Senate Commando Captain And Senate Commando - TCW [SOTDS] - Two-Packs (Exclusive)

A Senate Commando captain and his elite commando team confront suspicious arrivals to the Senate building. The captain and troopers rush to the platform where Cad Bane has landed without permission. They are prepared for a fight if necessary, but are taken by surprise when Bane springs his trap.

As we dig our heels deep into the Season 3 line look of The Clone Wars, we can make a strong assertion that Hasbro has a short attention span when it comes to the formats the use for their exclusive. In 2009, they briefly resurrected the "Screen Scenes" line (and only released two products in that line) and then they tried an "Under The Helmet" series which lasted just as long as the Screen Scene line did. The sets in general didn't do well and after Walmart gave up on them, Hasbro somehow tricked Toys R Us to try to sell (for significantly more than how much Walmart tried to clearance them out). But we digress. Hasbro must like the two-pack format (especially in 2010). Not only are collectors of realistic figures getting graced with exclusive two-packs (like the Legacy Of The Dark Side sets), but two-packs are back for collectors of The Clone Wars line. And for 2010, TARGET gets two great two-packs that are destined to be surefire hits for all. The Senate Commando Captain and Senate Commando two-pack will absolutely be the hot set of the two (so far - we're not sure at the moment if more are on the way) as it gives collectors tow unique figures available nowhere else. (Interestingly, the Cad Bane And IG-86 set gives collectors essentially nothing new at all.)

Both the Senate Commando Captain and the Senate Commando both build off of the totally amazing Captain Argyus. However, Hasbro changed the blue they used on Argyus and made it significantly darker here and we think the change in color was a very wise choice. There are of course quite a few other differences too, but we think you catch our drift here. Captain Argyus came with a removable helmet, but these two commandos do not have this feature. And we actually love this mystery about them so much and prefer that they don't have removable helmet features! The Senate Commando Captain has beautiful patterns on his armor a la Pennsylvania-Dutch art and it looks simply spectacular. And it's quite impressive how evenly and balanced Hasbro got it on a figure with this much articulation. As far as how these two action figures look together, they are really quite the antithesis of each other. The Senate Commando has a rather blandly decorated armor system in comparison. Essentially solid blue, the Senate Commando seems so anonymous and we just love how this gives his character an edge. But the two figures complement each other well and it certainly makes it easier to determine who is in charge! Well, we surmise this at best!

This set retails for $14.99 and we think it is on the high side honestly. And we still aren't understanding the need for this two-pack format. It seems rather unnecessary the more we think about it. Had Hasbro added two more regular Senate Commando action figures into the mix, they could have made an incredible army-building Battle Packs set (which we assume would have made collectors a lot happier.) And that would have meant that we would have paid $6.25 per figure for a $24.99 Battle Packs set with four figures instead of this two-pack line which is overcharging us by $1.50 per figure (or $7.50 each). So why did they spend the time and money to make new packaging and brainstorm a new lineup when there is really no need to do so? We're not entirely sure. But we do love what they done and hope that they can bring it back full circle and just worry about making exclusive Battle Packs sets. Regardless, this is a fantastic two-pack and we think that if Hasbro can extrapolate upon it more and develop multipacks with more product that this would be the most ideal and satisfying way to go. Once again, this will be the hot set of the two, so don't wait if you see it. Hopefully it will do well enough for Hasbro to bring us a few more cool ones down the road!