Gamorrean Guard - TBS [ROTJ40] - Six Inch Figures (Exclusive)

ABBA said it best. “The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself.” That thought has become commonplace in the Hasbro Star Wars The Black Series 6-inch line. And we’re talking a layer or level beyond straight repacks. We’re talking about reissuing the same exclusive to the same retailer. The 6-inch Gamorrean Guard was an immediate hit and likely deserves periodic re-release time and again. Let’s face it; this character always performs well. Hasbro also shared similar success with The Vintage Collection Gamorrean Guard (VC21) figure. So, here we are celebrating four decades of Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi, so it’s the perfect time to see the 6-inch Gamorrean Guard added to the lineup once again, and also as a Target exclusive release! This time, Hasbro changed the paint operations a little bit. It’s mostly identical to the previous release, but if you look closely enough, you will find differences. The Gamorrean Guard is a symbolic and necessary release for any celebratory event surrounding Return Of The Jedi. Still, we’d be fibbing if we said this is all roses here. At first glance, you might be enamored of the figure’s placement under the Return Of The Jedi logo, but what the frack happened to the character photo? It’s a slender crop and captures a shell of the glory and spirit the vintage Kenner release did. It looks odd and wrong, and we’re sad about that. Hasbro must find a better way to design the 6-inch sized Kenner cards that need to accommodate “larger” figures. In short, this pairing doesn’t work at all.

The Gamorrean Guard has a fantastic sculpt. It is portly, incredibly strong-looking, and possesses a color palette that is almost exact to the on-screen character but needs a few spots of tweaking before we’d so far as to say it’s perfect. Hasbro tooled an incredible amount of articulation into the Gamorrean Guard. The figure comes with 26 points of articulation, although not all are entirely user-friendly. For reasons unknown, the Gamorrean Guard comes with a hinge-jointed lower jaw. This feature, of course, is an ideal but novelty type of articulation point, but it is unnecessary here. Like the Admiral Ackbar figure before this, the combination of a ball-socket head with a hinge-jointed jaw severely inhibits head movement. So, we would have preferred a figure where you can turn his head left, right, up, and down without any inhibition, but that’s not possible here. You get a little leeway for left and right head turns and a jaw that opens very wide. That’s it. You have to rely on the ball-jointed torso to turn the head; as you can imagine, this is a big disappointment. There is an incredible amount of detail etched into the Gamorrean Guard. This release is an artful action figure from the armor to the bandolier to the helmet on its head. The most stringent collectors will find soft spots in their hearts for this gorgeous action figure. Hasbro should be proud of how much work they put into the sculpt. It is rare for all new tooling to go towards retailer exclusives, but in retrospect, that makes sense since it’s getting another exclusive release under the same retailer.

The helmet is still NOT removable, something we are disappointed Hasbro didn’t consider for this figure. But it’s also true that the absence of this accessory’s “removability” is a good thing. It stays in place as required and helps when displaying it in your collection. (It is a separately sculpted piece to clear things up.) The figure’s “groin area” is a bit hollow. That sounds strange, but you must see it to understand what we mean here. When you pose the figure, this section of this figure is thin and collapses because of pressure. It feels a tad cheap, honestly. The soft-goods skirt is silky and luxurious. It’s an incredible faux fur fabric that they’ve utilized here. It has a proper shape and a decent drape which looks a great deal like the costume from the film. As much as we will probably pick at the facial paint operations on this figure, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention that Hasbro generally did a good job decorating him throughout. Hasbro did a mostly-excellent job on the fine paint details on the figure face. There are imperfections here and there and a few off-color choices, but overall, the figure looks impressive. The Gamorrean Guard has three weapons: an ax, a hatchet, and a force pike. All interact with the figure perfectly. The weapons are stunningly sculpted and wonderfully painted. They are required additions to this character, and it was generous of Hasbro to include three with this figure. What doesn’t feel so good here is the MSRP. It’s hard to accept that this figure is $33.99. The days of buying one to keep in the package and one to open are nonexistent anymore, which takes the joy out of collecting.