Mace Windu/Battle Droid Commander - LC - Geonosis Arena Showdown (3 of 6)

The Jedi Knights rush to Geonosis to rescue Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padmé from execution. The Jedi brandish their lightsabers against the Geonosian warriors and the massive army of battle droids, super battle droids and droidekas. All hope seems lost that any Jedi will survive this battle, then Yoda arrives with an army of clone troopers. Although many Jedi are lost that day, others survive this climactic battle that ushers in the Clone Wars.

One thing we can definitely say about Mace Windu is that his appearance remained relatively the same throughout the Prequel Trilogy. So it would make sense for Hasbro to reuse the better-than-good 2007 TAC Mace Windu (30 06) action figure sculpt (based on his Episode III look) for this Geonosis Arena Showdown two-pack. And because he seemingly remains so similar from film to film, you may overlook the fact that this figure is completely repainted from the 2007 version. Not only is his skin tone, boots and belt significantly darker, his tan Jedi robes are much lighter. The last noticeable difference (besides his outer cloak missing) is that his undershirt went from yellow on the original figure to white on this figure. This figure fits our definition of new enough and fans of repaints should count your selves lucky that Hasbro humored us by revisiting his original paint applications. This was a treat and gave us extra reason to purchase this set for something else besides the awesome Battle Droid Commander (more on this droid in a moment). You already know that Mace Windu is super-articulated and that his leg movement is inhibited by his inflexible long lower front robes. Why Hasbro used such a tough plastic here surprises us, but if you just want Mace to stand around, then this is the perfect action figure for you. His hip joints basically are unable to move at all, although there is very nice articulation in the knees and ankles. Unfortunately, we would like to point out that mace will not be able to be placed in any pose you desire. Despite this problem, Mace is still one of the finer sculpts we have ever seen and he has so many other positives that very much outweigh his limitations.

You may already know by now that the reason to buy this set is for the incredibly fantastic Battle Droid Commander. He is everything and more you have already heard and then some! Surprisingly tall, he exceeds Mace Windu in height and is colored jaw-dropping perfectly! We are not sure if he is a bit out of scale, but the droid is excellent in every way and we are completely blown away at Hasbro's execution of it. The maroon colored metal is flawlessly interpreted to the images we saw on screen and Hasbro gave it one of the best final washes we have ever made available on an action figure. We would like to quickly acknowledge two very small issues on the figure and that would be his eyes (which are painted on too big) and his loose joints. The joints are not entirely loose, but we wish they had a little more resistance than what the final product has given us. Battle Droid Commander has 12 points of articulation including ball head joint, sliding neck joint, two shoulder joints, two elbow joints, and two of each of hips, knee and ankle joints. On top of all this marvelous articulation, the Battle Droid Commander has an accurate wide-legged stance that allows his to be posed in an infinite variety of ways and looks exceptionally stunning as a result. He also correctly doesn't come with a backpack, but rather just the antenna and his hands have been designed to fit his droid blaster very well. Bottom line: Battle Droid Commander is an absolutely amazing battle droid and is the best sculpt to date we have yet to receive. If Hasbro can apply fixes to the photoreceptors (reduce size) and joints (tighten them up a bit) the action figure will be without any faults. Keep in mind that since this battle droid has articulated ankles, it makes posing it that much easier. This of course makes us extremely happy. We didn't realize how sorely we missed not having them. This figure proves that there is no other way to go.

We are very curious to know if and how (and even when) Hasbro will rerelease the Battle Droid Commander into the line for army building purposes. Likely to be a hot figure for multiple sales per collector, we hope we don't have to wait too long to buy more. And we are pretty sure the days of two battle droids per basic figure are gone. If Hasbro spent this much time, money and effort on a new sculpt, they may need to amortize their tooling costs with as many individual carded figure sales as they can get. But for the time being, that shouldn't matter. The TARGET exclusive sets are gorgeous and provide us with a nice mini collection of various Jedi in addition to a plethora of Separatists. The whole package is stunning and we don't expect too many of you to pass on these. Like many other exclusives this year, these too seem to be at the moment in limited supply. We have heard whispers of stores only getting one or two cases each. And since one box only contains one complete set, one or two individual collectors could wipe the store clean. Hopefully these exclusives will pick up in availability and we hope that Hasbro affords many of us the opportunity to get them. Hopefully they won't be cherry-picked like the Droid Factory sets because each set has its own reason that warrants a purchase. Here in this set you get two reasons. Again, the Geonosis Arena Showdown sets are so awesome and we don't believe collectors will have a short attention span with them. They supersede the Order 66 sets by a landslide. They are that good! You should definitely heed our advice.