Darth Vader/Rebel Officer - LC - Comic Packs (1)

By way of a very cool Entertainment Earth exclusive Hasbro introduced us all to the Comic Packs line. While many of us had no inkling of who Carnor Jax or Kir Kanos was, we couldn’t deny just how cool they looked as action figures. But when the first wave of non-exclusive Comic Packs began hitting retail in December of 2006, the hair on our backs stood up in irritation of what Hasbro decided to send our way. What happened to the retooled action figures or the all-new sculpts? And where are the first time available characters? It didn’t happen right away and instead Hasbro repainted some inferior sculpts (for the most part) and what’s worse is that Hasbro made them rainbow colorful. Would you believe that Hasbro had the audacity to re-release the Darth Vader/Rebel Officer set from the 30 (77-07) line into the collector-focused Legacy Collection line? What were they thinking? The concept of the Comic Packs line is very cool. You get two figures and a replica comic for about $13. (The line started out at $10.) Even with the increase, the MSRP is very fair, but Hasbro needs to make the included action figures a bit more interesting, otherwise the line won’t sustain itself. And they need to stop utilizing such old sculpts!

It’s simply astounding to us that when Hasbro has big plans for a new line of figures that they open it up with less than stellar ideas. In retrospect we are thankful that so many wonderful Comic Packs sets came out of the 30 (77-07) line, but it was certainly a huge risk to start off the Legacy Collection lineup with a set like the Darth Vader/Rebel Trooper set. But this isn't the only Comic Packs set that is endangering the line. The first wave of Legacy Collection Comic Packs has five straight repacks in it and only three new sets. This is retail suicide. And it will for sure bottleneck the line's distribution for as far as we can see. How come Hasbro cannot see this? What we get is a major repaint of 1999’s POTF2 [FB/CT] Darth Vader (With Imperial Interrogator Droid) Comm Tech figure. Even his IT-O Interrogation Droid has been repainted. We also get a repainted version of 2001’s POTJ Rebel Trooper (Tantive IV Defender). The color palette used for this figures is very extreme and we are not so sure is the shadowing seen in the Comic Books was necessary to ascribe to the action figures. If you don't recall, Hasbro acknowledged the error of their ways and they revised many of Marvel Comics sets so that the paint jobs were more faithful to the images seen in the comics.

The modern line is now more than ever less forgiving about inferior articulation and sculpting for action figures. We have to admit that this set is dated right out of the package. It was in 2006/2007 and it feels eevn more outdated in 2009. While we see the need for Hasbro to pay tribute to some of the earliest Comic Books, we just don't think this was the right choice for re-release. We don’t think that this was the correct route to take. There are many better versions of Darth Vader that could have been utilized instead to make this set a little bit more likable. It goes without saying that the revised version of Darth Vader is a significant improvement to its appearance, but no updates were made to the Rebel Officer and he still looks much too colorful, even though his colors are faithful to the comics. We don’t know, maybe realistic takes of the characters in the comics may have been a better option here. But we do know that the Comic Packs line has to take a sharp turn if Hasbro wants to garner interest in this line. We’ll just have to see what transpires. But we'd be lying if we said we weren't concerned about this lines health. Repacks are inevitable, but don't start off a new line look with them!