be coming home from the theater and seeing all three of them standing on a shelf. Could be pretty positive.

What the real cause is is uncertain. What is certain is the idea that the two figures make each other seem unnecessary, and the Amazon one does more to overcome that sense of unnecessity more than the standard retail variant does. But in general, the lack of arm bending is a real, serious flaw in this figure. The other things, like the too tiny hands, happen with figures, so it is only a matter of time before one encounters bad hands. But the elbows are just unacceptable on this guy. The more exposure to this figure is had, the less and less tolerable the elbows are. Some investigations online have yielded some possibilities to fix the issue, but so far, none of them have worked.

Regardless, if only one of these Praetorian Guards fits in your collection, make it the Amazon exclusive version.