Princess Leia Organa - RO - Basic

As Princess of the Royal House of Alderaan, Leia was tasked with the delivery of relief supplies to the needy citizens of Lothal, a useful cover for her true mission of covertly aiding the efforts of the frowing rebellion.

(Editor’s Note: Apparently our sample didn’t come with her blaster. Once we get a replacement figure we will update the gallery.) Princess Leia Organa made her debut in Star Wars: Rebels at the halfway point of the second season. In all frankness, her appearance was much too delayed. But her appearance marked a very important plot point in the Star Wars timeline. She entered this Expanded Universe world in an outfit that was vaguely familiar, but new for her. But her animated appearance was a dead ringer for actress Carrie Fisher and we commend those who were involved to breathe animated live into the character. Now Hasbro add a basic figure version of her into the Rogue One toy line. Admittedly the figure looks great. She comes with the standard five points of articulation, but the sculpt is outstanding and the paint operations, without exception, are pretty much on the mark. We’re happy with the final product. We know it seems to be hit or miss with a couple of figures, but on average we have to commend Hasbro on the tightened up paint operations their action figures have been receiving as of late. Princess Leia Organa is a prime example of what can happen to a simply articulated action figure when painted right.

Princess Leia Organa may look good, but she isn’t without problems. Her sculpt LOOKS excellent, but it isn’t functional at all, this meaning that she is unable to stand unassisted without looking like she is breaking her back to counteract the gravity that wants to pull her down. What’s more, the height of her legs aren’t even, so it makes balancing her unassisted a real problem. Like most action figures, patience will allow you to succeed with posing her, but overall we will venture a guess that you will be frustrated as well. She comes with a blaster (our first sample did not) and a zip line accessory. We’re fond of the zip line accessory in all honestly. Hasbro has tooled a slightly feminine looking arm gauntlet which comes with a long thread and at each end of the thread is a grappling hook. They actually work well and we were able to achieve some cool images of Princess Leia Organa utilizing this accessory. It was a balancing act, but we even managed to capture images of her holding the zip line gauntlet. But you shouldn’t interpret that as something that was easy to achieve. We love great looking Princess Leia Organa action figures, but we have to say that we were totally let down by the figure’s wonkiness.

Whether the intent was to capture the exaggerated features of the animated character or just an accident instead, we feel that the head sculpt of Princess Leia Organa, while beautiful, is a tad too big; especially for her small frame. Maybe it doesn’t look freakishly big, but we can’t help but notice that perhaps a smaller scaled head sculpt would have been ideal here. The details of the head sculpt are very nice however. Her hair looks exactly like the hair of the small screen character. And the paint used to decorate her eyes and lips are right on the money. Our sample has a little bit of a raised left eyebrow, but when you get down to the nitty gritty of the figure, she doesn’t look odd at all. It is a bit surprising to see such a heterogeneous sampling of action figures in the Rogue One line launch. You’d think that all of the focus would be on the Rogue One characters. But between the basic figures and the Two-Packs sub-line, we’re getting a nice dose of Rebels characters at a breakneck pace. Princess Leia Organa is about exactly what we’d expect from Hasbro and we’re honestly satisfied with what they’ve done here. As you already know from our other reviews, we think more articulation is necessary and hope it will one day be brought back into this scale.