Professor Huyang - TVC - Basic (VC311)

It’s becoming more difficult to argue that Hasbro hasn’t brought The Vintage Collection far in terms of design, engineering of parts, and the figures’ finishing touches to new heights with Photo Real updating and crisp, clean painted lines throughout. You’d look foolish if you said otherwise. But what many often unfairly dismiss is that all of this goodness is mostly getting applied to characters that few Star Wars fans care about, namely those who make up the Disney Star Wars Universe. Even when a character has a history before Disney Star Wars, Hasbro relegates them to the latest Star Wars Entertainment, much to the chagrin of collectors. After nearly 30 years, they corrected the R5-D4 (VC303) back panel, only to place the figure on The Mandalorian card with a modern character photo. Professor Huyang, who made a splash in The Clone Wars, is part of the Disney Star Wars Ahsoka series, so we get this figure on an Ahsoka card. There needs to be a happier medium for new and old fans, and we hope that Hasbro goes back to the mindset of what most longtime collectors want: to see the characters reflected from their “first appearance” in the Star Wars saga, and yes, we’d allow for a few exceptions to this rule.

That said, Professor Huyang turned out extraordinarily well. We won’t go so far as to say it’s perfect, but it’s close to that. We first noticed the coloring of the figure, and it’s off. Disney crafted a super-articulated version of Professor Huyang for their Droid Factory line. They got the color right (a lighter metallic creamy white), and Hasbro should have followed suit. Coincidentally, Hasbro and Disney’s Professor Huyang figures are near dead ringers to each other. Yes, there are some apparent differences, but they mirror each other in so many ways that you have to do a quick doubletake to look for the variances. Hasbro approached Huyang’s complex backpack differently than The Black Series Professor Huyang (AH07) figure. And honestly, we’re not sure which method we prefer. The 6-inch version came with articulated utility arms. But The Vintage Collection version comes with interchangeable utility arms, extended and collapsed, and without articulated aside from the swivel articulated base where you attach them to the backpack. You get many posing options with both scales of the figure, but something looks cleaner with the 3.75-inch super-articulated version, and we get more accessories with the TVC version.

For accessories, you get the two sets of utility arms, as mentioned earlier. And both plug into the backpack that attaches to the figure’s back. Then we get a datapad. The figure’s extended utility arms hold the datapad well, whereas its articulated arms barely hold it. Interestingly, Hasbro put so much forethought into the utility arms for this figure, but we’re grateful. And lastly, we get a tool that Huyang uses in various scenes of both The Clone Wars and Ahsoka. Professor Huyang has an excellent articulation system. We achieved a fantastic array of poses with the figure, which impressed us because the figure design is a droid. But this figure will do it all for you. The paint operations are beautiful, and we mostly love the card art. The figure looks excellent packaged as well. Back to accessories, Professor Huyang should serve as evidence to us all that the Hasbro Star Wars line is a scam. Huyang got us thinking about the Deluxe Jango Fett, and we’ve become a little outraged. If they can produce an all-new figure with incredible articulation and seven accessories and sell it for $16.99, how can they justify setting the MSRP to $24.99 for Jango Fett, who is 80% reused tooling and comes with seven accessories? Hasbro should be held accountable.