Rey And BB-8 - Elite Series

Rey: Rey is a resilient survivor, a scavenger toughened by a lifetime of dealing with the cutthroats of the harsh desert world of Jakku.

BB-8: BB-8 is the spherical, loyal astromech droid of the Resistance pilot Poe Dameron.

Star Wars collectors are making too many comparisons between The Black Series [Phase III] 6” figures and Disney’s Elite Series Die Cast figures. They’re apples and oranges for many reasons. First, they fall into two completely different scales. And second, the mediums used to make these figures couldn’t be further from each other. The Black Series 6” figures are meant to be toys. But the Elite Series line is meant to cater to adult collectors. And ultimately, it feels that while great strides have been made to make the Elite Series an affordable premium collectible, the figures fall a little short. It’s not like they can’t correct the issues, it’s just if they will or won’t at this point. On Force Friday, the Disney Store released a nice introductory collection of Elite Series figures with characters all stemming from The Force Awakens. They became an instant hit. For the most part, this line warranted the praise it received. Disney honestly created excellent figures with authentic likenesses and beautiful designs, but that wasn’t enough to make everyone else jump on board. It’s old news now, but aesthetically, the figures “fail” because of the way they’ve been constructed. Obtrusive holes drilled into the backs of these figures to allow for the screws that bind the parts together were left unfilled, so your figures sort of look like they’ve been attacked from behind with a shotgun. Simple rubber plugs would solve these grating issues seamlessly. We hope Disney decides to work that into future figures.

The release of Rey And BB-8 may be one of the better highlights of the initial offerings. But we’re stuck on one major point with Rey. Although she has a beautifully designed body, outfit and comes with a nice dose of accessories, we’re really struggling with her likeness. We know that human likenesses are hard to achieve on any scale, but we imagine it’s even more difficult on metal. But Rey looks like a painted porcelain doll, than the hero we’ll see in The Force Awakens in December 2015. We’re quite perplexed over all the raving collectors are making about her head sculpt and likeness. For us, 2015’s TBS [P3] Rey (Jakku) & BB-8 (02) has a significantly better head sculpt. In fact, it is so much better in realism and accuracy that it’s not even worth debating. Besides, we shouldn’t even be comparing the two of them anyhow because they’re not made to be compared. We’re falling into the same trap, too. It’s just that everyone else has made these comparisons and it truly trips us up. Aside from wishing that Disney gave her a much better head sculpt/paint job on the head, Rey is a pure delight. She doesn’t come with a wealth of articulation, but her accessories interact quite well with her. Her backpack can be added and removed. She can hold her staff. And she comes with an accessory we haven’t seen on any other collectible version of her: a hand blaster (which she can hold quite well too). She can be posed in a variety of ways despite not having complete ball-jointed articulation. Oh, and she does struggle with balancing a little bit.

The shining star of this release however is BB-8. This little droid, which looks sizeable next to Rey, has been magnificently sculpted and painted. This droid comes only with a swivel head joint and has great difficulty balancing in an upright position, but we can’t deny just how remarkable the final figure turned out. The paint operations are extremely well done. We feel the final wash is a bit too yellowed when looking at stills from the film, but it certainly isn’t enough to prevent us from giving accolades to the designers and painters who made the final figure a wonderful reality. Both figures can share the included Star Wars display stand. It provides enough support to Rey for standing. She comes with one peg-hole in her right foot (BB-8 comes with none) and you can pose her in a quasi action stance to recreate some sort of scene from Episode VII. But it is more likely that most collectors will keep her forever sealed in the package and miss out on touching and holding this nice collectible and really understanding what went into this collectible figure. Rey And BB-8 comes with a great deal of “stuff” and we’re impressed that the Disney Store has managed to keep the MSRP in line with the rest of the figures in the Elite Series collection. If they could just find a way to seamlessly integrate out the holes on the backs of these figures, and perhaps work on improving how head sculpts are approached, these may resonate with a larger group of collectors. Disney seems to have big plans with this line. It will be interesting to see where it goes.