Plo Koon - ROTS - Basic (III 66)

Jedi Master Plo Koon is a member of the Jedi Council and comes from a long line of Jedi. Serving as a General in the Clone Wars, he leads a squadron of Republic star fighters against the Separatist forces on Cato Neimoidia.

Holographic/hologram action figures create a mixed bag of opinions within the collecting community. Some absolutely adore them while others can find much more important things to spend with their money. We actually are fond of them for the most part because the various Star Wars characters already developed into holographic images actually did appear in the films this way. Therefore these figures make “completists” very happy and they bring some diversity into the basic figure lines. Hasbro approached holographic action figures differently towards the end of the Revenge Of The Sith basic figure line. They through out the approach of using translucent purple and instead moved towards a translucent sky blue (with an added glitter effect) that made the illusion of a true holographic image all that more believable. The results are simply impressive, meaning that this new method is a great step forward, but the figures by nature aren’t too exciting. They aren’t meant to be played with and instead just fill up space in your dioramas and/or displays in your collection. Some holographic figures are better than others. And we’ve learned less is more when it comes to designing them. Let us explain.

In an age of collecting that has moved towards collectors always expected super-articulation to near super-articulation, we’ve discovered the trend that sculpts with very minimal articulation look significantly better as a hologram than those with multiple points of near to super articulation. Ball-joints look especially wonky in a holographic action figure. Because the ball-joint is highly functioning, the mechanics of it is visible through the translucent blue plastic. You really don’t want to see all of the “gears” inside of a figure that is meant to be an intangible image of the actual character. (This unfortunately affects 2005's ROTS Aayla Secura (III 67) figure whose 21 points of articulation are even more evident in translucent blue plastic now.) Plo Koon only has eight points of articulation and most of them are well hidden. Plo Koon truly look like a whole action figure and as a result functions as a very believable hologram of this demur yet powerful Jedi Master. The nice thing is that because Hasbro utilized the 2000 Power Of The Jedi sculpt of Plo Koon, he is wearing his outer robes which truly represents how Plo Koon looks in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith. (The 2005 ROTS Plo Koon (III 16) figure is incomplete by comparison.)

Plo Koon comes with extra accessories not really useful or even needed. He comes with a holographic version of his lightsaber and the included display base has also been case in this translucent blue plastic. Another example of Hasbro strictly abiding by Collection 1 versus Collection 2 designation (with one rare exception), Plo Koon comes with an added action figure display stand because the figure doesn’t offer any action features of the sort. If you can overlook the extra accessories, you will be left with a very fair holographic representation of Plo Koon. We think it was a clever (and accurate) addition to the Revenge Of The Sith basic figure line. You may not like these types of action figures, but they definitely serve a purpose. There is one thing we wish Hasbro would have done differently however, but it isn’t about the figure. Not that Plo Koon had any say in this, but we wished that Hasbro didn’t number him as III 66. This designation should have been given to wave mate 2005's ROTS Tactical Ops Trooper (III 65) instead, just for posterity. (We’re unhealthily obsessed with these kinds of relation and/or coincidences.) Nonetheless, Plo Koon is a welcomed addition to the holographic action figure family. This is the first time Hasbro has given us an accurately made blue hologram for a figure and we look forward to what they bring us in the future. We just hope that they’ll be able to find figures without a ton of articulation for aesthetic reasons in the future.