Dewback And Sandtrooper - POTF2 [R/G] - Creatures

TYPE: Lizard-like Omnivore
HEIGHT: 1.3 to 2.0 Meters at Shoulder
HOMEWORLD: Tatooine
USES: Patrol Animal, Pet, Food and Leather Source

One thing that probably no one can deny (no matter which side of the fence he or she is on) is that even if you are an Original Trilogy purist, the Special Editions brought forth a hoard of great toy concepts from Kenner. They introduced their Creature Assortment lineup with three “beasts” and pack-in figures that were all based on either new characters or newly revised established characters from A New Hope Special Edition. One of the standout sets was the Dewback And Sandtrooper. New CGI digital footage was created to pad the old analog footage of the brief moments mechanical Dewbacks were on the Tatooine desert as Sandtroopers looked for the missing droids. The Dewback took on a completely new appearance and admittedly it was one of the best parts of A New Hope Special Edition. Kenner made the new Dewback And Sandtrooper set a priority and we have to concede that it turned out extremely better than expected. The Dewback in particular is a heavy, chunky and borderline massive beast that has a pretty awesome sculpt and beautiful yet simple paint applications. Plus, we get an all-new Sandtrooper that has been tooled especially to interact and “ride” the Dewback without any issue.

Again, the Dewback is awesome. It is very heavy when compared to other toys in the line of comparable size. It comes with basic articulation, but in all honesty you don’t need a ton of articulation from these creatures. They basically just either stand there or mope along. They’re very slow beasts and the toy interpretations of them don’t need super-articulation since these are creatures that barely move in the film. The lower jaw opens and close and the tail swings. This is an action feature system that works quite well. This action feature has been demurely worked into the toy as to not interfere with its aesthetics. We approve with how it has been approached. When you move the tail the lower jaw opens and closes. It’s perfect. The detail worked into the sculpt of the Dewback is quite remarkable. Kenner really did a wonderful rendering of this beast especially since it was just CGI in the film. They made something that doesn’t “exist” tangible and we know that most collectors are going to be very excited when they see what this creature looks like in person. Perhaps they could have used less of that brown color, but we really have no complaints at all with this toy.

We’re almost as excited for the pack-in Sandtrooper too. He comes with a gray pauldron which means that Kenner took liberties here. Maybe it is meant to be a really dirty sergeant’s pauldron or a really dirty corporal’s pauldron, but gray isn’t an official color used by Sandtroopers. It doesn’t matter really. We’re just being specific. This all-new figure still have the same “bad” head sculpt as the awful 1996 POTF2 [R/G] Tatooine Stormtrooper figure, but the body has been completely reworked and the proportions have been rescaled. Add to that additional articulation and you truly have a nice update to a classic Star Wars character. Kenner gave this Sandtrooper hinge-jointed knees and a much wider stance. This allows the Sandtrooper to straddle the Dewback without any real difficulty. He looks great atop this beast of burden. The Sandtrooper also comes with a removable survival backpack, long blaster rifle (which has a stem that plugs into a hole on the side of the survival backpack), and a super long lance used to prod the Dewback along. Two versions of the Sandtrooper exist. One has an over-sprayed “sand blasted” paint job. The revised and corrected version has much less “sand” on his armor. The Dewback And Sandtrooper Creature set is nice. We recommend multiples of them.