Wuher - POTF2 [FB/CT] - Basic (Exclusive)

The surly human Wuher saw a lot of action while working at the seedy Mos Eisley cantina. His policy not to allow droids in the establishment was facilitated by a droid detector unit. Upon entering the cantina with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, R2-D2 and C-3PO were promptly ousted.

Is Wuher’s name a play on “woo her” because he lacks no confidence whatsoever as the bartender of Chalmun’s cantina in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope when it comes to the daily operations. He can be seen flirting with the beautiful space women in the bar, but this grisly and surly man has also been known to throw out a droid or two in his time as well. As one of the most wanted action figures of all time, Hasbro made Wuher a reality in The Power Of The Force “2” [FlashBack/CommTech] line. But he wasn’t so easy to acquire. A Fan Clun exclusive in 2000, Wuher became one of the most expensive action figure Star Wars collectors purchased that year. At a staggering $12.99, collectors received an action figure with a permanently affixed accessory (the white bar glass), the most basic articulation, a droid detector unit, a CommTech chip and nothing else for almost 100% greater the cost of a basic figure at retail at the same time. Now, that’s a great deal of information to digest, but basically the collecting community was ripped off by Wuher. Perhaps we didn’t need him “that” badly. He did however has a great sculpt and that was perhaps enough for collectors to plop down money on the overcharged action figure.

Wuher has some sort of wedding ring on his hand (we assume), although we have no idea if he is married or not, so that’s just a guess. The ring is just simply painted on his hand, but admittedly it looks pretty good. It’s not often we see Star Wars action figures wearing rings, so this feature alone stands out prominently. A few steps backwards have been taken with Wuher. Hasbro did seem too concerned about enhancing his articulation. Then again, how much to you really need a bartender to do buy stand around and serve drinks. But that is exactly the annoying part about this figure. He is permanently serving a white mug of some space ale. Why in the world would Hasbro sculpt the mug into his hand? This is an era of accessories and enhanced sculpting. They didn’t even sculpt permanent accessories in their earliest Star Wars figures. It’s a conundrum for sure. We don’t think we will ever be able to figure out this strange decision they made. Perhaps even more disappointing than the permanently sculpted mug however is the lack of vision with the figure itself. Why didn’t they blaze the trail and brave tooling budgets by adding more points of articulation into the sculpt than they did? It’s ultimately deflating.

We do think however that Wuher has an excellent likeness. What’s more, the paint operations bring out this detail beautifully. The lines are clean for the most part and although his outfit may be too clean and neat, the coloring is very nice. Wuher’s shape looks a little too portly (as compared to his onscreen character) but we think Hasbro was just trying to show clearly his characteristically rotund shape and that he is a big guy. Let’s talk about the included droid detector unit. It’s simple but it’s pretty awesome. And it will beautifully fit inside your cardboard cantina diorama and help round it out quite nicely. Sadly it’s a hollow prop, but Hasbro painted the front of it well, so it really does imitate the prop from the film. All in all, we’re happy that Wuher has been made for the action figure line. It seems pointless to get the cantina aliens without the bartender, so now that we have him Hasbro better start banging out all of the denizens there. It is truly a hive or scum and villainy, and each alien has a unique look which is fitting for an outer space drinking hole if you ask us. You can bet Wuher will continue to sell his various concoctions of liquor to unsuspecting aliens. And he will likely need to find new methods to diffuse the next bar fight as well.(Editor's Note: Wuher would soon be found for less than half his original exclusive retail MSRP at Toys R Us not too long after he began shipping from the Fan Club.)