Chewbacca [ROTS] - Unleashed

Wookiees don't take threats very well. Cross one of their kind, and you'll be lucky to have one arm left in its socket. But underneath their mammoth, fur-covered exteriors lies a race of compassionate, trustworthy and loyal creatures that strive to live in peace on their lush jungle planet of Kashyyyk. This is why the mighty Chewbacca and his fellow Wookiee warriors must fight to repel an invasion of their home planet by the massive Separatist droid armies. Jedi Master Yoda and an army of clone troopers fight with the Wookiees to help secure their position on the beaches of Wawaatt Archipelago on the coastal city of Kachirho. Armed with a body shield and a Wookiee blaster, Chewbacca battles the amassing droids during an amphibious assault. Later during the battle, while in a treetop command center with Yoda from the suddenly traitorous clone troopers, Chewie and Tarfful bravely lead Yoda to an escape pod, where they will say their distressing last goodbyes. Now Chewbacca and the rest of the Wookiees must band together to pull through their darkest hour.

Isn’t it fascinating that no matter the scale, medium or line that there will always be a “repack and repaint” wave when it comes to Hasbro? We’re sure Hasbro isn’t the only licensee “guilty” of this action, but in the Star Wars line it seems more heavily prevalent than others. Such is true for the Unleashed line. The final (and almost unreleased) Unleashed wave 12 almost didn’t see the light of day. In fact, many consider the wave a de facto Walmart exclusive. (This isn’t necessarily accurate, but it certainly seemed to be true for the most part. Aside from Walmart only a few other online and specialty shops carried them. There have been little to no reports of these showing up anywhere else). Although in spirit, but not in actuality a ”repack and repaint” wave, Hasbro utilized three former and quite popular base sculpts on which to extrapolate on for new characters (or new versions of characters). For instance, the 2004 Unleashed Chewbacca was revisited for an Episode III take on the character. Surprisingly, Hasbro have given this Revenge Of The Sith version of Chewbacca a more accurate Original Trilogy appearance than they did on the one that's supposed to be based from Return Of The Jedi. As we all know now, Chewbacca’s fur darkened with age and the reverse is true in the Unleashed line. From this perspective, Chewbacca [ROTS] may be a little too inaccurate for your tastes, but we appreciate the interpretation despite this.

There are quite a few things that set the 2004 Unleashed Chewbacca from this one. Obviously the paint scheme is completely different. Hasbro added many dark elements to his fur. We’re quite impressed with the paint operations as a result. There are new accessories as well. Hasbro tooled beautiful new weapons to accompany this Chewbacca and they include a body shield (which is made with enough plastic to make a 3.75” action figure) and a new Wookiee blaster. Both are sculpted beautifully and look fantastic when Chewbacca [ROTS] is holding them. Surprisingly, Hasbro spent the time and money to retool the unarticulated right arm. In fact, the new arm is an all-new sculpt that has been permanently worked into the existing tooling. What is so bizarre about this is that they could have much more easily replaced the ball-jointed left arm instead. That however is identical to the one released with the 2004 Unleashed Chewbacca. We understand the need for a new right arm however. On the 2004 Unleashed Chewbacca past of his crossbow was part of his right arm, so Hasbro HAD to tool a new right arm to get rid of that element to remove any trace of the Original Trilogy on this new take on Chewbacca. We’re glad they did. Although we didn’t see Chewbacca fight in battle like this Unleashed figure alludes he did, that’s part of the spirit of these figures: to put our favorite characters in an all-new light that may or may not be screen accurate to the films. Hasbro succeeded doing that here.

It may have behooved Hasbro to sculpt an all-new head sculpt to make a generic Wookiee Warrior (had they planned to approach this Unleashed figure with a little more screen accuracy. (It does feel that the newly tooled weapons are “wasted” on Chewbacca here. (We say that lightheartedly.) But maybe because Chewbacca is more of a “runt” of the super large Wookiee species Hasbro thought they could never pull of a generic Wookiee Warrior with this leaner body type. Who know. We’re only surmising here. Still, we’re glad that we have received another take on Chewbacca in the Unleashed line. We feel he came out quite well. The facial expression looks a little meaner (Hasbro muted the doe eyes from the first Chewbacca quite a bit) and the coloring just looks very impressive even if it isn’t that accurate to Episode III. Hasbro also revisited the base on which Chewbacca [ROTS] stands. Instead of green for Endor, Hasbro cast the base in beige to recreate the sandy beach of Kashyyyk. There is no new tooling to the base at all and it’s quite an accomplishment to go from “moss” to “sand” with the same texture in our opinion. Hasbro gave the base a very simple paint job, but the final result is very nice. Chewbacca [ROTS] may not be your first choice in the Unleashed line, but we can’t dismiss it as unnecessary. Hasbro did quite a bit of work on his to make him as Episode III specific as possible He isn’t perfect, but we think they still did a great job over all.

As a bonus feature to this review, we have provided the original artwork created for this Star Wars: Unleashed figure. Click the thumbnail to the left to see the amazing illustration.