Dark Trooper - TVC - Basic (VC271)

Hulking Imperial combat droids with gleaming black armor and powerful jet boots, the Dark Troopers are a powerful design.

Well, well, well. So, Hasbro finally admits they’ve been ripping off The Vintage Collection collecting community with the release of the VC271 Dark Trooper basic figure. (Hey, the long-awaited hole is finally filled with the Dark Trooper.) What is the admission, you ask? Without saying a word, they’ve proven the Deluxe figure format is a complete and utter scam. For the price and size of a basic figure, the Dark Trooper action figure, which retailed for a whopping $27.99 in 2022, is now $16.99. You get fewer accessories, but that’s all part of the smoke and mirrors. All of the Deluxe accessories would fit inside the basic figure bubble. They gave us the “fisted” left hand to pour more salt into the wound, which makes it useless to hold the included blaster (or any other accessory you decide to include with this action figure). It was a wise repacked figure to include in the basic figure line. But it’s hard to process how Hasbro makes themselves look foolish with a release like this, especially when they expected you to pay nearly double for the “same” figure almost two years earlier. A respectable amount of excitement brewed when the Dark Trooper character from The Mandalorian got announced for the super-articulated 3.75-inch line. But as with any announcement, it turned into disappointment when we discovered Hasbro would rip us off with a Deluxe release to help them pay for the tooling.

The Dark Trooper doesn’t differ much from the all-new Darth Maul or Ahsoka Tano. It comes with the same articulation system as both figures, which requires the same number of individual parts that Hasbro needs to create to complete the figure. The docking station is missing here. But that accessory doesn’t bring the MSRP to double the price. And they could have excluded it here and still included the other parts. As we said, the Deluxe format is all a scam. Despite Hasbro’s best efforts to pull the wool over the eyes of the Star Wars collecting community, the Darth Trooper action figure is excellent overall. However, it has one obsolete action feature, which irritates us a bit. They inserted a light port into the head sculpt to allow the eyes to glow red when held in bright light. Admittedly, the functionality works well and creates some impressive light-up effects, but we’re talking about a POTF2-era feature getting added to a premium modern collector-focused action figure. This feature may not bother everyone, but we find it a lazy add-on to the Dark Trooper action figure. The Dark Trooper comes highly articulated, and the joints work well. Joints made to look hinge-jointed are deceptively ball-jointed, so we commend Hasbro for the excellent engineering here. Also, the black plastic is beautifully shiny and matches the on-screen character perfectly.

As mentioned, the five-part docking station is gone from the Dark Trooper. We do get the blaster with this release, however, and nothing else. Hasbro installed a hole in the figure’s right thigh, reminiscent of how the First Order wore their weaponry. The blaster fits well into the right hand, but as explained, the left hand is a fist and pointless here. We miss the interchangeable hands with the Deluxe version for alternate display. The extra hands were simple to install, so it’s a setback that Hasbro omitted them here as well. Also missing are the two flame attachments installed into the droid’s feet as another display option. Hasbro drilled a second hole in the bottom of each foot for these flame attachments. New here is the classic Kenner0inspured card art. Hasbro did an excellent job of selecting a character photo of the Dark Trooper that shows it in a scene from The Mandalorian. Hasbro also correctly chose red for the accent color, which they used for the nameplate and the figure backer (as well as the reverse side of the card). Overall, the Dark Trooper isn’t a terrible release. But Hasbro either believes we have selective memory or amnesia because a release like this will likely only upset and irritate their longtime collector base, not make them happy. Then again, plenty of clapping and barking seals give Hasbro carte blanche to continue ripping the rest of us off.