General Grievous [Version 2] - TSC - The Episode III Heroes & Villains Collection (9 of 12)

The supreme commander of the droid armies is tracked to Utapau by Obi-Wan Kenobi. A powerful combination of droid and alien, Grievous is a formidable fighter, and ultimately confronts the Jedi in single combat.

Every new villain introduced in a Star Wars film always is the center of attention for Hasbro, and it seems to be especially true for those characters from the Prequel Trilogy. This of course is a good thing. Darth Maul and to a lesser extent Count Dooku saw plenty of action figure incarnations of their characters so that demand could be meant during such a huge multimedia event as a new Star Wars film. Episode III was really no different. And just a year after the Revenge Of The Sith line ended, Hasbro is already getting out some of what they're hailing the "greatest hits" of 2005 in 2006's The Saga Collection The Episode III Heroes & Villains Collection. This 12 figure set adds figures back into the line while keeping them separate from the new main basic figure line. Originally “teased” as 2005's ROTS General Grievous (1 of 4) Sneak Preview figure, General Grievous’ very first “basic” figure release was 2005’s ROTS General Grievous (III 9) which boasted “Four Lightsaber Attack!” as a call out action feature right on the front of the figure’s packaging. What's interesting is that Hasbro goofed. This was the intended version of General Grievous to release, but they accidentally released 2005's ROTS General Grievous (III 36) figure first by mistake. You can see the incorrect General Grievous [Version 1] HERE. It was quickly changed and the correct version has been updated as a part of this sub-line.

General Grievous [Version 2] comes with 14 points of articulation, but it honestly gets convoluted when you try to count them. The action feature is all in the upper body. When you press his head down, his four arms flail 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. The articulation is confusing in the shoulders. It's partly double ball-jointed, but it's also more of three swivel points working as a system (a swvel shoulder with two hinge-jointed arms on each shoulder). We feel the ball-jointed knees were completely wasted here. Ball-jointed articulation isn’t necessarily cheap to produce, so it should have been saved for another figure or a different version of General Grievous (at least collector-focused version). On the other hand, the ball-jointed shoulders were definitely required to help with posing his arms in a variety of ways since it’s the only articulation they possess. Grievous isn’t without his issues. He is much too short in scale. He should tower over Obi-Wan Kenobi and they are “peers” in the height department. And it still appears that his color is much too yellow (even though the paint job looks spectacular). Lastly, this isn’t an action figure for collectors.

Obviously a big portion of people who buy Star Wars figures will affect the performance of this General Grievous [Version 2] figure. There are plenty of General Grievous figures in the Revenge Of The Sith line and it appears we're going to get plenty of carried forward versions of him in future lines as well. We think each brings a special “something” to the basic figure line. And it is good to see them often. You obviously won’t get accuracy with this version. But it serves a purpose and Hasbro had to find a way to grab the kids' attention to hopefully create a new generation of fans. It's a perfect version to keep at retail and Hasbro will do that well with the The Episode III Heroes & Villains Collection line now. We still think scale could have been better represented here, but in all honesty we know that Hasbro had to work months in advance with incomplete reference material. It does seem that scale was clearly set in Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars micro-series, especially during the capture of Chancellor Palpatine. Even the General Grievous animated figure is larger than the other figures in that line. Oh well, it was missed by Hasbro. We’ll just have to wait until they can bring collectors a truly impressive version of him in the future. General Grievous is a staple Star Wars character from Revenge Of The Sith, so expect to see frequent releases of him in the future.