TIE Pilot/Stormtrooper - R - Mission Series (MS17)

Imperial Stormtroopers and TIE Pilots are deployed across the galaxy to crush any Rebel resistance.

Army building in an inevitable part of the hobby. Thankfully, with the Rebels line, Hasbro is making this a bit easier for us. Originally part of the second wave of Rebels Saga Legends, the simply articulated, yet excellently sculpted TIE Pilot figure has been the topic of much debate, criticism, and praise. We have even conceded ourselves that with the Rebels line these figures have never looked better. The same couldn’t be more true for the TIE Pilot. Now packed together with the equally excellent Stormtrooper, Hasbro produces the Mission Series two-pack to help kids and collectors build their Imperial masses at a much brisker rate. If you can’t get past five points of articulation (or less), then there isn’t much we’re going to be able to say to convert you, but we are admittedly quite taken with the TIE Pilot/Stormtrooper Mission Series set. They only come with five points of articulation each. There are some imperfections on both, of course. For instance, there is inhibited head movement on the TIE Pilot and a dinginess to the white armor of the Stormtrooper. So not all is completely perfect here. Then again, things aren’t wholly terrible as well.

For the TIE Pilot, the figure has a very impressive and well detailed sculpt. His posture is a little bit “leaning forward,” but you can easily pose his torso area backward to counteract this. In short, it’s not the end of the world. His helmet looks appropriately large and has the perfect combination of animation and realism rolled into one distinct look. The black plastic used to cast him averages medium in sheen. In other words, he doesn’t look too dull or too shiny. He looks just right. Goldilocks would approve. The chest box looks phenomenal. Every last colored squared has been perfectly decorated. There are no runaway paint operations here in the least. Even more impressive are the Imperial insignias on his helmet. They’re not the slightest bit blurry and are evenly distant from each other as far as their placement is concerned. There aren’t a lot of different colors used when decorating the TIE Pilot, but what Hasbro used looks fantastic, and we are overall quite impressed with how this figure turned out. The TIE Pilot looks incredible with many of the past TIE fighter vehicles Hasbro has produced in various collector lines; large-scaled wings or small scaled wings.

Despite a pretty rough basic figure version, the Mission Series Stormtrooper is looking a bit better. We still have to wonder, however, how can the black and gray paint operations be so messed up and so choppy looking? And how hard is it to cast a figure from head to toe in the SAME plastic to prevent the limbs from discoloring (or just appearing to be a different shade of white)? It’s maddening. The Stormtrooper is indeed a figure we’d love to army build (within reason), but it’s a crapshoot whether these figures look good or just really, really bad. Perhaps with Hasbro giving us all of these opportunities we will have better luck than before, but we just need to know why all the inconsistency exists. As far as the animated style, some collectors still aren’t sold on it. And after the sudden death of The Clone Wars line, hasn’t Hasbro learned that it might have been ideal to tool realistically styled action figures so when Rebels goes away, kids and collectors will have a more homogeneous line of action figures? For the Rebels line, the Stormtrooper comes with an E-11 blaster pistol, but with the limited range of motion, there aren’t too many exciting poses you can attain because of this. He will likely be a hit, so just be sure to get one that looks good. This Mission Series set is not a bad idea on paper.