General Grievous - TLC - Saga Legends (SL 7)

General Grievous attempts to escape 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, fleeing 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 time in the The Legacy Collection Saga Legends assortment, with a few slight paint operation changes. This version of General Grievous still lacks in proper scale and has limited articulation, but the figure serves a purpose. Hasbro needs to keep this main character in the basic figure line at all times. This is the most cost effecive way to do it. 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. If you recall, this figure started off life as 2005’s ROTS General Grievous (Sneak Preview) (1 of 4) figure. Hasbro then completely repainted the figure from head to toe claw to be more movie-accurate and released it as 2006's TSC General Grievous (SAGA 030) figure. Now just a couple of years out from that release Hasbro once again changed a few minor paint details and added him to the Saga Legends assortment.

Technically speaking, General Grievous is a slight repaint of 2006's TSC General Grievous (SAGA 030) figure, but you're really going to have to analyze the figures side by side to pick up any differences. It might not be of any relevance to you. This is the figure's first time in any Saga Legends assortment. It fits in well with this "greatest hits" collection amd it is simply meant to serve as a complement to The Legacy Collection Droid Factory line. To be fair, General Grievous 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.

For The Legacy Collection Saga Legends line, figures come with a locker of six extra weapons. We suppose it's a nice gesture from Hasbro, but getting the same six extra weapons becomes very redundant very quickly. Any pack-in certainly makes a purchase worthwhile and for those that are terrible at losing weapons, you now have backup. You can even use the weapons if you're looking for alternate ways to pose your figures too. In retrospect, figure stands or Force Files seem so much more important than a locker full of extra weapons, but that's just our opinion. Although General Grievous should have been considered a new figure in 2006, he ranks as nothing more than a slight repaint (if that) in 2008. Sure, the paint job is a huge improvement than the 2005 release, but there are much better versions of General Grievous you should be spending your money on anyhow. In fact, the basic General Grievous figure in The Legacy Collection is the best version to date. 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 "best of" action figure 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 an d worthwhile action figure.