Durge (With Swoop Bike) - CW - Deluxe

A century before the Clone Wars, this 2,000 year old bounty hunter went into hibernation to recuperate after being tortured by Mandalorians. Awakening shortly after the Battle of Geonosis, Durge learns that the only Mandalorians still alive are the Clone Troopers, which were created from Mandalorian Jango Fett. Durge joins the Confederacy to enact his revenge upon Jango Fett's clones. His swoop bike is a high-performance craft with exceptional speed and challenges even the most skilled pilots. Simple vehicles, they achieve their performance through a combination of repulsorlift and turbothrust engines.

2003 was an exciting time for multiple reasons. Even if you felt that Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones was a clumsy and unsteady middle story in the Prequel Trilogy, the opening scene of the Clone Wars got our hearts racing for what transpired during this rumored time. Star Wars fans were dying to know what transpired during the Clone Wars since we heard Obi-Wan Kenobi briefly mention it in passing when he and Luke Skywalker met up at his abode on Tatooine. All we learned is that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker fought in the Clone Wars. And that was enough to make us obsess about what events took place during this time. Obviously, the Clone Wars provides a rich and fertile soil of unlimited Expanded Universe storytelling. And these truly limitless stories are not only able to affirm what we learned from Obi-Wan Kenobi, but delve into the specific of the wars. Thanks to a fantastic new multimedia marketing event, Lucasfilm, Hasbro and many other licenses are putting together a Clone Wars multimedia event which are all going to help shape the Star Wars universe in a very profound way. Hasbro has produced a line of realistically styled figures and vehicles to complement the comics, books and even Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars micro-series, and for collectors this will be the highlight of the multimedia event.

Unlike the basic figure, Durge comes heavily articulated so he can interact with his swoop bike perfectly. We have to admit it. Hasbro has done a brilliant job with the figure and vehicle interactivity here. With an impressive 20 points of ball-hinged/jointed articulation, Durge is very flexible to attain an array of poses that are both useful and interesting. He can sit. He can stand. And he can be positioned in some action poses thanks to the freedom that his joints give him. With a healthy dose of accessories too, Durge will be an action figure you’ll want to secure for your collection. If there are any drawbacks, we’d have to focus on the paint operations. They are not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but they are reduced in a way that makes the figure feel like more should have been done to give it a rich canvas of color and detail. This definitely feels like the paint job has been given that “obligatory pack-in figure” simple paint job. It’s alright though, because you’re going to love Durge and his features. He comes with two functioning holsters which house his blaster pistols. He also comes with a strapped blaster rifle (where the strap plugs into the stock of the gun for an alternative appearance). Oh, and he comes with a removable jetpack which seems too thin and small for his larger stature, but looks cool nonetheless.

We’re not too keen on any speeder bike type of vehicles. It’s just a type of vehicle that hasn’t completely grabbed us, save for the speeder bikes in Return Of The Jedi. But we’d be misleading you if we didn’t admit that Durge’s Swoop Bike looks pretty darn amazing. The plastic is a little too soft for our tastes and this causes some warping, but overall this bike is beautifully detailed, sculpted and painted. What’s more, Durge has been engineered flawlessly to interact with the bike in the most natural and believable of ways. We’re serious when we say that we don’t believe a figure and vehicle has interacted more perfectly than this. Durge’s Swoop Bike is loaded with emblems and insignias. With a mostly green color palette, Hasbro has added red and white elements to help annunciate this villain’s association with the underworld. He is after the Mandalorians and this is the sole reason why he is engaging in battle with the clones (and Obi-Wan Kenobi). Clearly his hibernation has made him cranky and it’s all about justice and revenge at this point. We feel that Hasbro has done a fine job with bringing this character to life in the basic figure line as 2003’s CW Durge (Commander Of The Separatist Forces) (’03 #46) figure. The basic figure looks better as far as paint operations are concerned. But this Deluxe version just functions a whole heck of a lot better. You’ll likely need both.