Death Squad Commander - TBS [SW40] - Six Inch Figures

You likely remember the scene from “Liar Liar” where the spell has already been placed on Fletcher Reede and he tries to force himself to say the pen is red. It doesn’t pan out so well for him. He is forced to concede that the pen is blue. This is an important metaphor when considering Hasbro’s many offerings of the Death Star Commander, the most recent release in The Black Series [Star Wars 40] lineup. Disney/Hasbro are “lying lying” to us saying that the Death Squad Commander’s uniform is black when no doubt should exist that it’s actually gray. And we’re the ones saying it’s gray year after year. Yes, we get it Disney. Most if not all of the Death Star Troopers seen on the Death Star in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope are clearly wearing all-black uniforms, but this character is different as evidenced by his unique helmet, uniform and console he commands. The actual Death Squad Commander has a revised helmet where earphones lay underneath with a communication cord (it looks like a landline telephone cord in all honesty) hangs down from the helmet and his uniform from head to toe is gray, save for the boots and gloves (and aforementioned helmet). So what’s the block? Are we ever going to get a modern update to this original 12 Kenner action figure? It appears not. Hasbro has relayed to us that Disney sees the “all-black” uniform as the official haberdashery of the Star Destroyer Commander/Imperial Navy Commander/Imperial Officer character from A New Hope. Hopefully continued asking, begging and pleading will make them cave in one day, but our outlook at the moment isn’t hopeful at all.

The Death Squad Commander is a very good action figure in The Black Series [Star Wars 40] 6” line, but he is ill-fitted with the rest of the dozen figures that make up this commemorative range of action figures. Until Hasbro makes a Death Star Commander in gray clothing longtime collectors will not rest. Can’t they just humor us once for this character? It’s a simple paint job variation that will cost them no additional dollars in tooling (unless they include a new head sculpt). We’re way past the acceptable time frame waiting for this character to be produced. We digress. The Death Squad Commander is pretty much like any other character in 6” scale line but holds a distinction. It’s the very first “generic” human trooper for the line. We of course have received many stormtroopers, sandtroopers and clone troopers, but we haven’t received an unnamed human army-building character like this until now. And what sets this one apart is the fully removable helmet. (That is about as trivial as it is sad.) The Death Squad Commander comes with a ton of articulation (like any other figure in this line) and has a pretty much excellent sculpt. We truly couldn’t find anything to nitpick about him besides the obvious coloring issue. The points of articulation have a wide array of movement as expected, The lower skirt portion of his outfit really doesn’t interfere with this movement much at all. He comes with ball-jointed elbows, but many TBS6 collectors wish to see the return of double hinge-jointed elbows instead. We beg to differ on that.

The Death Squad Commander comes with a removable helmet and blaster. The removable helmet possesses a beautiful sculpt. It’s shiny, has the right textures and fits like a glove on the figure. He’s also able to hold the helmet without any issue in his hands (or even under the arms for that matter). The strap fits snuggly under his chin and while it’s moveable, it isn’t loose at all. Hasbro has given the Death Squad Commander a holster and it houses his blaster while not in use. It isn’t too bulky and it hangs closely to his body. Seemingly, everything is in place for the Death Squad Commander and most collectors will find that he meets every expectation they have. He comes packaged on a ridiculously sized vintage Kenner inspired card back. Because the exact proportions had to be sacrificed because of size constraints, shortcuts were made to make everything fit on the front of the card. You’ll notice that the “S” ins WARS is grievously cut short and doesn’t look right. What’s more revealing is that newer collectors don’t even care about this packaging and many are waiting for these new figures to be released in a box somewhere down the pike. While Hasbro tried, this shows us that the vintage Kenner line look is really only for those who grew up with the line, or those motivated to collect via nostalgia. If it’s meaningless to you then you probably don’t understand why Sim Aloo is such a necessary 3.75” super-articulated update. What different collecting times these are.