Clone Trooper - SW [S - P1] - Basic (’02 #17)

If there is an action figure that can prove why more articulation is useless, it would probably have to be the Clone Trooper from the Star Wars “Saga” line. Is it just us, or did Hasbro seem ill-prepared for the arrival of clone action figures for this line, especially since the film is called Attack Of The Clones? Anyway, Hasbro did appear to make a concerted effort to bring the first official basic figure Clone Trooper, an action figure in the Star Wars “Saga” line, to collectors in a way that they’d appreciate. In many ways, we understand the figure, but in others, we have to question why they approached the Clone Trooper in this manner. The Clone Trooper has some excellent features. For example, the ball-jointed knees are especially helpful when posing the figure alongside the included cannon. And we have to admit we are impressed with how the arms can hold a DC-15 blaster rifle well and “man” the cannon equally well. There are many reasons collectors will find this figure satisfactory, and Hasbro considers that a success. But the rest of the tooling is wonky. The Clone Trooper doesn’t have a perfectly accurate silhouette. You’ll notice some “skewed proportions,” for example, and Hasbro opted to give us a clone officer instead of a member of the infantry. Hasbro choosing a rare “red” clone officer is beyond us, especially since they appear in the film at a significantly higher ratio.

Clone Trooper is not a total failure, but Hasbro hasn’t mastered the body and the armor accurately enough yet. It was a huge seller, and people bought more of this figure than others in April 2002. The figure comes with a nice amount of accessories. A separate sculpted tripod has an attachment to place the cannon on it. And then, a projectile goes into the cannon so the clone can help the Grand Army of the Republic defeat the Separatist Droid Army. Sadly, Hasbro cast the tripod in soft and unstable plastic, which can barely maintain its shape. But all is not lost with this setback. The Clone Trooper comes with a DC-15 blaster rifle. Hasbro didn’t include the smaller DC-15 blaster, but you do a Geonosian “rock,” which baffles us. Interestingly, the card of the figure reveals how to use this “accessory,” but Hasbro designed the foot peg on the production piece “backward” (for lack of a better term), and you’re unable to situate the clone as shown in the “help diagram” on the packaging. We’re unclear why Hasbro would have wasted their time designing this piece as it serves no real purpose for the Clone Trooper, and while you can get it to interact with the figure, it feels extraneous here instead of functional.

Clone Trooper comes with 14 points of articulation. There aren’t any ankle joints, and only the knees offer ball-jointed articulation. The rest of the points are swivel articulation. As you know, swivel articulation limits the range of motion to only one 180-degree plane. As a result, you’re not going to get a lot of movement out of the action figure. You’ll probably find that it is much more limiting than articulated. Hasbro should have released the first basic Clone Trooper figure with ball-jointed articulation from head to ankles. It would have been a massive seller for Hasbro, and collectors would have bought a plethora of them. For those that love trivia, there was supposed to be an all-white running change of the Clone Trooper at some point during the Star Wars “Saga” 2002 run. (Editor’s Note: Plans changed, and by the time 2003 came around, Hasbro was already working on the beautiful Clone Wars Clone Trooper (’03 #50) figure.) Packaged samples of this version appeared at Toy Fair, but ultimately Hasbro never released the new variation. Clone Trooper is a decent figure to launch the line, but it’s time to bring something awe-inspiring. Forgo the gimmicks and bulky accessories in the film, and give us a definitive action figure instead.