How Durable Are Black Series Figures And Accessories?

Some Black Series figures are prone to falling over. This is just a fact of life. You learn to live with it. But now, in the span of just a few weeks, something broke when two figures decided to take a nap. Is that a common occurence or am I just very unlucky? What are your experiences? Click through for more!

About to break

A few weeks ago General Grievous fell over in my IKEA Detolf cabinet. Anyone who owns a Black Series General Grievous figure will probably not be surprised to hear this. However, he knocked over several other figures as well. One of them the original Revenge of the Sith Obi-Wan figure originally released in the phase I packaging, which I bought a little more than seven years ago.

Obi-Wan didn’t really fall, he merely tipped over, leaning against the glass door of the Detolf cabinet. But when I tried to pose the figures murdered by Grievous I saw that Obi-Wan’s lightsaber blade had broken off at the peg even though very little force had acted on it. How is that even possible? Obi-Wan didn’t shelf dive, he didn’t even really fall over, he was merely knocked out of balance a bit. But when the lightsaber blade made contact with the glass door it snapped at the peg.

And then late last night Obi-Wan’s best friend ever, Anakin, also about seven years old, decided he’s had enough and fell over. He does that from time to time. It’s a serious condition but the doctors can do nothing about it. When I went to the cabinet to revive him I saw that his lightsaber blade was broken as well… it had also snapped at the peg that connects it to the hilt. How annoying!

I used a knife to trim the end of the broken blades, so they fit into the (very rubbery) hilts again. The blades are somewhat shorter now (both are missing the pegs of  course), but at least the lightsabers have their blades again.

But  I wonder, has the plastic used for the lightsaber blades become so brittle over time that it breaks very easily now? Will more things break when one of the figures will inevitably fall over?

Have you experienced any of this with your (Black Series) figures / accessories? Other than some slight yellowing of both Stormtrooper Disguise Han & Luke’s torso armor (even though both were never exposed to direct sunlight) which was the only visible change so far, everything still more or less looks like on day 1 (okay, Maul’s lightsaber hilt is very crooked because it’s so rubbery), but two broken lightsaber blades in such a short time – without even any strong forces acting on them – makes me wonder how durable the plastic is Hasbro uses for the figures and accessories and if more breakage will occur in the future as the plastic is aging.

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