First Order Stormtrooper - Elite Series

Equipped with sleek armor and powerful weapons, the stormtroopers enforce the will of the First Order.

The Disney Elite Series brings die cast metal figures to a whole new level. Who could forget Hasbro’s niche Titanium figures line. It wasn’t grasped by many, but those who did buy into it thoroughly enjoyed what was presented in the line. The new way to approach metal figures in 2015 is to bring them in a larger scale similar, yet quite different to Hasbro’s The Black Series 6” line. Generally speaking, the Elite Series figures are well made, admirably articulated and have a few issues that truly affect the aesthetics of the pieces: we’re of course talking about the Swiss cheese holes on the figures’ backs. Thankfully, some are more obscured by the outfits than others. But when it comes to a First Order Stormtrooper character who doesn’t wear any outerwear of any type, let’s just say it’s nearly impossible to cover those holes up. So this figure will be best displayed frontally and that’s about it. If you turn him around he just isn’t going to look right. Some have been able to overlook this, but we’' find it just too darn distracting.

What’s even more disheartening that the holes on the dorsal side of the figure is the missed paint operations. The First Order Stormtroopers have a black line running atop the visor and the makers of this Elite Series figure seemed to have missed that altogether. As a result, the First Order Stormtrooper just looks off and there isn’t anything you can do about it to make it right. It’s just an unfortunate mishap here. Besides this glaring error, the rest of the First Order Stormtrooper looks pretty fantastic. The figure is mostly white, but there are plenty of black accents added to represent the body glove underneath as well as the painted contrasting details on his helmet, chest armor and boots.The sculpt is fantastic. In fact, it may be one of the nicest First Order Stormtrooper interpretations made for The Force Awakens to date. This especially makes the missed paint operations even more painful. This could have been definitive. We wonder if it is even possible at this point for Disney to catch the error and address it on a running change version. That is unlikely with smaller run lines, and we believe that even if this line is truly successful that it won’t be made in even a fraction of the quantity of Hasbro’s lines.

The First Order Stormtrooper comes with both a First Order blaster and blaster pistol. There appears to be some extra molded device on the figure’s right leg (where the weapon could be affixed when not in use), but we have found it impossible to attach the included guns. It seems that a simple square peg hole in each blaster was all that was needed to make this possible. Perhaps it was overlooked. Or perhaps it wasn’t ever part of the deal here. Either way, it’s a disappointing oversight. Also included with the First Order Stormtrooper is a Star Wars display stand which doesn’t really help the figure stand up all that well, but works nicely as a support for some of the more action oriented pose you can achieve with this figure. As far as articulation is concerned, all of the Elite Series figures come with decent, but far from acceptable, articulation. So, you won’t be able to do what you want with these figures. There capabilities are very limited. As a display piece, the First Order Stormtrooper is pretty nice. As a collectible action figure? Well, we feel they should be able to do more.