Kanan Jarrus - R - 12-Inch Figures

Kanan Jarrus gears up to duel the enemy with his lightsaber and combat gear!

As most collectors have appeared to figure out, Hasbro appears to be developing all of their action figures (of the same character) from one source of digital files). Action figures across different scales and lines look remarkably similar. And when you display them side by side their identicalness is borderline alarming. You especially feel it when you compare a super-articulated 6” figure against a 3.75” Saga Legends/Mission Series figure. Whether this is just speculation or not, there is no denying that Hasbro is definitely tooling figures from one source and expanding it across the lines. This is especially true in the Rebels line up when it comes to the 12-Inch Figures Hero Series line. But instead of just producing a larger-sized figure in 12” scale, they upgraded them to include additional articulation and a few extra accessories. Hasbro produced three characters in the Hero Series line that fall into a more “Deluxe” type of format. One of these, Kanan Jarrus, receives the works with a premium set of play feature accessories which, in all honesty, makes the figure a fun toy. These are for kids, let us be clear on that.

These figures of course are basically just one-sixth scaled 3.75” basic figures. The sculpts are nearly identical thanks to that unfounded rumor that the same digital files are being used to create all of the Hasbro action figures these days. But we have to admit the addition of multiple “off screen” accessories make these toys a little more interesting, and if your kids are into action figures, this might be a great way to get them interested in Star Wars collecting at a young age. These figures will not interest collectors and that’s OK. If Hasbro would just figure out that they need to keep the 3.75” appealing to collectors and then make everything else non-3.75” for kids, we would all have a lot more fun in this collecting era. Until this attention refocuses, we imagine there is going to remain a lot of resentment to the way the Star Wars toy line is headed. Without getting too off track here, we think it’s worth mentioning that Kanan Jarrus is an admirable and “cheap” toy that is well made and well painted and should be the perfect accompaniment to the Rebels television show that is winning hearts at a rapid rate.

Like Ezra Bridger, Kanan Jarrus looks incredibly better in 12-Inch Figure scale than he does as a simply articulated 3.75” action figure. Still billed under the Hero Series banner, this new term mostly describes anything of a large nature. But they’ve added $5 to the MSRP and included a significant amount of accessories for this price. We think you’re getting a lot of plastic here for your money. If only The Black Series 6” figures could come with this many accessories there would probably be very little complaining from collectors. In fact, it makes us a little bit angry that Hasbro cannot include all of the necessary accessories with the action figures they produce in 6” scale yet can “make up” accessories for a 12-Inch Hero Series Kanan Jarrus and not even think twice about including all the extra plastic, even for $5 more. Kanan Jarrus looks great. He has an excellent paint job and the few extra points of articulation make him a wonderful toy. We hope that Hasbro finds success in this format. They seem to do everything possible to produce anything that isn’t high quality 3.75” figures to keep the Star Wars line running. If they could only get back to basic, things might be better for everyone.