Qui-Gon Jinn - SW [TPM 3D] - Movie Heroes (MH18)

Qui-Gon Jinn battles Darth Maul in a deadly confrontation on Naboo. The Jedi Master first duels the Sith apprentice on Tatooine, barely escaping the confrontation, then faces him again on Naboo. Qui-Gon is up against a relentless enemy who tests his mastery of the lightsaber. Although he's strong in the Force, Qui-Gon battles for his life against this powerful foe.

The Movie Heroes line is disappointing at an exponential level. You already know we don’t like it, so we’ll try to make this review more productive and not so much a whining session. To set the record straight, we did our best to look for the good in this line. Repacks are a must for any Star Wars Hasbro line, but the repacks Hasbro chose for the Movie Heroes line are mind boggling. A great new product line should have all-new sculpts. Movie Heroes satisfies this requirement and has all-new sculpts, but they don’t make that much sense because the all-new sculpts would have suited collectors much better than young kids. But even the kids’ figures aren’t ideal. What makes the new “light-up” figures worse is that Hasbro still hasn’t found a way to make (even if it has to be bulky) a light-up lightsaber accessory that doesn’t interfere with the natural aesthetics of a human form. Qui-Gon Jinn quite honestly looks like he was a very long delayed figure from 1997’s The Power Of The Force Electronic Power F/X figure sub-line. Honestly, aside from some pretty good sculpting of Qui-Gon’s portrait and even the updated articulation, time and technology hasn’t healed the wounds of those terrible figures from yesteryear. We apparently have a while to go before Hasbro gets this down to a science.

As we’ve just mentioned, all is not completely lost with this figure. Hasbro sculptors truly have knocked the head sculpt out of the park. But ironically, this is exactly the problem. If Hasbro wants to make basic figures with electronics for the kids (and yes, even some big kids), why add premium articulation at all to them and then instead use those dollars to update figures in the collector-focused line when stuff like that is appreciated? For example, Qui-Gon Jinn comes with ball-jointed knees and a ball-jointed left elbow. Why? The articulation doesn’t help you pose the figure. In fact, check out the gallery and see how awkward he looks if you do articulated those points. (Besides, Qui-Gon Jinn has a removable plastic molded skirt that inhibits his leg movement.) And why in the world did they bother adding ball-jointed articulation to his left elbow? It’s perplexing anymore. Yet The Vintage Collection Qui-Gon Jinn (VC75) figure is just a repack of the same exact figure we received years ago and not a blessed things was done to upgrade him. That was the figure that should have received the all-new head sculpt and perhaps the tooling budget that went into giving the Movie Heroes Qui-Gon Jinn ball-jointed knees could have been donated to some other figures in desperate need of it, like The Clone Wars figures that are quickly becoming micro statuettes for example.

When we think about Hasbro and the Movie Heroes line anymore, all we can envision is a big tent with the various Hasbro suits (executives) walking around with red noses and exploding shoes. It is a chaotic circus there apparently and we just don’t know what to make of it anymore. Like we’ve said, we understand the need to give something to the kids. But to make a 2012 line appear like it’s using the planning of a late nineties line, we have to take a step back and question what’s going on here. Thank goodness things are coming together and they haven’t lost their vision for The Vintage Collection yet. Many people who are indeed buying these figures are still complaining that the batteries are unable to be replaced. Well, we understand that Qui-Gon Jinn would really be a total waste of time if his lightsaber didn’t work, but do you really care about this with an action figure? And if you do, this is exactly the reasons we do not like action features like this especially when the weapon is permanently affixed to the figure. (Just think how high-end collectors feel when the electronics of a Premium Format Figure or Mini Bust dies.) If electronics can’t be built to last indefinitely, we’d just assume they’d be skipped altogether. So there you go. Qui-Gon Jinn is a maddening and confusing figure. Kids will love it, but the premium articulation needs to be curtailed in these figures for sure.