Darth Vader And Seeker Droid (Star Destroyer) - SW [DV/ROTS] - Mission Series (MS01)

Darth Vader sends out Seeker Droids to hunt down all those who oppose the Galactic Empire. Vader deploys the Droids from his Star Destroyer to find spies, Rebels, and all other enemies of the Empire.

Hasbro decided to kick off the 2013 Star Wars [Darth Vader/Revenge Of The Sith] line of action figure two-packs entitled the Mission Series with an Expanded Universe combination. Darth Vader And Seeker Droid have been joined together in a newly approached format that Hasbro hopes will engage the younglings while created angst for the adult market. The new outlook Hasbro has is that kids are no longer interested in articulation, or perhaps we should qualify that with “super” articulation. They had regressed the line to how action figures were designed when Star Wars made a comeback in 1995. But instead of bulky proportions, realistically styled features have been ascribed to the new tooling to also pique the interest of adult collectors. The Darth Vader And Seeker Droid Mission Series: Coruscant (MS01) set is interesting. We will give Hasbro that much. They were inspired by The Empire Strikes Back version of Darth Vader and then decided to throw in a Seeker Droid. The Seeker Droid made its first appearance in Star Wars: Republic Commando for those curious. A cool droid gives the kids some extra value-added play value while saving on tooling dollars at the same time.

Darth Vader at face value looks pretty good. He only has five points of articulation (all swivel points) and also comes with a soft-goods cape that is made from a cheaper material but has a decent drape nonetheless. Darth Vader is proportionately tall and has a wealth of features worked into the sculpting to make it as realistically styled as possible. The shape of his helmet honestly looks like no other Darth Vader likeness we have seen to date. Interestingly, it looks pretty fantastic. As far as accuracy and realism, Hasbro has held our interest. Darth Vader only comes with his lightsaber, and it can only be held in his right hand. As you can imagine, you don’t have many options to pose him dynamically, but at least he can hold the lightsaber. He doesn’t have a perfect center of gravity surprisingly either. You’ll have to futz with his legs and find a way to prevent him from being too top heavy. It’s possible, but this imperfect design drives us insane, and we typically don’t possess the patience to waste time on such things. It’s not terrible, but you will notice the imbalance at times.

If anything about this set interests you, it will likely be the Seeker Droid. As a never-before-released character, most Star Wars collectors like to get one of every figure. As a result, this may be on the top of their lists. For those of you interested, this is actually called a Prowler 1000 exploration droid. It isn’t something Hasbro pulled out of their butt. There are varying colors of this droid, and Hasbro chose a color scheme that would nicely complement Darth Vader. And it does. The Seeker Droid comes unassembled in the package. It is comprised of a main head and body section, two legs, a cannon and a clear plastic display stand. Once fully assembled, the Seeker Droid actually looks pretty interesting. It looks like a mixture of a probot and sentry droid.You get the drift. We find it very interesting that Hasbro has opted to call this set “Mission Series: Star Destroyer.” Clearly, this wasn’t seen in any of the films so it’s sourced from the Expanded Universe. It will be interesting to see how well these do at retail when all is said and done. Something about the plastic used feels cheaper and lacks the wow factor of previously released kid-focused products. We wonder if others will notice.