Hammerhead - Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figures

It’s more than fair to assess at this point that Gentle Giant Ltd.’s Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figures line has kicked into high gear. Appearing to test the market with the most popular characters from the 1978 Star Wars Kenner line, Gentle Giant Ltd. eagerly has stepped into the background characters pool delivering such classics as the droids and aliens that made up most of the 1979 action figure offerings. Hammerhead is next up in this collection of one-sixth scaled vintage Star Wars figures. The line is special for multiple reasons. Besides designing large-sized versions of the action figures we had as kids, Gentle Giant has also replicated the vintage packaging, albeit in a way that best fits these larger figures, so it pulls at our heartstrings and draws us in to consider dropping a lot of money we didn’t have intentions of spending. Gentle Giant certainly isn’t dumb. Any vintage Star Wars item is a safe best for any licensee. We are endlessly starved to see Star Wars items in “vintage styled” packaging so every time a new item gets release, it piques our interest. As a result, a Jumbo Vintage Kenner Hammerhead grabs our attention a bit more intensely than an all-new Hasbro action figure. We just can’t seem to get enough.

Long before the Expanded Universe changed his name to Momaw Nadon, he was originally known as Hammerhead. What’s more interesting however is that we thought he was a bad guy. The Expanded Universe spun up some “silly” tale that he is actually a covert member of the Rebel Alliance, but if you grew up in the seventies and eighties, you had this guy alongside Greedo, Walrus Man and Snaggletooth wreaking havoc in the Creature Cantina (Action Playset) which was one of the coolest Star Wars items you could own as a kid. Hammerhead, like most of the other cantina aliens was stylistically very inaccurate from the character in Episode IV. To be fair, Hammerhead was mostly just a head and two arms, so there weren’t many reference materials to give designers and idea how he actually looked. Again, the Expanded Universe has now answered many of those questions today, but Hammerhead came dressed in a teal shell... and that was it! Although outfitted with a blaster too, it was simply just Hammerhead’s stature, angry eyes and varicose veined skin that made us believe he was bad news. The blaster just brought it all to a head. We wonder how things would be if we new he was a good guy in the 70s. Then again, it may have not mattered.

Gentle Giant Ltd. did an excellent job replicating this figure in one-sixth scale. It’s truly a perfect replica of the original Kenner figure. He comes with five points of articulation. This includes a swivel head, swivel shoulders and swivel hips. His wide feet are flush with any flat surface and are instrumental in giving him a relatively flawless center of gravity. His skin color isn’t nearly as shiny as the 1979 figure, but because the Jumbo Vintage Kenner Figures line is made from roto-cast vinyl the figures appear duller in the large scale. Special elements like Hammerhead’s original date stamp in addition to the original “seam lines” to show the halves of the mod are just two details that makes this line especially wonderful. At this larger scale, you can see many things for the first time that you may have taken for granted on the 3.75” scale action figures. Hammerhead in general looks amazing. And we’re so happy that Gentle Giant Ltd. isn’t afraid to develop background characters. But we understand where their confidence generates. Back in the day, a Hammerhead figure was almost as popular as a Darth Vader figure. There is just something magical that the vintage line has that just doesn’t exist with today’s figures.