Ahhhh, the Power of the Jedi. As awkward and out-of-place as was the name of Hasbro’s oft-maligned range of Star Wars figures with no specific movie in mind, I think it’s sometimes shortchanged by the fans and collectors who are overlooking the unique and eagerly-awaited characters it brought to our toy shelves.
Intended to hit the toy stores prior to the similarly-packaged Episode II preview wave, the final burst of Power Of The Jedi figures looked behind (with a pleasing mix of classic trilogy characters) and forward (with a glimpse of things to come).
Bad droids, bad droids, whatcha gonna do?: as much as R2-D2 fans will hate me for saying this, droids in the Star Wars universe are pretty much like toaster ovens: they’re handy, multipurpose, and can be used for good or evil. Case in point? Imperial astromech droids R2-Q5 (a sleek black R2 unit complete with a mini-hologram of Return Of The Jedi‘s unfinished Death Star) and R4-M9 (a coneheaded droid who presumably grilled the computers of Princess Leia’s rebel blockade runner in Star Wars). R4-M9 came packed with yet another Imperial mouse droid (same kind that Chewbacca scared away in the first movie), an accessory that had already been included with a previous Power Of The Force figure, the Death Star Droid. They may look innocuous, but these droids, especially R2-Q5, have the insidious power to drain your wallet by inspiring lust in collectible scalpers. How so? R2-Q5’s blister card misspelled its description, billing the little guy as an Imperal astromech droid (as opposed to Imperial). This led the scalpers to assume that the card would be corrected, thus making this first batch a rare misprint. Well, it wasn’t. They were all spelled like that. Not that you could tell from the astronomical prices for R2-Q5 figures on the net.
Pilot episode: now, if you think about it, BoShek is an absolutely pivotal character in the saga, a man without whom the original trilogy wouldn’t have unfolded as it did. But we never heard him utter a word in Star Wars. BoShek’s the flight-suited, disco-sideburned pilot who introduced Obi-Wan Kenobi to Chewbacca. The rest is history. BoShek’s a fairly detailed figure, and a nice addition to anyone’s cantina diorama. Incidentally, I think we’ve now gotten figures out of just about everyone in the Mos Eisley cantina aside from the women smoking from long pipes, and Bea Arthur’s bartender from the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Koth and effect: intriguing character, this Jedi master Eeth Koth from Episode I. He looks like he might be a member of the same species as Darth Maul (and I’ll bet there’s already a novel, a comic, fanfic, or all of the above addressing that similarity; at the very least I’d be disappointed if there weren’t). And he looks no less fierce than his fellow horned lightsaber-wielder in this pose. And if it looks like this figure is actually from Attack Of The Clones, that’s no coincidence either – Eeth Koth is clearly in a much more active pose than Episode I‘s Jedi Council scenes, and his lightsaber is the same removable blade design as seen in the Jedi and Sith characters from Hasbro’s Episode II “Saga” range (to say nothing of the suspiciously Geonosis-esque red background on the card’s character photo). Hasbro was almost certainly testing designs out with this figure, and the design seems to have stuck.
Meet the in-laws: well, kinda. Technically, Shmi Skywalker and Sabe (Royal Decoy) belong to a previous wave, as they come with Jedi Fact File booklets, but for lack of a better place to display them, they’re being included on this page. Collectors were clamoring for a Shmi figure – to create a Skywalker family tree in plastic, no doubt – but though it’s finely detailed, the Shmi figure is missing some of the world-weary, haggard look Pernilla August wore while playing the role. (No doubt, we may wind up at the opposite end of that spectrum if an Episode II Shmi is released.) Sabe continues the excellent sculpting that has been standard issue for Queen Amidala (and her lookalikes).
Bacta reality: now if this isn’t one of the coolest things Hasbro’s given us, I don’t know what is. Rebel med-droid FX-7 was one of the coolest figures in the original Kenner line, but it lacked huge amounts of detail when compared to the few existing reference photos of the film prop. This new FX-7 rectifies that, boasting more detail and moving parts than almost any Star Wars action figure before it. Every one of its mechanical arms can be extended and bent at the elbow, and each arm is meticulously, delicately sculpted.
Furthermore, while I usually don’t cover the “deluxe” figures and accessories here due to budget (I tend to concentrate more in the figures themselves), FX-7 has a counterpart that it’s almost criminal not to include here: the Bacta Tank in which Luke recovered from being Wampa-whomped in The Empire Strikes Back. The tank, which includes a (removable, but only with some effort) Luke-in-underwear figure, includes a circular slot for FX-7, as well as the droid’s medical console.
Water can also be poured into the water-tight tank, and a hose can be blown through to simulate the bubbling effect seen in the movie. (Don’t have any actual pink bacta? Fear not – the tank is tinted to simulate the color of the fluid in the film.) When put together, this figure and this mini-playset form one of the coolest double-acts Hasbro has yet given us.
In general, the last couple of waves of Power Of The Jedi figures also did away with the well-intentioned but not-so-well-executed Jedi Fact File booklets, and the cardbacks started to morph into something much more like what we’re currently seeing on the backs of the blue “Saga” blister cards. The gradual change, however, was lost – most parts of the country outside of the top five major metropolitan areas didn’t see these figures in their toy shelves until well after the four-figure Episode II preview wave had come and gone, and in many cases they didn’t appear in the stores until after the first Episode II figures had made their appearance. Chalk that one up to a hiccup in the distribution hubs.
Special thanks to Dave Thomer for helping me pull these figures together. Some of ’em still haven’t made it to my area.