Obi-Wan Kenobi/ARC Trooper Commander - TAC - Order 66 (Series 2) (1 of 6)

Obi-Wan is assisted on many of his missions during the Clone Wars by an ARC Trooper Commander and his elite supercommandos.

When it came time to release Order 66 (Series 2) exactly a year to the day after the first set of six in 2007, Hasbro chose to take new liberties with what the concept of Order 66 actually was. (Actually, they just ignored the Order 66 concept.) Perhaps calling Series 2 "Pre-Order 66" would have been more fitting because Hasbro has decided to go into a different direction and include more phase I clone troopers than we care to count. They’ve dug deeply into many “Expanded Universe” portions of the Clone Wars and focused there instead of the whole event focusing on the destruction of the Jedi Order. The decision to go this route is indeed bizarre because there are so many other actual Order 66 takes they could have conceptualized into these two-packs. But we nonetheless got some really cool combinations in this second batch and we’re pretty much very satisfied with most of the results. So while we’re in theory we’re not crazy with the idea of these sets locked into events prior to Order 66, these two-packs are exciting and we get some really cool first time time characters as well as awesome updates to others.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is the least exciting of the two figures in the 1 of 6 set. Hasbro dusted off the 2003 CW Obi-Wan Kenobi (General Of The Republic Army) ('03 #45) and gave him a filthy paint job which looks fantastic. But this complicated paint job would have been best reserved for a better quality action figure. Obi-Wan Kenobi suffers from getting his head stuck in a vice and his limited articulated coupled with a action stance will not allow him to be very versatile in your Clone Wars displays. Loosely based on his appearance in the opening chapters in Volume 1 of Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars micro-series, not all of Obi-Wan Kenobi is a complete waste of your time. Hasbro developed a new (and very clever) Jedi robe that has a wire sewn in the hem of it which will allow you to post the robe in many more configuration that you can with the actual action figure. It’s a very neat development in the basic figure line and we’re thrilled that Hasbro decided to test it out here. Obi-Wan Kenobi also comes with his lightsaber. To be fair, the great new paint job breathes revitalized life into Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the sculpt is unforgiving and ultimately doesn’t save it.

The exciting figure in the set is the ARC Trooper Commander, although he technically is an ARC Trooper Captain. If you research Advance Recon Commandos in Wookieepedia, you’ll quickly learn that their color flashes exactly mirror the regular clone trooper officers seen in Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. Hasbro took the sculpt of the ARC Trooper from the 2007 TAC Obi-Wan Kenobi/ARC Trooper (No. 07) Comic Packs set and gave it an all-new paint job to represent Captain Fordo from the Clone Wars. They also dug out the kama from 2005’s ROTS Clone Commander (III 33) figure and placed it on this figure to complete the look. This version of Captain Fordo (ARC Trooper Commander) looks fantastic and we’re impressed with how well Hasbro kit-bashed the figure’s parts. ARC Trooper Commander comes with a nice amount of accessories including two DC-17 blaster pistols, a large blaster rifle, removable helmet, removable kama and a removable pauldron/gauntlet combination. He’s not covered in dirt, but Hasbro speckled some here and there for good measure. At $9.99 this set is awesomely priced, but even if you can do without Obi-Wan Kenobi, the ARC Trooper Commander is the real star of this set.