Mara Jade - EU - Basic

Prepare to jump to lightspeed with Kenner's Expanded Universe, now offering the most memorable characters from Star Wars Dark Horse comics, Bantam novels, and LucasArts video games. Finally, the entire galaxy can be yours!

Five years after the Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance has driven the evil Empire into a distant corner of the galaxy. But a new danger has arisen: the last of the Emperor's warlords has devised a battle plan that could destroy the New Republic.

Before the death of Palpatine, Mara Jade was the Emperor's right hand assassin. Five years later and now a successful smuggler, the last thing Mara expected was to stumble upon her former arch-enemy – Luke Skywalker.

There is one character who became so popular in the Expanded Universe that it almost made it feel wrong she wasn’t featured in a Star Wars movie…. and that character is Mara Jade. Making one appearance after another in comics, books, novels, video games and what have you, this intricately detailed character has become a superhero in her own right, and a collector’s dream come true. Making her debut appearance in the action figure line thanks to Kenner’s specially created Expanded Universe sub-line, this The Power Of The Force “2” era figure will go down in history as one of the greatest gifts Kenner has ever given us. Now, this doesn’t mean the Mara Jade action figure was free from issues. She has an OK likeness and a much too thick neck, but the rest of her features are feminine and delicate, but all that's just a mask for the power she exudes wielding a lightsaber and blaster. This is one tough cookie and a love interest for Luke Skywalker. So what is there not to love about her?

We still think the Expanded Universe Mara Jade figure looks fantastic in the basic figure line. She comes with minimal articulation, and it’s a shame Hasbro didn’t grace her with a few extra points of articulation. The sculpting is great as far as we’re concerned, and while her likeness isn’t perfect, we think they did an admirable job on her. The paint operations are cleanly applied. And her accessories interact with both of her hands. Her lightsaber is the wrong color—we’d love to see a purple-bladed lightsaber for her—but the blue works too. Hey, maybe she stole this one from Luke Skywalker. Who knows. Her blaster is of a unique design and works perfectly well for her slightly mysterious, slightly aggressive character traits. Overall, we think she looks great posed on a shelf or interacting with other Star Wars action figures. Clearly, your options are limitless. Her pose isn’t too action oriented either, and this is a main reason why she looks so good in so many displays. She is very versatile despite her rather “boring” pose.

As with all Expanded Universe basic figures, Mara Jade’s packaging converts into a 3D diorama which includes some original artwork from the comics, and it looks stunningly beautiful. In the background of her display is a wandering astromech droid. It really brings a sense of the storyline and backdrop for which her character interacts. And when you pose the Mara Jade action figure against the diorama, it’s amazing how much life is brought into this little scene. We really hope Kenner/Hasbro will invest more time and effort into these types of micro environments these types of backdrops bring into the toy line. With her popularity soaring and the sole fact this is a beautiful female action figure, expect Mara Jade to be one of the most elusive action figures of 1998. In fact, the whole line was elusive because Collection 2 clogged the pegs and prevented most of the Expanded Universe action figures from making it to store shelves. Thankfully, other online sources came to the rescue and made all of these action figures a little bit easier to find.