Bossk (Bounty Hunter) - Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figures

Now that Gentle Giant Ltd. has completed the original 21-backs of Kenner figures in the jumbo scale, they’re plowing right into characters based on The Empire Strikes Back. As with any licensee wise decision, some of the earliest character focus in on the bounty hunters. Bossk (Bounty Hunter) is first up and after Boba Fett, he may just be the most popular scum and villainy in Episode V. It’s wonderful to see the Trandoshan in this line, but the way this 12” figure was approached makes us truly question how accurately these figures are being rendered in larger scale. We’ll get to all those points in a moment, but we are suddenly feeling differently about the authenticity of these characters and are beginning to believe that a artistic license is taking the reigns to perhaps make these figures look better while jeopardizing their beautifully simple classic qualities. We hope that Gentle Giant Ltd. returns to what made this line so special: simplistic sculpts with flawless nostalgic accuracy. In fact, even the black "plus sign" on his chest looks more like he is a follower of Jesus Christ instead of slime from the galaxy on this larger scale interpretation.

Gentle Giant Ltd. did do a great job on the total package of Bossk (Bounty Hunter). He looks fantastic packaged and the vintage The Empire Strikes Back line look is fantastic. While this is a much bigger scale and Gentle Giant needed to find ways to revise the original card back to fit these bigger figures, they remained as faithful as possible to make the release as meaningful as possible. We always think they succeed well in these areas. The paint job on Bossk (Bounty Hunter) is excellent. All of the colors have been well-matched for the most part. Aside from a few slight differences in some shades, they’ve really done an excellent job matching it to the original 1980 Kenner figure. He comes complete with an up-scaled version of the blaster rifle of the original figure too. It sadly fits a bit too loosely in his right hand, but we’ll take loose fitting weapons in this line as compared to the one that barely fit in these figures’ hands because they’re too bit (or tight). That causes damage very easily to the hands in this line. Thankfully that’s not an issue here, but it is annoying when a figure’s weapon always falls out of its hands no matter what you do to prevent it.

So what’s the issue with the Bossk (Bounty Hunter) Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figure? Well, Gentle Giant Ltd. took too much artistic license with the portrait. The Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figures are suppose to be digitally scaled from mint 3.75” scaled Kenner figures. If that’s the case, then Bossk’s head sculpt wouldn’t look the way it does on the Jumbo figure. There are way too make scales, bumps and grooves, all of which weren’t present on the 1980 action figure. Clearly, a digital artist took the reigns over what the computer was digitally scanning to make it, well, look better. But that’s not what this line is about, is it? We want Gentle Giant Ltd. to capture the uninfluenced and unadulterated versions of the classic figures as purely as possible. So, from that point of view we are a bit disappointed. We understand the need to tweak things, but this is a line where they have to leave things like that alone. Other than that we’re happy with the release. From the mismatched color of the arms and feet against the head, to the grimace on his face, this is another decent addition to the Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figures collection. They just have to return to the roots of the purpose of this line a bit more.