Clone Commander [Green] - ROTS - Basic (III 33)

An elite officer in the clone army, the clone commander leads a squad of clone troopers into battle against the Separatist forces. He wears a special armor similar to that worn by ARC troopers.

Obviously 2005 brought us the final Star Wars film, Revenge Of The Sith, but it also infected many Star Wars collectors with a clone obsession virus. Even with seemingly advanced notice, Hasbro just wasn’t prepared for how many clones were needed for the basic figure line to satiate the demand. And to be honest, it probably won’t ever get met. But in 2005, Hasbro wasn’t privy to many of the final clone color flashes and designs so they had to rely of reference data and concept art to develop most of them. But even that supply ran thin and they had to start brainstorming their own concepts to keep that healthy and steady supply of new clones arriving at retail. After most of the Revenge Of The Sith line made it out, Hasbro released three repainted figures of previously released clones in August of 2005 to help fill that clone demand. They were cool figures and one was even screen accurate. One of the strict “Hasbro concepts” released, the “green” clone commander, is pretty cool but Hasbro didn’t change up the paint operations enough to make it entirely unique.

Copying exactly the same patterns and designs as seen on 2005’s ROTS Clone Commander (III 33) – also known as Clone Commander Deviss – Hasbro released a green version of him, albeit the Clone Commander was never seen in Episode III or any subsequent Expanded Universe storyline in any capacity. He’s been packaged in the same exact fashion and comes with the same exact accessories as the red version. Interestingly, we also noticed that his posture leans to the right even more heavily than the original “red” Clone Commander figure. We suppose that using the same tooling over and over reduces the quality of sculpts. Actually we know this to be true. So while a “green” Clone Commander helps add some diversity to the Revenge Of The Sith line, if you’re only interested in screen accurate characters, well then, this isn’t the figure for you. We do happen to like this figure but we have to admit it pales in comparison to the first version. If Hasbro applied some unique pattern to the figure instead of identically replicating it in a different color, the results would have been much more satisfying for all.

Repainting figures is a great way for Hasbro to amortize tooling costs. And we welcome the opportunity for them to do this as often as they need to especially if it gives us movie accurate clones. Look at the positive results of repainting the III 33 sculpt for 2005’s ROTS Commander Bly (III 57). That ended up turning out to be one of the greatest action figures in the Revenge Of The Sith line. (Almost the opposite is unfortunately true for the green Clone Commander (III 33) figure.) We’re thankful that Hasbro decided to use such a good sculpt to bring forth again into the basic figure line. Loaded with premium articulation, the Clone Commander sculpt could be reused many times over to bring us even more cool Clone Commander action figures into the toy line down the road. (Editor’s Note: Hasbro has indeed continue to use this sculpt multiple times to bring us very unique figures.) As long as they change it up a bit more, we really can’t complain about using a great sculpt over and over again. Clone Commander [Green] will probably remain unnamed. We’d like to get an official name from Hasbro one day, but that is probably unlikely.