Star Wars: The Black Series Kylos Ren (The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi)

 Here’s an opportunity to get another multiple figures all handled in one article, so let’s take advantage. Let’s take a look at both of the Black Series Kylo Ren figures, one from The Force Awakens, and the other from The Last Jedi.

 By now, we all should know Kylo Ren; and unless we’re just being difficult, we should also all know that he’s a pretty good antagonist for the New Trilogy. He was a whiney emo kid in Episode VII, but in Episode VIII, he’d rounded out into a pretty developed character, and seems to be the actual tortured soul in the Star Wars universe that Anakin Skywalker was meant to be in his extra poor appearances in the heinous Prequel Trilogy. The former Ben Solo, like the other members of the new cast, has gotten a new 6” figure for each movie, and they are two very different figures.

Star Wars: The Black Series: FN-2187 (Stormtrooper Finn)

 

A quandary: how does one, devoted solely to collecting Imperial-esque figures, incorporate a non-Imperial character into one’s collection without having to explain why there’s a deviation from the purely Imperial inclusions? 

A resolution: one waits for the Stormtrooper version of said character.

Not really screen accurate, but...

After seeing millions of jacket-wearing Finns plugging up store space for months, I found a Stormtrooper Finn, First Order designation FN-2187. I had to buy it, because he’s a Stormtrooper. This had been my justification since I’d first found out about the toy: I can just keep his helmet on, just like troopers Han and Luke. And, he also adds some context to my Poe, obtained thanks to his inclusion in a two pack. 

 

 

Star Wars: The Black Series: First Order Flametrooper

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.

Star Wars: The Black Series: First Order Snowtrooper

 One of my C2E2 grabs was the First Order Snowtrooper. There were a number of vendors at the show that had a wide assortment of Black Series figures, but only one that I saw who had this guy. I’m not entirely sure what wave this comes in, but I’ve yet to see one at local retail. That worries me quite a bit: I know that I’m behind in getting some write ups posted, and I’ve got some stuff that’s pretty much brand new, and also a few things that aren’t as new, but I’d never seen in a store before, and some of them are things that came out waves or years ago in their respective toylines. I’m not sure what has kept some of these things from getting on to store shelves, and it does make me worry when new waves of figures are supposed to be out at retail but all you find are the previous waves’ shelfwarmers, still hanging there. Long ago I found the Leader class Skywarp, right after he’d been released, in a store; now I’m so tired of seeing that Skywarp at every Target that I have to remind my Skywarp that I’m not mad at him, just the other ones. Overall I’ve had little trouble getting the Black Series figures that I really want even on the secondary market, but I’d much rather be able to find them at retail, the easy and fun way.

Some nice detail here to draw your eye a bit.

Anyway, I don’t know what wave this figure comes in, and the pegs at most stores now carry an assortment of the first, second, and First Order TIE Pilot wave, whichever one that was.

I’ve written on the Toys R Us exclusive Snowtrooper Commander already, so in terms of the base figure here, I’m not sure what else to say. The First Order Snowtrooper is the Commander figure minus shoulder pad, and

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens General Pre-release Thoughts

It has been over ten years since the last installment in the Star Wars saga. Tomorrow night, December 17^th, 2015, the seventh chapter will hit US theaters. My oft-written of wife got us tickets for the Thursday night opening, so we I don’t have to wait another excruciating day to see it. I’m dealing with a lot of feels right now about the new movie, and I wanted to take some time and try to deal with them.

Yet another important event in my life that I have been mercifully spared an emotional marathon of anticipation, thanks perversely to a chaotic and seemingly endless schedule of teaching and graded. This has been the story of my 2015: my wedding in May, my honeymoon in August, and now Star Wars in December. These things have all been waiting at the end of the semester, always just beyond reach, only accessibly by finishing the semester and all its related work, like some grotesque item in an RPG that is only attainable after hours and hours of level grinding. I’ve successfully completed all the levels, but then, I end up being beset by thoughts and feelings all at once. That’s hard to deal with.

Since I have been, there has been Star Wars. I truly believed that after 2005 and Revenge of the Sith there would be no further big screen Star Wars adventures, and when Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 and practically immediately announced plans for more movies I felt my heart beat hard. The teaser trailer a year ago literally brought a tear to my eye. I had to pull my car over this spring when the first actual trailer came out, Han telling Chewie they were home gave me a feeling that all was right with the world, and that all I needed to do was make it to December. I heard that day, the first time of many, if I’m being honest, my father’s voice in my head. He died in January of 2005, and never saw Revenge of the Sith. He would always say upon news of a new Star Wars movie “I hope I’m alive to see it.” This became something of an unofficial tagline for Star Wars in my still dealing with his death mind, and when that trailer came out in the spring, I heard my father say it again. Except this time, it was me saying it, a little shout out to my dad I guess, who is going to miss his second consecutive Star Wars movie. I’m getting a little teary even thinking about it.

The last time however, we knew what was going to happen. We knew it because it had to happen, because we knew what came next. 

We knew it in the same sense that you already know the happenings of Paradise Lost, because Milton’s genius was likewise working within a fictional universe that had to resolve itself in some very specific ways.

This time, we don’t know. There is nothing that has to line up or follow here; we are in undiscovered country. We have a new bunch of heroes, and a new villain, and some old favs most likely just stopping in for an appearance. For the record, I thought of the evil Luke idea months ago, but my wife thinks it’s terrible. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being true, and I gave a bunch of evidence from the Original Trilogy, verbatim naturally, to support my claim. I am a professor of rhetoric, after all. 

I realized that there is probably not a place to organically insert the Imperial March into this new movie, and that squeezed my heart like nothing I can describe. One of the most iconic themes in all of film, how could it not appear in the next movie? Then, recalling the rousing martial score that accompanied the Clones in Episodes II and III, I felt the dread being replaced with interest as to what the new Imperial March would end up sounding like. 

I’m worried because the prequels were so bad. Sure, we all tried to act like they were fine, and that they were all the things we loved about Star Wars and all that, but they weren’t any good, and they flat out contradicted things and changed things that formed the basis of our universe.

I felt myself lumping enormous pressure on Kylo Ren, he who must somehow fill the shoes of Darth Vader,  and I know that he can’t, but I’m willing to give him an honest try. I like a lot about him, provided all the things we’ve come to know remain true. I like that he’s basically a Sith/Empire sycophant, a guy who’s trying so hard to follow a legacy that he wills himself into being those  things he so adores. 

I’m worried that when the lights go down and the crawl starts I’m going to cry. I know, I know for a fact, I won’t be the only person doing that, because Star Wars, like Harry Potter, is something you grow up with. I learned lessons from the Original Trilogy that I still reflect on daily, and there are moral and philosophical questions from the prequels that my wife and I engage in probably once a week. I’ve been able to get my wife interested in Star Wars, where she previously had no connection at all. I suppose it’s fair, as all of my Harry Potter knowledge is thanks to her. This isn’t so much a concern as it is a certainty, I think: when the crawl starts, I’m going to cry. I’ll shed  few tears and hope my wife doesn’t notice, because she make fun of me afterwards, because that’s the correct way to respond to someone’s emotional investment. Just like when Snape died, and she was practically inconsolable, and I held her in the theater and whispered to her that it was alright, and have spent years telling her that her emotional response was and is perfectly fine and normal.

But that’s what Star Wars is. It’s something that you love and live and learn from. It’s something that you got (probably, depending on your age) from older people in your family, and we know, because we see it on social media all the time, it’s something that you give to others. To your kids and your loved ones. You grow up believing that you could be a Jedi if you train hard enough, only to have that dream dashed by idiotic, introduced and forgotten plot points like midicholorians. Star Wars as metaphor for American life: YOU can do anything, and be anyone. So long as you were born into it. Otherwise, you’ll spend the rest of your life working for a junk dealer, complaining about sand. It’s Star Wars as the teenage experience: you grow up idolizing the Jedi because of the tales of their heroism, only to learn that those tales were only true from certain points of view, those same points of view that determine and define good and evil. A person who loves you like a brother will leave you to die in agony rather than grant you a merciful death, only to show up at your awesome living space thirty something years later when your son who was born on that same day is only like 18 somehow, and make it seem like that thing that happened decades ago was all your fault, that it was your fault he left you to die screaming on a planet that was nothing but volcanoes. 

Leading up to the day of my wedding, I kept making these jokes about hoping my dad would show up as a Force ghost. On the day of my wedding, right before my wife walked down the isle, I looked around real quick to see if he did. He didn’t. I’m going to do the same thing in the theater tomorrow night, just like I did in 2005. I know he won’t be a Force ghost, and if he were, he’d probably steal my popcorn and make comments about the other people in the theater. But I got the idea to look for him, and somehow believe sincerely in my heart that he could appear as a Force ghost, from Star Wars, the movies that made the most impossible things seem like they were just a matter of focusing hard enough and reaching out with your feelings. If he were there, when the crawl started, my dad would shed a tear as well.

But tonight brings us finally to a new chapter. A new set of heroes and menace. For Generations, another chapter; a First Contact for a new generation; an Undiscovered Country for all, but, as we know thanks to the promise of continued movies, not a Final Frontier. As the theater descends Into Darkness, and we move Beyond the iconic crawl, and then long after the completion of our Voyage Home, having fought off the ever-present Nemesis of the internet and all its spoilers and theories, ourselves mounting our personal Insurrections filled with Searching and Wrath against out inborn fandom needs to know about our favorite galaxy far, far away, we will have a whole new Star Wars movie to talk about and add to the huge wealth of Star Wars. I can’t wait much longer, and fortunately, we don’t have to.

First star to the right, and straight on until morning.

Star Wars: The Black Series: Gauvian Enforcer

As I said back in my initial Black Series entry, my interest in the line has been limited to Imperial or Imperial-related figures. That allows me to get my Clones, and whatever First Order stuff catches my eye. This figure is, aside from the Riot Trooper/Poe Dameron two pack Poe, the first purchase that doesn’t meet that criteria. I found the look of this guy interesting from the first images of him that I’d seen, so it was a no-brainer that I’d add it to my Black Series to-buy list. My wife and I found him on a Target shelf, not far enough away from a guy who was looking at the 3.75” version to indicate that said man hadn’t picked this figure off the peg and set him down while perusing other figures. My wife said “Don’t you want this guy?” and picked the box up off the shelf; the man sort of turned and looked at us, first her and then me, and then back to the smaller figure in his hands. “Yes,” I said, and we walked away, receiving a slight type of side eye from the man left in the aisle. Oh, we had many laughs about that, my wife and I, and I christened her as a member of the Taking A Toy Away from Someone Club, and we saw that guy leaving the toy section a few minutes later, with a look that could only be described as disappointed loss on his face. 

This review is for you, whoever you are. 

Star Wars: The Black Series First Order Snowtrooper Commander

Following in the grand Imperial tradition of noting rank via shoulder pads, the First Order Snowtrooper Commander sports the orange. A Toys R Us exclusive, this is a slight variation of the eventual First Order Snowtrooper figure.

Star Wars: The Black Series: The Force Awakens Poe Dameron and First Order Riot Trooper

So, we all knew this was going to happen. It was foretold. 

This Black Series two pack, which I think is a Target exclusive, or at least, Target is the only place I’ve ever seen it, contains a Poe Dameron in civilian clothes and a First Order Trooper with some riot gear. I’ve been seeing this for like two months now, each time walking past it and muttering. “Why does there have to be another trooper in a pack that would force me to buy a non-Imperial figure? That would break my one Black Series rule. Why do I want that stupid trooper anyway? It’s just New Hat Syndrome, AGAIN.”  

Star Wars: The Black Series 6" First Order Special Forces TIE Fighter

Packaging for the TIE Fighter

The TIE itself, well, that’s a lot to take in. Like the pilot, the new TIE fighter is a much different version of the classic craft, modifying much of the original design in order to become a familiar-yet-different ship. Most of the differences are not really noticeable on first inspection, and in fact as I carried out the simple assembly steps, I found myself surprised again and again at the changes, none of which I’d noticed in any of the images of the new TIE, or in the toys I’d seen at the stores. I skipped buying a 3.75” TIE on Force Friday because I thought it was just an old one painted black, and with those big gear things on the insides of the wings. Boy was I missing a lot.

Star Wars: The Black Series 6" First Order TIE Elite Pilot

         The First Order Special Forces TIE Fighter comes with a pilot figure, basically a red striped version of the TIE Pilot from Episode VII, a 6” of which there will be later on this year. The First Order Pilot is a much different figure from the Original Trilogy TIE Pilot, which is something of a surprise to me. I’d basically expected the new pilot to be the old pilot body with the new helmet, and probably some new chest equipment; I’d never thought that a pilot, the most overlooked of the Imperial figures, to be so different from the old design, at least toy wise.
 
         If you took the 3.75" pilot, blew him up to 6" and gave him some good articulation and detail, you'd have this guy. 

Star Wars: The Black Series 6" General Thoughts

      My wife is an incredible person. Last year, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, she sort of prompted me to get in to the Star Wars Black Series figures, a line which I’d liked from afar, but was for some reason reluctant to start collecting. I knew why, or at least, I’ve always told myself that I knew why: we currently live in a one bedroom apartment, and we have a very finite space for our collections. We both collect things, so there are times where our displays run into each other, and I know, after being with her for years and going through a number of arrangements in terms of displayed toys, that too much stuff out and around starts to make her upset. I try to maintain a degree of restraint when I start putting my figures around the place, and for the most part, I guess I do a decent job because she only on very rare occasion tells me that I’m getting out of hand. That’s good, right? Happy wife, happy life and all that.

       My concern with the Black Series was that I liked what I’d seen of them, and I know myself and my collecting quite well. If I like something, I tend to commit full bore, at least in the beginning. I don’t even know how many Transformers lines I’d gone completist on, and let’s not bring up my 3.75” Clone trooper collection right now. If I got into the Black Series, I’d end up buying THE Black Series, and for a few reasons, I wasn’t ready to indulge that idea. If I just stuck to the Empire, I’d be doing ok, right?

      I’m new to the world of 6” figures, only having a few DC or Marvel figures in that size. My primary action figure size has always been the 3.75”: it’s what I had as a child, it’s what I continued to buy as an adult.

      I really like the Black Series for their visuals. They are basically 6” versions of the best era of Star Wars figures, that run from the Revenge of the Sith toyline until The Legacy Collection was coming to an end, I think around the middle of the run of the Clone Wars television show. The 6”ers are visually appealing, and accurate as all get out, with some really great articulation. Double jointed knees, elbows, ab crunches, ankle rockers, thigh, wrist and elbow swivels, and a ball jointed neck make for very poseable toys, and each one comes with some accessory which are generally real screen accurate. But that’s something that Star Wars figures have usually done very well, looking like they do in the movies. And, since the 3.75” figures are apparently going down the 5 points of articulation road for the foreseeable future, I needed a Star Wars toyline I could buy and feel good about, feel like I was getting my money’s worth for and not buying essentially because there was no other way to get Star Wars figures.

      SDCC 2015 brought the first images of toys from the new The Force Awakens line, including the Black Series. One of the reveals was a First Order TIE fighter large enough to hold two six inch pilots. How huge must such a vehicle be? One seeming limitation of the Black Series is that the figures are just too large to occupy vehicles, because the vehicles would have to be really large. The only vehicles to date are two versions of the Imperial speederbike, and, if you loosely define vehicles as any thing a figure can mount, then a Taun Taun. Any vehicle, in order to maintain the accuracy and a general sense of scale, the vehicles would have to be huge.

      I’ve been wanting to write about the Black Series figures for a while now, but as with all things Coffin-related, the time just hasn’t been available. I grabbed Kylo Ren on Force Friday, and thought “This is what I’ll do my first review on,” but that didn’t happen. Two weeks ago I got a Toys R Us exclusive First Order Snowtrooper Commander, and I thought, “This is what I’ll do my first review on.” But that didn’t happen.

      My first Black Series review needed to be something big, something really big.

     And then, it happened.

     Yesterday, my wife and I stopped at a Toys R Us. Toys R Us had the gigantic Black Series TIE Fighter. My wife, being an incredible person, gave me the coaxing I needed to buy it. The next few posts will be a review of the Black Series TIE Fighter.

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens Stormtroopers

Regular, Pilot and Flametroopers

                So Friday, September 4^th, 2015 was Force Friday, release day for the Star Wars Episode VII toys. My English professor side thinks that sentence was a complete mess.

                Anyway, despite being pretty broke, I was able to find a few of the new figures, both in the 3.75 scale as well as the 6” Black Series.

                As far as the 3.75s are concerned, they’re pretty much a mixed bag. My intentions regarding pretty much everything Episode VII toy related are just to pick up troopers, as I’ve got a love of Imperial army building and, as yet, I have no real interest in any of the new characters. While I’m sure that once I see the movie I’ll develop some affinity for Finn and Rey and whoever else, right now they’re simply “new Star Wars characters I know nothing about”. The last time I was excited about “new Star Wars characters I know nothing about”, it was Darth Maul, and, well, he wasn’t much more than a visual anyway.

                I picked up three First Order troopers: the TIE pilot, the Flametrooper, and a standard Stormtrooper. They all share the same basic five points of articulation body, with a few aesthetic details setting each one apart. The Stormtrooper has the fairly standard Stormtrooper body; the TIE pilot has his chest pack deal; the Flametrooper looks like he’s wearing something similar to the chestplate/bib that the Snowtroopers usually have, as if he were wearing a vest of some type, or like the chest protector a catcher wears in baseball. All three have shoulder, hip and head movement, but that’s all. Elbows and knees are gone, and apparently the main line of 3.75 figures won’t have them at all, but by now, this is a pretty well-known ‘development.’ The figures from the recent cartoon Rebels line are all these 5 poa toys as well, as have been Original Trilogy figures sold under that banner. Each comes with a weapon – a pistol for the pilot, a slight update of the classic Imperial blaster for the standard, and a flamethrower and backpack for the Flametrooper – as well as a piece for a buildable weapon made from pieces included with other figures in the wave.

                I have to be honest, I don’t care for these build a weapon things at all. The best Star Wars figure pack ins were from 2007-2009 when they would include the cardboard weapon locker full of random weapons. They were random assortments of weapons, and mostly Clone weapons at that, but they gave you an armory in each package and, as I army build, this was usually a good deal. This was a better approach than a buildable, because there was no need to buy a complete wave to complete the bonus toy. And let’s be honest, because we all know it: waves of Star Wars figures are less than 50 – 50 propositions. At best. There’s always one or two real good figures, one or two mehs or duds, and then one or two that you’ve already got, and are naturally actual characters, like Obi-Wan or Anakin Vader or Chewie. You know you never REALLY need multiples of those guys, ever. I own several, several Darth Vaders, and I’m fine with that. But I don’t see the point in army building a specific character other than him. But, you know. Whatever makes you happy. My point is that these build-a-somethings make you need to buy the entire wave or waves in order to do that, and that’s never really been something I’ve gone for. Not with comic figures, or Star Wars figures: I usually feel that I’m just going to end up with more figures that I don’t want than with any thing that I actually do. So it’s an easy pass.

                Anyway. The helmets for all three of these dudes are updates of the originals, giving them all a fresh yet familiar new look. The TIE pilot looks like the helmet includes a visor of some type, but it doesn’t move on this figure, so I honestly can’t say if that’s really the idea or if it is supposed to serve some other purpose.

                I am kind of conflicted here. I do like the figures, and they are pretty nice looking. I’d say they’re essentially on par with most of the trooper figures ranging from the Attack of the Clones line until The Clone Wars line. For a bunch of guys who are basically just white, the Imperial trooper has always benefit from the well-placed black paint in-between armor segments or on the fingers and such. These troopers are no exception there. Despite their lack of joints, they do manage to strike a very specific profile, due to the elbows and knees being molded at slight angles. And while that alone does not make up for actual posability, let me say this: I am 37 years old. I don’t think I had an Imperial solider who could bend his arms or legs until like 2003, when I was 25. As a kid, I was more than used to troopers having to fully extend their arms at 90 degree angles in order to fire their weapons at someone.

                My first impression of the troopers was a recollection of those old 70s/80s/90s figures, forever standing at stiff attention and performing simple physical actions like pointing and sitting with terribly uncomfortable looking rigidity. I think this lack of articulation sucks, but there is the Black Series, both in the 3.75 and 6” formats, so I feel less upset about these. It’s not ok, but it’s ok. I feel like the existence of the Black Series figures makes up for the cheaper nature of the standard size: at least there is a good line of figures on the market, so it’s not like I don’t have a choice of what to buy. And let me tell you, I have really come to love the 6” Black figures. But more on that some other time.

                These new figures are also a little smaller than an older 3.75” figure. Here’s the standard trooper next to a Cobra Viper from 2007. You can see that the new trooper is slighter and shorter. So all around, these figures are lacking a lot in comparison to other 3.75s. Now, I know, I’ve read it all over the Internet. Times have changed, toys are for children, think of the poor company and their profit margins, the price of oil. The simple fact here is that newer figures are smaller and generally less engineered than they were eight years ago. Whatever that means to you is fine, but I’m not really a fan of it. I don’t expect a 3.75 figure to have mind blowing articulation or anything, but knees and elbows are/should be standard. As is, we’re getting smaller, less engineered toys without even any real noticeable improvement in accessories to make up for it. Sure these things come with some build-a-weapon part, but that’s not doing it for me.

                All in all, while I do like these figures, I am not willing to commit to the entirety of the line, and will (maybe) only be picking up a few other troopers if/when I see them in stores. My wife has an interest in the Captain Phasma, as do I, and I’m interested in essentially any other troopers that get released. But a revelation Sunday evening about what the 6” Black Series holds for the Episode VII line – basically various troopers – has me cooling off on these smaller ones real fast. I don’t dislike these, I don’t feel robbed for having bought them. I just feel neutral, and that might actually be a worse response to a toy than disliking it.