General Grievous - SW [SOTDS] - Saga Legends (SL09)

General Grievous flees Coruscant aboard his flagship after kidnapping Chancellor Palpatine. In an attempt to stop him, Anakin and Obi-Wan crash-land aboard the ship but are captured by Grievous' forces. The two Jedi fight their way out of this mess, and Grievous escapes to the Utapau system.

Can you really fault Hasbro for using an older mold of General Grievous when they work hard at making it unique from previous releases? That's how we felt when this figure was released in The Saga Collection. Now he has been repackaged once again, this in the Star Wars [Shadow Of The Dark Side] Saga Legends assortment, with a couple of different paint operations. This version of General Grievous still lacks in proper scale and has limited articulation, but the figure serves a purpose. General Grievous is an action figure that is bittersweet for multiple reasons but when all is said and done, it may be one figure that should have been abandoned for other better basic action figure releases, released recently. Starting off life as 2005’s ROTS General Grievous (Sneak Preview) (1 of 4) figure, Hasbro completely repainted the figure from head to claw to be more movie-accurate than ever before for The Saga Collection. Now in 2010 the figure has just a few slight paint deco differences. However, due to the figure's inherent limitations, they actually overshadow the improvements.

Technically speaking, General Grievous is a slight repaint of 2006's TSC General Grievous (SAGA 030) figure. First released in The Legacy Collection Saga Legends line, it is now part of the latest assortment intended to complement The Vintage Collection. To be fair, the figure has wonderful proportions and you can pose him in that semi-crawling action that we witnessed aboard The Invisible Hand in Revenge Of The Sith. He comes with a healthy supply of accessories which aid in the interaction of collector and toy. You get an electropole, blue lightsaber, droid blaster and removable plastic cape so you get enough accessories to make this action figure relatively fun to play with the rest of the figures in your collection. Grievous appears extremely clean. While the paint job is significantly more accurate in color and presentation, Hasbro may have gone too clean, as you cannot see any of the marbling in his organic structures at all. (But something like this may be better reserved for high end collectibles to document.) Grievous definitely looks good and you can pose him “at the ready” for battle, so it’s hard to fault the figure when it brings this much positivity to your collection.

With this release, you get a collectible Galactic Battle Game card, die and action figure dispaly stand. Oh, and you also get an assortment of Secret Weapons which certainly makes this purchase worthwhile to those that are really terrible at losing weapons, or are looking for alternate guns to pose with the Saga Legends figures. We're actually quite fond of the Galactic Battle Game cards, but it's easy to understand why so many collectors don't care about them all that much. Although General Grievous should have been considered a new figure in 2006, he ranks as nothing more than a repack in 2010. Sure, the paint job is a huge improvement than the 2005 release, but there are much better versions of General Grievous you shoudl be spending your money on anyhow. Again, you get a new lineup of accessories this time around, so there is enough here to consider another purchase of this action figure. We all have to remember that Saga Legends is really just meant to be a "greatest hits" line. Only packaged collectors really have much to worry about with lines like these. If you don't own any versions of this figure yet then General Grievous still brings enough new stuff to the table to be a fun action figure.