Jar Jar Binks (Tatooine) - POTJ - Basic

Rescued by Qui-Gon Jinn from the Trade Federation forces, Jar Jar leaves Naboo and joins the Jedi on a mission to deliver Queen Amidala to Coruscant. An emergency detour to Tatooine leads them to Watto's junk shop. There, Jar Jar's insatiable curiosity gets him into trouble when he actually activates an excitable pit droid!

It’s amazing that with all the heckling that surrounded Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Hasbro wasn’t the least bit swayed to stop making him as an action figure. In fact, once the Episode I line wrapped, a new Jar Jar Binks action figure was already in the works for the new Power Of The Jedi line look based on a multiple scenes that involved his elongated tongue. Jar Jar Binks (Tatooine) is more of the same. Hasbro decided not to bring any new technology to the table here. Jar Jar is minimally articulated, possesses a rather static and limited pose, and comes with an accessory that you may or may not find interesting. There are strengths to Jar Jar Binks (Tatooine), but we’re just not sure if an all-new sculpt was warranted so soon after the Episode I line had concluded but it seemed to have been well received by the collecting community anyway. He is considered a staple now, so you can expect Jar Jar Binks to make frequent appearances in the basic figure line for years to come.

Jar Jar Binks (Tatooine) comes with six points of articulation. An inhibited swivel head is joined by two ball-jointed shoulders (which really help this figure’s arms greatly), a swivel waist and two swivel hips. You’re not going to get a world of movement out of this figure, but it does everything Hasbro planned it to do including sticking his hand up in a “nanny-nanny poo-poo” motion as well provide some awkward body motion to accompany the annoying tongue that just droops no matter what pose you decide. With all of the clever accessories Hasbro has made, why in the world could they not have added a removable tongue feature here? It goes without saying that a constant protruding tongue is obnoxious at best, and it really ruins the potential the figure has. Over time, gravity pulls the tongue in a completely downward angle which seems to defeat the intent of this added accessory. Based on a few scenes in Episode I where Jar Jar Binks uses his tongue to eat and annoys Qui-Gon Jinn, or where he is zapped with electricity by Anakin’s podracer, the inspiration for Jar Jar is screen accurate.

Jar Jar Binks (Tatooine) comes with one accessory: a collapsed pit droid. If you recall in the film, in one of his many antics, Jar Jar Binks in an exaggerated manner fights with one of Watto's pit droids and needs Anakin Skywalker to tell him to hit it on the nose so it will collapse into a sedentary state. Well, that is the accessory here. You can use it as background fodder, or even uses to balance Jar Jar Binks resting his foot on it. Either way, it’s a decent accessory, but it’s not earthshattering. Perhaps a bowl of fruit or a bunch of chubas/gorgs (like he stole from Gragra in the Mos Espa marketplace) would have made better accessories here, but a pit droid always seems good especially since they were the Jawas of Episode I: they were everywhere. Jar Jar Binks (Tatooine) has an average sculpt, but it’s his skin pattern that stand out from everything else. His paint job in general is alright, but the skin pattern is quite impressive. They clearly spent time to get it right and screen accurate. Jar Jar Binks (Tatooine) is an OK figure, but you may have more Jar Jar Binks action figures than you know what to do with now.