Jedi Legacy, The - TAC - Evolutions

Journey through the evolution of the Jedi Knights! The Jedi carry on through the many challenges to their survival, teaching the order’s noble ideals and powerful skills to each succeeding generation. Qui-Gon Jinn’s decision to bring young Anakin Skywalker to Coruscant forever changes the fate of the Jedi. Bultar Swan wields her lightsaber courageously during the Clone Wars, and years later, Luke Skywalker helps end the crushing rule of the evil Empire.

What more could fans want than a three-pack of Jedi spanning various sources of the Star Wars universe? Hasbro initially worried fans with the 2008 TAC lineup of Evolutions set. You see, the first three sets were straight repacks! Instead of starting the line off right with four exciting new sets, Hasbro decided to reissue three of the sets from the 2005 Revenge Of The Sith line instead. As you can imagine, the sets didn’t sell as well as they should have and it took a few months for the new product to hit store shelves. A new Evolutions assortment (with all-new product) did finally hit however in February 2008 (one of the heaviest product month and year we have ever seen in the history of our collecting for the record) and it delivered some of the finest action figures our collections have seen. One of these set was The Jedi Legacy featuring some of the most popular Jedi ever in the Star Wars universe. It provided us with a super-articulated version of Qui-Gon Jinn, an Expanded Universe take on Luke Skywalker and finally a prequel version of Bultar Swan (whose name has been making quite a splash in the Expanded Universe too). All three action figures have a lot to offer collectors and we believe that this Evolutions set has given us some of the best head sculpts in a long time (and it’s not Qui-Gon Jinn we are talking about here). The good news too here is that it appears the Evolutions line is continuing on the same trail of stepwise progression of various Star Wars sources. We think this is an important detail to this line.

Qui-Gon Jinn is amazingly scaled and super-articulated. Coming with a sloppy soft-goods Jedi cloak, we have to admit that he looks much better without it. His sculpt is amazing, but he suffers from a slightly poor paint job which in the end makes him look too pale (for both skin and clothing color). His head has been painted good, but something went wrong with the eyes and he has a “deer in headlights” expression. This is a shame because the figure would be much improved if Hasbro spent a little more time getting this detail right. Qui-Gon has a beautiful combination of molded plastic and soft-hoods in his lower skirt and he has very broad shoulders and this is another detail that is very screen accurate to Liam Neeson’s character. Qui-Gon unfortunately comes with a very dated Episode I era lightsaber. But at least it can be held with ease in his modern hands! He has amazing playability and can be posed in an infinite amount of configurations thanks to expert engineering. Bultar Swan is probably the highlight of this set. While she doesn’t have the same popularity of Qui-Gon Jinn, Hasbro created an impressive interpretation of her in the Evolutions set. Aside from slightly poor paint applications on the face and hair, Bultar Swan is perhaps one of the best designed Jedi Knight from the Geonosis Arena sequence in Attack Of The Clones. The head sculpt is brilliant and her skin color is flawless. On top of an unbelievably authentic likeness, her Jedi robes are also perfect in every way. She is done so well we think that she should have been sold as a basic figure.

We initially thought that the Luke Skywalker (New Jedi Order) action figure looked a little bit bizarre in the face. Upon careful inspection, we are actually quite impressed with how good his likeness is. There is definitely something misshapen with his head but overall he scores high marks from us. There is something in his expression that is very “Mark Hamill-ish” and we think Hasbro captured a face they needed to for this action figure. His Jedi outfit is a little bit colorful in comparison to most others we have seen. But this unfamiliarity we witness with this figures makes him stand out in a good way. A little bit short, Luke Skywalker should make quite a few EU fans very happy. As an Evolutions set that gives collectors three all-new figures, there is certainly plenty of value here for all. No repaints, no repacks and not even any retools, Hasbro has evidently spent a lot in tooling costs and the result has paid off big time. On a different note, Hasbro has really skipped out on the extra accessories for the action figures. When the Evolutions line first started in 2005, the big selling memo was that the figures were loaded with accessories (which they indeed were). Hasbro seems to have focused any available tolling funds on great action figures and this is more than OK for us. We just hope they keep coming. The Evolutions line is a great way to get three new and highly articulated figures that share a theme together into the marketplace. If this set is any indication of just what Hasbro can do, then we should be in for a plethora of great products!