Clone Captain Lock - TCW [SOTDS] - Basic (Exclusive)

Captain Lock serves under the Jedi General Eeth Koth. The Clone Captain and his troops valiantly defend Master Koth's Jedi Cruiser when it is being boarded by General Grievous, firing their blasters at waves of super battle droids marching into the ship.

Isn’t it interesting how clone commanders and clone captains end up becoming store exclusives? For the February 2011 Kmart reset in boys’ action figures, Hasbro treated collectors to an exclusive Clone Captain Lock action figure. Kmart has certainly been getting some cool exclusives lately, especially since the past hasn't treated them fairly by Hasbro for the last few years. Most of the previous exclusives tended to be straight repacks, but for the most part now, Kmart seems to be getting all-new figures that aren’t available in any other format....yet. They even got the awesome 2010 SW [SOTDS] Bounty Hunter Jodo Kast figure the year before Lock and that figure was excellent. And so is Clone Captain Lock. The sculpt is made up of figures you have seen before, but where Lock rises to the occasion is with a simple but colorful and well done paint job. Not having too many appearances in The Clone Wars television show to date, Clone Captain Lock (CC-4142) is hopefully a character that will make some sort of return in the show. He served under Jedi Master Eeth Koth and was seen in the episode entitled “Grievous Intrigue” where Lock and his troops battled the Separatist general before retreating in escape pods during battle.

Clone Captain Lock is a kit-bashed figure. His arms are from 2008's TCW [B] Clone Commander Cody (No. 10) figure and has the torso and legs of the standard 2008 TCW [B] Clone Trooper (No. 5) figure. And lastly Hasbro gave him an all-new head. The paint job on the figure is very simple but beautiful. There are green color flashes which are quite reminiscent of the 442nd Siege Battalion Clone Trooper (which happened to be released in The Saga Collection in 2006) and in fact, the green is even almost the same color. But perhaps the best paint job can be found on the smallest surface area on the figure. On his helmet there is a "mohawk" that is green and is outlined in a bright yellow. Every time you gaze at the figure your eyes are immediately drawn to this spectacular detail. Maybe it isn’t the most exciting feature on an action figure, but we think it’s very effective in making this figure stand out from the rest. Clone Captain Lock’s battalion has distinct and ornate insignias on their armor and they are colorful as well. We hope that we are not too far off from receiving them as action figures soon too.

The color doesn’t bleed onto the white armor at all on this figure and for the most part we didn’t have any difficulty finding nicely painted samples. It will be interesting to see how this action figure fairs at retail. While Bounty Hunter Jodo Kast is awesome, he didn’t sell that great. And this is particularly disturbing since there are significantly less Kmart locations in the USA now. Less opportunity to purchase should translate into brisker sales. But The Clone Wars has a lot of kid support in addition to collectors, so hopefully this figure will move without any issues. Another interesting tidbit about Clone Captain Lock is that he comes with a Star Wars stand, die and Battle Game card. Jodo Kast did not come with these pack-ins despite being part of the “Shadow Of The Dark Side” branding. Hasbro isn’t consistent all of the time, but we think it makes the most sense to include the pack-ins, especially for The Clone Wars product. After all, the Toys R Us Nikto Guard also came with these additions. Commander Ponds, Commander Fox and now Clone Captain Lock has all had important involvement to help tell the powerful The Clone Wars stories and it’s so cool to finally have them as action figures.