Princess Leia Organa [TFA] - TBS [P3] - 3.75 Inch Figures (Exclusive)

Despite all that she has endured and lost in a lifetime of war, Princess Leia Organa continues to shine as a beacon of hope for the loyal soldiers of the Resistance under her command.

From the way she is named on the packaging to the way her paint operations were applied, the Walmart exclusive The Black Series [Phase III] Princess Leia Organa 3.75” figure, based on her appearance from Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, is just plain wrong. We’re going to beat a dead horse again. The collector-focused super-articulated 3.75” basic figure line SHOULD NOT be a store exclusive. And if it has to be a store exclusive, Walmart should be the ABSOLUTE LAST choice retailer to take on such a cherished collectors’ line. How much more pain do we all need to continue to endure before Hasbro sees this? When the news broke that The Black Series 3.75” scaled figure line was becoming a Walmart exclusive, we immediately brought our concerns to Hasbro who came back with “Walmart knows what they have with this exclusivity and they’re going to do right by it.” (That’s an almost perfect direct quote.) Well, after failed promises of the figures going up for pre-order online (which they finally did MONTHS later), nonexistent distribution of any new figures (and especially later waves of figures never arriving to stores), as well as many Walmart stores putting this exclusive line on clearance for as low as $3.00 each, it’s now safe to conclude that Walmart has treated this line about as well as they treat anything they sell. They just don’t care. It’s a sad, sad tale. Now that we’ve seemingly reached the end of “The Force Awakens” era of The Black Series [Phase III] line look, Hasbro manages to get out one final wave of 3.75” figures and only time will tell if most of us will be able to find them. After all, wave 3 shipped much too heavily and has clogged retail terribly. And we know that if one figure from an old assortment is hanging on the pegs, nothing else is coming until it sells. This aggravating trend is taking over, and with the short attention span this young generation has, retail behaves in a way where every item released arrives and sells in a “blink and you’ll miss it” fashion.

Even in a perfect world if all of the line made its way seamlessly across the USA and the rest of the world, the tale of The Black Series 3.75” Walmart exclusive line is a sad series of events. Only a baker’s dozen count of figures were released for this Walmart exclusive line. Of them, only eight were all-new sculpts based on characters from The Force Awakens. One was an all-new sculpt based on the Original Trilogy, but that was only because it was a leftover from The Black Series [Phase II] mainstream basic figure line. (It got canceled because of soft-goods issues yet was miraculously included in the Walmart line. Perhaps we should count our blessings.) The remaining four figures were straight repacks of figures we all had seen before at some point, and many of them sold better than the all-new figures. We certainly didn’t need to see them again and those slots would have been much better utilized by including characters from The Force Awakens, but incessant repacking is just part of Hasbro’s plans anymore. Obviously, this is a drastically different collector climate than just a few short years ago when we were receiving 50, 60 and 75 super-articulated basic figures in a calendar year. It’s nearly painful to consider. So where are we going with this? We’re two paragraphs in and we haven’t even talked about the figure at hand. Well, maybe that’s the whole point. The issues surrounding the collector 3.75” Star Wars line may have become too great to allow it to thrive. We’re about ready to throw in the towel ourselves. When we do finally get an unannounced and miraculous new wave of figures, they’re riddled with problems like paint issues – which create bad likenesses – and we struggle with the inability to find them anywhere but the aftermarket. It’s defeating. It’s upsetting. It’s maddening. And it’s depressing to think that this is where we’re at with Star Wars collecting when it should be at its peak.

A less important criticism for us is why is this action figure called Princess Leia Organa? She was a general in Return Of The Jedi, so why aren’t they taking advantage of that now? OK, so she will always be a princess. But for us that’s not the point. This mature version of Leia Organa should be solidified with an updated identifier. And what about a subtitle? Can’t we know the official name of this gown? It’s nitpicky, but we want to know. As for the figure? Well, we’re truly unable to tell you if this is a good figure or not. It SEEMS like Princess Leia Organa has a great sculpt, but the paint job given to her ruins the figure.... completely. She looks like an aged Joan Crawford instead of the beautiful Carrie Fisher. Putting paint operations aside for a moment, Princess Leia Organa is loaded with articulation. That’s a wonderful thing. But the separately sculpted gown shell that Hasbro tooled isn’t removable without cutting it off the figure (or maybe a derivation of boil and pop might work) rendering much of the figure’s articulation utterly useless. Unlike so many other “gowned” figures from ages past, Hasbro gave Princess Leia Organa fully articulated legs. It’s a nice change of pace, but again, the gown shell really interrupts what the legs should do. They’ve also added a matching soft-goods dress which fills in the gaps of what the molded shell does not. Clearly Hasbro made an effort to make a great figure. But again, the paint operations RUIN the figure. She also comes without any accessories which in all honesty is a disappointment. It’s time to make the super-articulated 3.75” basic figure line GREAT again. Only Hasbro can make this happen. Give us no less than 25 new figures a year, preferably in vintage Kenner styled packaging and call it a day. Die hard Star Wars collectors would have a reason to spend money again, and pretty much EVERYONE would be happy again. This current nonsense needs to stop.