Darth Maul - DST - Seven Inch Figures

It's looking like Diamond Select Toys 7" figure line is unnecessary. Coincidentally, the same company that worked with Hasbro in 2013 to produce The Black Series line (Gentle Giant LTD.) is also involved with this line, but the Hasbro 6" line has come so far that Gentle Giant LTD./Diamond Select toys have to play catch up to get their 7" figures to where Hasbro's 6" figures already are. We digress. The biggest problem with the 7" line is that it's not necessary and perhaps unneeded. And the line is already feeling like it's treading water. Why do the same obligatory characters get made in every single line? We never thought we'd complain about getting another Boba Fett or Darth Maul in the line, but they've been done to death. And with definitive versions of them produced in other scales, do we need to break open another? Diamond Select Toys would be better off focusing on the characters that Hasbro egregiously ignores. Imagine a 7" Momaw Nadon, Ponda Baba, Bib Fortuna, Wooof, or Weequay Skiff Guard? Perhaps then (and only then) will the 7" line pique the interest of collectors and become a success. The 7" Darth Maul isn't fantastic. It's good. It has a fair likeness to the on-screen character, but it isn't perfect. So why do we need it?

Let us reiterate our disdain for the lackluster packaging. The figures are housed in a massive bubble against a flimsy backer card. There is little artwork against the mostly-white background, and the figures look lost in all of the open "air space." Diamond Select Toys should reduce the footprint of the packaging by at least 50%. There is NO NEED AT ALL for the packaging to take up so much space. The figure is an inch taller than Hasbro's The Black Series 6" and the packaging is at least five or six times larger. Let's take a closer look at Darth Maul. It makes sense why Diamond Select Toys chose Darth Maul as one of their first releases in this new scale. It's fair to say that Darth Maul is better than average, but it's not perfect. And that's a problem in contemporary collecting. A product has to be excellent to grab the attention of collectors with money. At this stage of the game, Darth Maul should be perfect, but it's not. We imagine that many collectors will approve of what Diamond Select Toys accomplished here, but we believe most others will criticize what went wrong here. Darth Maul comes with 24 points of articulation, which means that the 7" line of figures by Diamond Select Toys is a little less articulated than Hasbro's 6" figures. That's a huge problem. The range of movement also isn't what we had hoped to see. For example, Darth Maul has poor upper and lower body movements. They didn't think through the articulation system carefully here.

Darth Maul comes with a wealth of accessories, eleven to be exact. Many are functional, but many border on being artful. They give us the double-bladed lightsaber that breaks down into two halves. And we also get two removable red standard lightsaber blades. Interestingly, Diamond Select Toys also added two lightsaber blade effects, which show a swirling motion. They also included a green blast/deflection effect; perhaps it's Qui-Gon Jinn's lightsaber's reaction clashing with Darth Maul's lightsaber. Admittedly, the interchangeable effect accessories are lovely and make this figure stand out quite a bit. They also included two sets of interchangeable hands. Two of the hands are fists, which we feel are completely useless here. We almost wish they didn't include them here. The other two hands are cupped to hold the lightsaber accessories as needed. Darth Maul comes packaged with two hands in a wide-open spread, and they're our favorite of the three options. You can also mix and match them, too, if you're adventurous. The head sculpt on Darth Maul isn't bad. But it's far from ideal. Collectors will find it too "friendly" and too smooth. This issue is that the expression doesn't capture the villainy of the character at all, in our opinion. Also, the accessories are made from brittle plastic. We cracked one half of the hilt while switching out the blades. That's unacceptable for a $25 figure.