Stormtrooper Commander (The Force Unleashed) - Mini Busts

Blue armor markings distinguish the stormtrooper commander from the more common stormtrooper. Specially advanced ARC training gives the stormtrooper commander sharp intellect. A stormtrooper commander leads a typical squad of stormtroopers, but they may advance into an Imperial officer's rank if potential is displayed.

It was inevitable that Gentle Giant Ltd.. would reuse the Stormtrooper mini bust sculpt a few times. Making good use of their molds, we received a chrome plated Stormtrooper and three unique Sandtrooper mini busts. Now, with the extremely popular The Force Unleashed game released, the Stormtrooper gets reinvented into a Stormtrooper Commander. It has been very well made and both the color and the sculpt are excellent. Full of many scratches on the blue paint and carbon-scoring marks on the white sections of the armor, the Stormtrooper Commander is very well done and is an instant hit in their impressive line of mini busts. Thankfully, Gentle Giant decided to do away with the modular parts (you won't find any detachable parts here) and they have released a very faithful representation of this popular video game character. We are huge fans of the Stormtrooper Commander and while the mini bust is excellent, we have seen better collectibles based on him. (In particular, we have yet to be more impressed by the Stormtrooper Commander that Sideshow Collectibles interpreted.)

And the bust has one or two inconsistent decos. Almost immediately, we noticed one "glaring" error. The lenses are painted in the dark green again just like the Stormtrooper mini bust. We think it would have been best served by having them painted in black. We understand why the first Stormtrooper has green lenses, but the Sideshow Stormtrooper Commander was designed with black lenses and we think it is very accurate to the video game character. We think Gentle Giant may have forgotten that they weren't designing an Episode IV character. It looks a bit off, but not enough to entirely detract from its overall beauty. We think Gentle Giant chose the best parts to make the optimal pose for the Stormtrooper Commander. His right arm is holding up his Imperial blaster and his left arm is resting on his belt. He has blue color flashes everywhere and while we think it is beautifully painted, there are some sloppy lines here and there. But more importantly, Gentle Giant painted the worn look very well onto the figure. There are so many realistic scratches and it simply blows us away. We are impressed!

We mentioned earlier that we are very happy that Gentle Giant left out the modular pieces. This Stormtrooper Commander is one solid piece. Not only are the arms held permanently in place, but the head doesn't move either. We are of the opinion that mini busts shouldn't be "articulated" (like our action figures - they are miniature statues, that's all) and we especially love the oneness of the piece. There is less chance for pieces flying off and causing irreversible damage. So clearly it is our desire to see mini busts continue in this fashion. We think that the deluxe style of mini busts is good for certain pieces, but for the most part, the mini busts should be one piece. The packaging on this box contains an error. You will find that it states the edition size is 2100 pieces while the bottom of the bust says 2500. We confirmed that the correct edition size is 2500 pieces indeed. The Stormtrooper Commander mini bust seems to have suffered from the shrinking process (very similar to the Galactic Marine and Airborne Trooper) and is a bit shorter than many other mini busts. This is a bit unfortunate and we hope Gentle Giant can gain better control over this for future busts. In a nutshell, the Stormtrooper Commander is great, but definitely not one of their best!