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Sculpting -***
One of the key features is always going to
be the head sculpt, and Ford is always tough to capture, no matter what
the character.
Here, we get a solid representation of Han, with
a few minor issues. I love the hair sculpt, and it has that perfect
early 80's style. It also has enough detail in the hair to give it a
fine appearance - no tootsie roll hair here.
The best aspect of
the sculpt is the lips and chin. The scar looks great, and the slight
twist to the mouth is perfect. Ford tends to talk out of one side of
his mouth more than the other, and that tilt is present in his smile
and even relaxed mouth position. The sculptor here managed to capture
that in the position of the lips and tilt of the muscles around the
mouth.
The nose isn't bad, but is a bit thick. That's also the
issue with the cheeks - this should be a young(ish) Ford, when he has a
thinner face and harder jawline, but this version looks a little older,
with a more filled out face. It's not fat, but more of Solo with about
10 more years on him.
Thankfully, there aren't 10 more years of wrinkles. The skin has the
necessary ones, but matches his smoother skin of the time.
The
eyes and eyebrows are where it falls apart most for me, but much of
that is in the paint and not the sculpt. Like the UQS Indiana Jones,
I'd love to see this head stripped and repainted by one of the terrific
customizers out there - I think it has a tremendous amount of
potential. While it has it's issues, it's certainly better a better
Solo than we've seen from some other high end collectible companies
like Gentle Giant or even Kotobukiya.
Since there is only one
pair of hands included, it makes sense to also include their sculpt
here. The left is done in what seems to be a standard gesture for the
UQS figures, while the right is designed to hold the blaster. They both
work fine for most poses, and the scale is about right.
Paint - ***
There's not a ton of paint here, with the important work on the face
and hair.
The
paint ops are very clean, and color choices are reasonable (getting
Ford's eye color perfect is nigh impossible), but there's a lack of
life in the eyes that bugs me.
Folks who hate when catch lights
are painted in ("doll dots") will find these as annoying as usual. But
there's also a mannequin feel to the eyes that hurts the realism of the
overall sculpt.
The eyebrows don't help either.
While they are
relatively clean and neat, they are also very Hasbro-ish, much like
something you'd see on the usual mass market toy.
There are some
nice small painted details on the rest of the figure to help make up
for the shortcomings though, including great work on the communicator/
tracking device/doohicky on his jacket, and they've used the paint to
simulate wear on the binoculars and gloves.
Articulation - **1/2
Of the two released so far (Indy and Maul), Maul was clearly my
favorite. In fact, remember that had it not been for having to get
three of them to get one without joint breakage issues, Maul would have
scored a ***1/2 overall.
I didn't have any breakage
issues this time, and I put Han's joints
through the paces to be sure. I did have a problem with both feet
falling off the pegs, but you can just super glue them on - it has
nothing to do with the articulation, but whether or not you'll want to
swap the feet. Since I see no reason to swap the feet on this guy, I
just glued them on to avoid the annoyance.
The range of movement on the
figures is better than I anticipated for this line. In the old review
of the Indy, I included a nekkid
shot.
When DST first said these would be 'poseable', I assumed it would be
fairly limited, much like the rotocast figures from Mezco or NECA in
this scale. But these are true action figures, which makes them quite
unique.
I'm dropping this score a half
star though this time
around, because the lankiness of the design is annoying me more as time
goes by. I didn't have an issue with it on Maul (and still don't)
because the style of costume hid it quite well. The same will probably
be true with characters like Obi-wan, where the long robes hide some of
the disproportioned body parts. But on Han, the extended legs and long
torso were just to apparent.
It may also appear to you that
the
arms are stumpy, but that's not the case. Rather, that's simply a
visual trick created by the baggy upper arms on the jacket, tucked into
the tighter gloves. I'll mention more of that in the Outfit section.
The arms are the same length as the previous two figures, where they
didn't appear too short at all.
Accessories - ***
Han is a little light in this department, particularly compared to the
other releases.
He
has his blaster, and the funky binoculars he used on Hoth when search
for Luke. Both are fairly well done, and the binoculars even have a
real leather strap, well affixed to the case. He can't really hold the
binoculars in any realistic way, but they look good around his
shoulder.
The plastic used for the blaster
is a little
soft, but it's not a major issue, and the gun fits great in either the
hand or the holster.
There's also a pair of goggles,
to
protect his eyes from the frozen elements. These look alright when the
hood is up, but since the outfit lacks the other hat he wore on screen,
you can't really have them resting up on the top of his head in a movie
accurate way.
He also has the black stand that
comes with each
figure, which is plain, lacking any logo or emblem. These work fine,
but you won't really need them unless you live in an earthquake zone.
And then you probably have bigger issues than keeping Han upright.
While
the couple accessories are good, the quantity is a little
disappointing. With other figures we've gotten extra hands, and
multiple weapons. I suspect a big part of the issue here is that his
outfit is far more complex than most, and the bulk of the budget
probably went into it.
Outfit - ***
Here's where I was really hoping this figure would be outstanding, and
it's soooo close...but it misses due to a couple major issues for me.
It's
all about the jacket here, and this jacket could have been amazing. It
is very, very nice, but has one annoying feature that's more a problem
because of the underlying body than the jacket itself.
Let's
start with the good. The hood is very well done, with a great looking
faux fur collar. A key feature is that the hood itself is made from a
very thin, soft material, much thinner than the rest of the coat. This
is important because it allows the hood to lay on his shoulders better,
and when the hood is up, it doesn't pooch out at weird angles.
There
are three small snaps up the front of the jacket to close it, and these
work well. You can use the top snap for a tightly bundled look, or go
with it open, as you prefer.
The jacket also has some
terrific
stitching throughout. I'm not sure the blue color is the best for the
thread, since it makes it stand out more than it did on screen. But the
complex pattern on the shoulders, with the slightly simpler pattern
throughout the rest of the coat is accurate and very well down.
Finding good images on line was
tough to compare, oddly enough, but this one isn't too
bad.
So, is the jacket brown or blue? It's brown. Yes, Hasbro tried for
years (and is still trying) to convince us it's blue with their toys,
but the parka was brown. You can see the prop
costume here
from one of the Celebration events. It does LOOK blue in many of the
scenes, but that's an effect of the lighting and film, not the actual
color of the jacket.
The waist of the jacket has been
designed to
fit very tightly around the waist of the figure. This is the biggest
negative for me. The waist on the UQS body is VERY narrow compared to
the overall size of the figure, and making the jacket fit it tightly
just accentuates the weird proportions. At first I thought this was
easily fixable, because the twisty tie in the package wraps around the
figure at this point. I assumed it was merely the tie squeezing in the
coat, not the actual coat, and a quick ironing would fix that right up.
Ah, but nay, nay...there's not only a stitch around the outside of the
coat that brings it in tight, there's an elastic band on the inside to
snug it up! I really wish they had left the coat straight, and allowed
us to use the belt to tighten it to his body where and as much as we
wanted.
Which brings me to the belt, my
other area of concern. On
the plus side, it's made from a terrific leather-like material that's
fairly thick and unlikely to tear easily. There is an actual metal
plate on the front and back, with real metal rivets and even a metal
slot for something like a droid caller. There's a ton of loops to put
in other items, although there are no additional accessories with the
figures to go in these loops. The attached holster looks good, and has
a sturdy snap to hold the blaster in place, as well as a solid leg tie
to remain attached to his hip. The holster hangs down a little long,
but it's a minor issue.
The major issue is that the belt
is held
together with a snap (hidden by the large metal plate in front), and
can't be adjusted or tightened. The fit is VERY loose around his skinny
ass waist, and the belt tends to sag on his hips. If you can keep the
belt up around his mid-section, you can hide the area of the coat
that's pulled in too far. Unfortunately, that's tough to do without
being able to adjust the belt. I'm going to end up using a rubber band
on the back to pull it tighter, but something a bit less hokey would
have been nice.
Other parts of the uniform
include his shirt,
boots, gloves, pants and scarf. The gloves are a little long on his
arms, adding to the stumpy arm look. In the film, the gauntlet section
of the glove wasn't nearly this far up his arm. The jacket tucks into
the gauntlets well enough, but you can also untuck it and the sleeves
come all the way to the half-hand area, giving you another display
option.
Speaking of display options, the
scarf gives you several
more. As I recall, he wore the scarf a couple different ways in the
film, and you can do the same here. It comes wrapped around his neck
inside, which looks pretty good and helps hide the long neck. You can
also wrap it around the neck outside the coat, much like the way he
wore it when he ventured out to find Luke. The scarf is fairly long,
but you can tuck the ends back inside the coat, or flip the ends back
over his shoulders, if that bothers you.
He's wearing a tank top
t-shirt under the coat, and they didn't include the hat that he wore
under the hood. That's too bad, since it would have worked well with
the goggles.
The pants look good, with
quality stitching, but you
may want to pad up the legs a bit with some wrapped toilet paper to
make him look a bit less gangly.
The boots, like the gloves, are
a decent sculpt. I do wish they'd gone with a one piece sculpt, like
the Darth Maul and upcoming Obi-Wan, because the two piece look
(separate foot from upper), leaves too large of a gap.
Talking Feature - ***
A feature of all the UQS figures is sound. The figures include a number
of lines taking right from the film. For Solo, they are:
- "Laugh it up,
fuzzball, but you didn't see us alone in the south passage."
- "There isn't enough life on
this ice cube to fill a space cruiser. Sensors are placed - I'm going
back."
- "Then why are you following
me, afraid I was going to leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?"
- "Hurry up, goldenrod, or
you're going to be a permanent resident!"
The
voice box is nice and clear, and the pelvic button works well enough.
You can easily flip the switch on his left side from 'trial' mode to
normal mode without removing his clothing.
Fun Factor - ***1/2
These are actually great toys, with solid bodies and well constructed
outfits and accessories. If sixth scale figures just aren't enough for
your yunggins, then these might do the trick.
Value - **1/2
Some of these figures have been as cheap as $50, and finding them for
$60 was no problem. At that price, he really is a great value.
However,
Han seems to be running another 10 bucks or so more than that at most
retailers right now, so he falls to a more average value. There really
isn't anything else out there like this - these are true quarter scale
action figures, with full posability. Yep, there's some issues with
the base body that will always plague them, but the more you
Things To Watch Out For
-
I didn't have any issues this time, so hopefully the weird breakage
problems I had with the Maul were a fluke.
Overall - ***
I'll admit it - I like the UQS figures. Yea, the lanky body bugs me
too, and these aren't going to replace Premium Format figures any time
soon. But not everyone has $300 to spend, and would still like to have
reasonably good looking large scale movie figure collectibles for their
entertainment room. These fit that bill pretty well, especially when
you can pick them up in that $60 range.
I
also have to admit that I'm disappointed with this guy. It doesn't
really reflect in the overall score, because he's decent, but I had my
hopes up that he'd be the ONE, the Neo of the line. This is a
character/outfit combination that we don't see a lot, and is one of my
favorites. But there are enough issues with the outfit (along with the
usual body issues) that
he doesn't surpass Maul as the best release so far in the series, and I
don't know that there's anyone on the horizon with the potential to
upset the Sith Lord any time soon.
We're
going to see a ton of these in '09 though, with a bunch more being
shown off this week at Toy Fair including Darth Vader. How
far off can
Boba Fett or a Stormtrooper be?
Score Recap:
Packaging - **1/2
Sculpting - ***
Paint - ***
Articulation - **1/2
Accessories - ***
Outfit - ***
Fun Factor - ***1/2
Value - **1/2
Overall - ***
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