Death Trooper [Gentle Giant Ltd. Web Exclusive] - Mini Busts

The legion of the undead are here. Nothing can prepare the galaxy for what lies waiting aboard a seemingly abandoned, derelict Star Destroyer. Amidst its vast creaking emptiness the unknown is lurking and the dead are slowly rising: soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.

Star Wars fans (and especially the purists) were kind of not that interested in the 2009 novel Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber. It quickly became known as the Star Wars version of Night of the Living Dead and many wondered why the Expanded Universe would be allowed to head in that direction or at least be approved by Lucasfilm, Ltd. Despite the initial chagrin of this novel, many thought the story was well written albeit being a little too familiar to some the greatest horror classics already established in the genre. Interestingly, Gentle Giant Ltd. showed the quickest interest of any licensee and took immediate interest in the book. They got immediately started to work at making a collectible version of the Death Trooper for their Mini Bust line. What could be considered more interesting however is that they decided to make a special Web Exclusive version in addition to a standard release. Did we really need two versions of this character on the market? We would answer that with a resounding negative response. But we also have to admit that the final product is a work of art.

The Death Trooper Mini Bust will definitely interest those who might be a fan of horror films and all things ghoulish and morbid. As we have mentioned, the "art" aspect of this Mini Bust is just amazing. There is definitely some impressive skill applied to the Mini Bust and the artists at Gentle Giant Ltd. didn’t hold back anything to bring forth the greatest amount of realism possible. The wounds appear to be oozing "something" and the decay is yellowed and disgusting. The Deluxe Web Exclusive version comes with five individual pieces of armor including the side of the chest, the helmet and the left arm and multiple parts for the jaw and head. The design here is quite impressive because these pieces has some give and pliability and they actually snap into place with relative ease and sort of “stick in place” until you’re ready to remove them. When all of the pieces are removed, you can see inside the helmet and a very scary and rotted face is visible. The right eyeball just stares at you and you actually can’t wait to place replace the removable armor so it stops ogling you. The paint job is just incredible and if you didn’t know better, you’d think the rotting flesh and blood would require latex gloved handling.

Limited to only 1500, it even seems that this low edition size was too much. It just didn’t sell and in fact Gentle Giant, Lt’s ended up clearing it out of their inventory it out for almost 50% off (which still didn’t move all the units). If you're a fan of Stormtroopers or even just a fan of anything "dead" we would highly recommend this piece to you. It's the perfect decoration for Halloween and we bet that since it wasn't a success that Gentle Giant Ltd. will likely not attempt a similar collectible like this any time soon. We would even say that this is a Mini Bust that was designed for fans of horror film stuff and not so much Star Wars fans. We appreciate the tribute to the book and for thinking of bringing something cool out for collectors, but it may have been a collectible just left as a collectible concept instead of a final production piece. One last point we'd like to make is that we don't understand how they are so capable to include an infinite amount of detail in the Death Trooper Mini Bust, yet pieces like the Entertainment Earth exclusive Obi-Wan Kenobi [Episode III] Mini Bust leave so much to be desired. We hope this changes for suture Mini Busts of course. That doesn’t mean we aren’t able to acknowledge how impressive the Death Trooper piece is. It's remarkable.