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Name: General Grievous
Collection: Star Wars [The Phantom Menace 3D]
Number: MH07
Source: Revenge Of The Sith
Availability: January 2012
License: Hasbro
General Grievous is the supreme commander of the droid armies. The ruthless cyborg is tracked to Utapau by Obi-Wan Kenobi, where the two engage in single combat. A formidable fighter, Grievous uses lightsabers with great skill and relishes any opportunity to duel a Jedi.
Every major new villain introduced in a Star Wars film always becomes the center of attention for Hasbro…. for years. It’s almost as if collectors cannot escape these characters’ nonstop action figure releases. This is especially true for General Grievous, admittedly one of the more exciting villains in the Prequel Trilogy. But what if the re-releases are overshadowed by Hasbro utilizing inferior sculpts in the most recent collections of figures? We’ll explain. There have been more General Grievous action figures tooled than we can keep track of now. Hasbro has made some pretty bad figures, and then they’ve made some miraculous works of art. But when it came time to produce the Movie Heroes assortment, Hasbro thought it better to release a seven-year-old sculpt of General Grievous with a gimmicky action feature, small stature, and poor articulation than a beautiful updated sculpt of General Grievous that makes collectors very happy. Hasbro is of the opinion that kids aren’t into articulation and that play features trump authenticity. But the reality is that collectors of all ages care and these Movie Heroes figures are just rotting on store shelves. They’re just not moving at a speed required to sustain the line. Let’s find out more why this version of General Grievous from 2005 wasn’t needed in 2012.
Not including the Sneak Preview figure released in early 2005, the very first true “basic” figure of General Grievous was 2005’s ROTS General Grievous (III 9) figure. And this is the same sculpt that Hasbro has released in the 2012 Movie Heroes assortment. The original figure boasted a “Four Lightsaber Attack!” call out action feature right on the front of the figure’s packaging. You know our feelings on action features and it should go without saying that while cute, this addition to the figure wasn’t necessary by any means. General Grievous comes with 14 points of articulation. The action feature is all in the upper body, but you press his head down to flail his four arms while each holds one of the four lightsabers included with the figure. You get two blue and two green lightsabers and a droid blaster. All of these weapons fit flawlessly into any of his hands and they even stay in place (within reason) while utilizing the action feature. Despite scale issues and shortcuts taken with the sculpt to allow for the action feature, General Grievous is still nicely decorated and decently articulated. We feel the ball-jointed knees were completely wasted here. Ball-jointed articulation isn’t necessarily cheap to produce, so it feels wasted on this “kids’ toy”. On the other hand, the ball-jointed shoulders were definitely required to help with posing his arms in a variety of ways with the lightsabers, so we’ll look the other way here.
Although not perfect, Hasbro updated a movie accurate version of this character with 2008’s TLC General Grievous (BD 25) figure. And then Hasbro released an update to this figure and released it as 2010’s TVC General Grievous (VC17) figure. They added wrist articulation and an all-new soft-goods cape. Either of these versions would have been much wiser to re-release to not only give retail the best version of General Grievous possible, but to give those that missed the figure a second chance at him. But it must have been too expensive to re-release this version because of all of the articulation and soft-goods. Hasbro seems to go the cheapest route anyway with their figures. We’ve said it before, but It seems odd to us to include characters from Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith into a product line that is focusing on the release of The Phantom Menace in 3D. As you know, those plans never materialized, but the line seems unfocused and a bit disjointed with these random additions from Episode II and Episode III. With all Movie Heroes figures you get a stand, a die and a Galactic Battle Game card which have been revised for a fresh appearance in the line. The display stand has been changed to a tan/bronze/gold color and the die is now black with gold print. Regardless of these extras, these pack-ins don’t make up for the 100% price increase. And this is a $5 figure, not a $10 one.
Status: General Grievous is a repaint of 2005's ROTS General Grievous (III 9) figure.
Articulation Count: 14 points (10 areas of articulation)
Articulation Details: ball-socket head (1), action-feature sliding neck (1), ball-jointed left shoulder (2), ball-jointed right shoulder (2), hinge-jointed left secondary arm (1), hinge-jointed right secondary arm (1), swivel left hip (1), swivel right hip (1), ball-jointed left knee (2), ball-jointed right knee (2)
Accessory Count: 6
Accessory Details: 4 lightsabers (2 blue, 2 green), droid blaster, removable vocoder
Date Stamp: 2004
Assortment Number: 37755/36563
UPC: 653569686811
Retail: $9.99 USD
Market Value: Click here to check the latest prices based on listings.
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