Clone Trooper [Lieutenant] - CW [A] - Basic

Through the creative vision of Lucasfilm Ltd. and the Cartoon Network, the Clone Wars are brought to life in an exciting new series of short animated chapters. A unique animation style captures the drama of this epic period in galactic history along with its outstanding heroes and adversaries. Noble Jedi warriors lead Clone Troopers into battle against the evil Separatist forces and their droid armies. Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda and their comrades struggle against the rising power of the dark side and confront personal challenges against a backdrop of war-torn planets.

After two great waves of Clone Wars [Animated] action figures released as TARGET exclusives, the success of them prompted Hasbro to release more as general marketplace releases. They re=released some of the most popular, but they also added al-new sculpts and tweaked others to bring us new characters. Interestingly, Hasbro created three more characters out of 2004’s CW [A] Clone Trooper figure by adding a different color paint to each of them. Now we have the Clone Trooper [Captain], the Clone Trooper [Commander] and the Clone Trooper [Lieutenant] to add to the ranks of the Clone Wars [Animated] line. Ironically, none of these characters appear in the micro-series, so these at best should just be considered extras. The great news is that they fit well into the already established line and they help to enhance various displays and dioramas in an army building fashion. But be careful when choosing your samples because the paint operations are all over the map and it took us a long time to find copies of our own that satisfied our stringent standards. It is possible, but it has been aggravating as well. Just be forewarned that you’ll have to expend extra energy here.

Let’s back up a bit. Once the announcement of an Clone Wars [Animated] line was made public, collectors began to fixate on how the Clone Troopers from the line would appear as action figures. It’s no secret that the figures in the Clone Wars [Animated] line come with very little articulation, but it sadly is true that the Clone Trooper action figures in this line come with the least! Although the figures in this line possess great sculpts through an animated interpretation, the Clone Wars [Animated] Clone Trooper may be the one disappointment. The figure’s sculpt can only be articulated in a few different ways. As the most “active” characters in the entire Cartoon Network micro-series, it’s a shame that Hasbro didn’t get a little more generous and add a few more extra points of articulation to these action figures. But then again, this isn’t an action figure line about articulation. This line is about translating beautiful animation into three dimensional miniature plastic statues to forever immortalize one of the greatest multimedia events to ever grace the Star Wars saga. So, it’s a “take it or leave it” basic figure line. What will you choose? The Tartakovsky Clone Wars micro-series was flawless in its vision, and the series has picked up fans from all over the world.

The various Clone Trooper officers do have excellent and screen accurate sculpts. Well, everything except for their color flashes that is. The officer rankings are strictly a Hasbro concept in this line as they don’t appear in the television show. Once you do find a great painted sample, the black paint used to decorate the visor (and a few other parts on the figure) at times has been over-sprayed and leaks onto the white portions around the visor. Also, with a clean white body it’s probably easy for the figure to pick up some “artifacts” that adulterate the clean white canvas of the figure. Sadly that’s what can be seen our on samples too. You will find some splotches here and there which shouldn’t be part of these figures but they’ve affixed themselves to the white armor in different spots. This is sometimes expected and white figures are definitely hard to keep clean. But maybe they shouldn’t have these issues right out of the gate. These Clone Trooper officers come with nicely detailed DC-15 blaster rifles. These guns can be only be held in these figures’ left hands because their right hands are in fisted positions. Also included is an action figure display stand. It’s more of a novelty item but not really that helpful for holding up these action figures.