Dengar - Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figures

Special thanks to Gentle Giant Ltd. for providing us with this early sample.

The Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figures line to proceeding fast and furious. Gentle Giant Ltd. has already knocked out all of the characters from the 21-backs category, and now they’ve moving briskly into the figures themed from The Empire Strikes Back. They smartly kicked off knocking out the bounty hunters first. Now Dengar gets realized in this super-sized scale and just as you’d imagine, the figure came out without any surprises. Gentle Giant Ltd. has actually scanned mint condition 3.75” Kenner original Star Wars action figures. They then took these digital scans and upped them to jumbo one-sixth scale. Why another licensee didn’t think of this clever collectible property is beyond us. Because these are designed solely for vintage lovers and vintage lovers only. He comes just as he did in the 1981 phase of the line, complete will ill-fitted blaster rifle. He’s got everything from a cranky expression to hexagonal foot peg holes. Not a detail was missed.

Even the packaging is retro-inspired. Gentle Giant Ltd. designed a skewed but familiar version of the original Kenner card backs and the large action figure is housed on it in a re-sealable clamshell. Officially referred to by the Star Wars collecting community as a 45-back, Gentle Giant Ltd. has recreated the back portion of the card back in this very fashion. Of course, they haven’t yet produced 45 Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figures yet as of Dengar’s release (although they’re awfully close now), but you wouldn’t know without counting because it looks just like the packaging we found in stores when we were kids. They have done a fantastic job on both the packaging and the figure and adult collectors will find favor with the entire release. It’s nostalgically relevant as it is awesome and this type of release shows that Gentle Giant Ltd. clearly knows what the adult Star Wars collector wants. If you focus on any high-end collectible line, be sure it this one.

Dengar has been replicated in large scale very well. You’ll remember every last detail about him, and you’ll probably see things on the 12” figure that you never knew existed thanks to the much bigger scale. If we had to find fault with Dengar, we would have to say that his final paint job comes across a little too pale. Star Wars action figure historians will tell you that the 1981 Kenner Dengar figure had some variations, especially in the way the face was painted. Some samples have a brighter yellowish hue, while other have a more normal and calmer flesh tone. The Jumbo versions favors the more normal coloring of the latter style, but we still feel the applications were a bit too light. The blaster rifle he comes with doesn’t necessarily fit into his right hand all that well. In fact, we damaged the paint on the hand trying to force it in the hand, something that happens much too often in this line. But other than that we’re pretty impressed with how he came out. We love this line. We wish it was cheaper so more collectors could hop on board.