Last of the three Disney Store exclusive Black Series figures, Zuckuss is the
first actual new one, and the first one that adds actual value to your
collection. Zuckuss is the last of the Empire
Strikes Back bounty hunters, and with the first batch Archive series figures just about to be delivered, this means that
you could finally complete your bounty hunter collection.
In order to talk about this figure, it’s important that we
remember an idea that’s been floated around the Coffin for quite some time now,
and that is that sometimes, figures are better as part of a team picture than
they are individually, and that logic is 100% applicable to Zuckuss here. On
his own, this figure is not really much to get worked up over. The head sculpt
is nice and insectoid, and the figure comes with a unique blaster, which on its
own is usually pretty cool. There is a lush mythology and cast in the Star Wars
universe, and it’s easy to think of figure accessories as “just” parts for that
figure; but in reality, or the reality of a fictional universe, they are artifacts of that fictional universe. Just like in our reality, not all
accessories are the same, and the world has a vast array of weaponry and such
in it, as sad as that is on a metaphysical level to say. But aside from the
head and blaster, Zuckuss is not much to crow about.
The figure is short, which is accurate to his brief
on-screen appearance, but this means the arms are stubby, and the full length
garment Zuckuss wears obscures the entirety of the figure to the degree that
this is basically a head with a robe attached. The hands are three fingered and
alien, like in an extraterrestrial sense, but they struggle to grasp the blaster,
really only allowing for Zuckuss to hold it across the body in front, as
Zuckuss does in Empire. Fine, fine,
but just another thing that limits this figure. The body contains the standard
array of Black Series joints, but
again, the robe severely limits the ability to use them, at very least use them
in any appreciable manner. So, Zuckuss stands there. And that’s about all
Zuckuss does. How well Zuckuss looks doing this is even up for debate, as the
color scheme of the figure is such an uninspiring brown and tan that there’s
not much to see, really. But, obviously, that’s an issue of initial character
design, and not anything that the Black Series
had control over, so. This is a nice figure, but not a very interesting or
exciting one. At the very least, it is something new, unlike its Disney Store
mates, and that feels like high praise considering how difficult it is for me
to say almost anything about the toy.
Zuckuss honestly looks like a cult member, like a Cthulhu
cultist from the works of Lovecraft.
Zuckuss is a figure akin to 4-LOM from a few waves ago, in
that the idea of Zuckuss is more enticing than actually holding Zuckuss in your
hand. Like 4-LOM the poseability and motion are impeded, but Zuckuss is going
to be necessary if your goal is to assemble a full bounty hunter team. How important
that is to your collection drives how important it is that you track down a Zuckuss.
Like 4-LOM, the excitement of Zuckuss dissipates pretty fast, and that sours
his status as a store exclusive. Part of the same batch of exclusives as the
ultimately underwhelming battle damage Captain Phasma and the completely
underwhelming battle damage Stormtrooper, there’s not much to Zuckuss to
sustain the figure on its own. But, once again, this is the last member of the
group photo, and that group photo is a really good one. Even Dengar is a more
interesting figure than Zuckuss, and as nice as Dengar is, he also fails to
spark prolonged joy, to latch on to an Internet phrase popular at the moment. Or
at least it was popular, last week.
As of now, I have not amassed my bounty hunter shelf, as my Archive figures were just obtained late
last week and time has not permitted me to take pictures of them. But a friend
of mine has sent me the group shot of the Empire
bounty hunters, and they all do look very good together. I’ve long been
talking about this line working in pieces to complete a certain group or scene
from the franchise, and Zuckuss is the end point of that, even if a bit of a
bland end point. Thanks to Archive bringing
me another chance at IG-88, Bossk, and Boba Fett (for not $80 –mr), I am real
glad to have Zuckuss and 4-LOM and Dengar. Back at the beginning of the
Transformers Combiner Wars line,
combiner teams were split up among the first two waves of figures because the
thought was people wouldn’t want to buy one whole set at a time, and would
rather get a few Aerialbots and a Stunticon for variety. Subsequent waves would
ignore this, as Combaticons and Protectobots appeared all at once. That may
have made completing Superion and Menasor tedious, but with the bounty hunters
here, spreading them out and releasing them slowly worked out well, I’d say. I did
come to them late in the game, but I was far more interested in completing the
set once I knew there was going to be a full set than I would have been had I just
wandered into the toy section of a store and found all six of them on the pegs.
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