Stormtrooper - Mini Busts

Gentle Giant Ltd. wasted really no time getting the first Imperial soldier into the Mini Bust line. It wasn’t until year three that the Stormtrooper Mini Bust was finally released to a very eager collecting crowd and the final product followed in similar footsteps to the very popular and varied phase II Clone Trooper Mini Busts released a year earlier. But the short gap that we waited for him allowed us to gear up the excitement and anticipation for his release. The Stormtrooper Mini Bust has been released in Deluxe form. This means that the piece is modular and comes with interchangeable parts so you can build your own unique army under Darth Vader (providing you buy multiples of them). What Gentle Giant Ltd. doesn’t tell you (probably because they aren’t entirely aware) is that the various poses you can achieve of the Stormtrooper are not drastically unique from each other. The feature is nice, but it almost isn’t necessary. They may have been better off making a few permanent variations themselves (i.e. without modularity). What’s more disappointing than this is that the removable pieces, although reinforced with magnets, do not stay in place as strongly enough as they should. If you tilt the Mini Bust (or even look at it the wrong way) it’s a good bet an arm or two will go flying. As a display piece it’s great. But we bet that you’ll find little use for many of the interchangeable parts because they make the Stormtrooper looks a little too obtrusive.

Inside of the Stormtrooper Mini Bust box you’ll receive the main section of the Stormtrooper Mini Bust (clearly), two interchangeable left arms, two interchangeable right arms, removable portrait (with the capability to swivel left and right, but not 360 degrees), two interchangeable left hands holding a BlasTech E-11 blaster (in two different ways) and a left hand holding a long blaster rifle. Despite seeming to provide multiple parts for various configurations, we bet that you’ll find that the Stormtrooper doesn’t looks “all” that different no matter how you decide to piece him together. It’s quite a phenomenon because there are a lot of parts here. They just haven’t been sculpted in very dynamic ways to offer more versatility to the overall piece. While this sounds like a criticism, it really isn’t. We tend to be collectors that favor one clever static pose without removable parts. Interchangeability is a great thing, but it works much better for figures (small or large scale) that have multiple points of articulation. We feel the real success of a Mini Bust is how close to perfection Gentle Giant Ltd. can capture that one perfect pose that showcases the spirit, attitude and affect of any given Star Wars character. The Mini Bust line doesn’t need to rely on the novelty of removable parts to make the piece more dynamic. It should be propulsive and exude awesomeness on its own. We think they could have achieved this had they not included the interchangeability here.

The Stormtrooper has reasonable authenticity to the onscreen character. The proportions are excellent. The armored pieces are in exact scale to one another and the chest armor area of the Mini Bust is clean and fitted. It fits like a glove in fact. Underneath are periodic sections of the black body glove underneath. Then details like the buttons on the abdomens sections and the droid caller are expertly added in to provide further accuracy to the costume. The head sculpt is excellent as well. It’s lacking a few details and some of the coloring is ever so slightly off, but Gentle Giant Ltd. did manage to ensure that the lenses were colored dark green. At times the black details that were painted on were done so in a pretty sloppy manner. For example, the rim encircling his helmet isn’t clean and hardly straight. These hand painted details were clearly rush which is a shame when a collectible like this will set you back $50.00. But after you get past the critical points, you’ll overall appreciate the fine effort that went into this piece. The Stormtrooper Mini Bust is “limited” to 10,000 pieces. While we would claim this to be an insane amount for a standard Star Wars character, this many not be enough for those collectors who really want to “army build” this piece. If every Mini Bust collector bought four, that technically means that only 2500 units were produced. In that perspective, we wouldn’t suggest waiting to secure one for your own collection.