Sith - Celebrate The Saga

An ancient order of Force-wielders devoted to the dark side, the Sith practice hate, deception, and greed.

The Celebrate The Saga multipacks are an “au revoir” to the dreaded 5POA format. Hasbro has openly admitted that the tooling is going into their faults “forever” unless they change their minds about that. If we’re honest with ourselves, we should be able to admit that some of the Celebrate The Saga sets bring worthy characters into the 3.75” scale. With hyper-focus on The Vintage Collection quality for action figures, along with collector expectations, there are some vast missteps with the Celebrate The Saga sets. Hasbro didn’t utilize the Build A Droid tooling for all of the new droids presented within them. For instance, the Sith multipack comes with a never-before-released version of TC-4, but Hasbro, unfortunately, utilized the 5POA C-3PO tooling to create the figure. For $29.99, they couldn’t dig out the superior tooling to throw super-articulated collectors a bone? If you can get over this disgrace, the Sith set looks visually stunning. It’s the articulation where this multipack fails. All of the characters that make it up are red or black or have both colors. And as a whole, it stands out from the many others released in this sub-line. The only “new” figure here is TC-4, and we’ll discuss where this figure is from and why we’re seeing it now over twenty years later.

TC-4 is a maroon-colored protocol droid, not looking all that different from R-3PO from The Empire Strikes Back, that was part of a deleted scene in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Little is known about TC-4’s role in The Phantom menace, but admittedly it’s an attractive-looking cyborg relations droid. Hasbro utilized 2017’s Star Wars [The Last Jedi] C-3PO figure to develop TC-4. While the paint operations are gorgeous, the figure’s articulation is lackluster. We’d like to know why Hasbro didn’t take advantage of the Build A Droid protocol droid tooling instead. Imagine having a super-articulated version of this character right out of the gate. If they can use the Build A Droid tooling for astromech droids, Hasbro can do the same for protocol droids. That said, TC-4 stands out from the rest of the figures in this set. But we know that collectors will become frustrated that the figure doesn’t come with more articulation. With prepositioned arms and legs and no waist movement, TC-4 is relatively useless in the 3.75” line except as a background statue. At least Hasbro thought outside of the box and gave us an all-new character. They could have gone with first instinct and added TC-14 or some other figure we already have.

The rest of the multipack comes with an excellent cast of characters, but with tooling that severely lacks articulation. The lack of articulation is expected. Hasbro made it clear that this was the farewell to 5POA. Still, it would have been incredible to include at least one “collector friendly” figure to ensure the successful sell-through of these sets. Emperor Palpatine is from a TARGET exclusive three-pack and was once again release singly in the Star Wars [The Last Jedi] line in limited numbers. (It’s one of the rarest Star Wars figures to date.) Hasbro updated the figure with Photo Real paint operations. Kylo Ren is from the Rogue One line. If you recall, Hasbro mixed parts to create a version of Kylo that had a removable hood. Kylo Ren also comes with a lightsaber accessory. Darth Vader is simply the best simply articulated figure in the entire set here. Hasbro took the Star Wars [Solo] Darth Vader figure, slightly repainted it, and included it here for re-release. Lastly, Darth Maul dates back to the original Star Wars [Darth Vader/Revenge Of The Sith] 5POA line. Darth Maul comes with Photo Real updating and looks the best it ever has. We don’t feel the set is worth $29.99 to get TC-4, but your opinion may vary. Many collectors still have the compulsion to collect them all.