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Can someone explain the whole "Super-Deformed" thing to me? I know they're meant to be cute, but really? Kittens are cute. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is cute. Vespas are cute. Angelina Jolie is cute... especially naked. Covered in gleaming massage oil. With that smouldering, wanton look in her eyes. Sorry, I had a point somewhere, but it got away from me.
"Doesn't anyone care what the Padawan thinks?"
Oh 'Soka, you're just handing the haters a line when you say stuff like that. Ahsoka's got more than her fair share of naysayers who think she's the most irritating thing to hit Star Wars since Jar Jar Binks, but I'm not one of them - I think she's rather adorable. I mean, obviously - would I have bought a super-deformed thingy otherwise?
Ahsoka in SD form stands 8" tall, 5" of which is head. You'll notice there's no "mug shot" face photo on this review, since their standardised size means it'd come out smaller than her face in every other photo. When I say "stands 8" tall" though, I do mean that literally - thanks to her feet pointing forwards, she's able - barely - to remain upright on her own, despite her vastly disproportionate noggin. She doesn't actually have any legs, making her deformed even by SD standards - instead her feet just poke out from beneath her skirt; at least, I guess the brown colour beneath her belt's supposed to be her skirt, since it's got the ornamental panel thingy in front of it, and there's no white leggings in view anywhere. It looks more like her underpants, though.
She's all one piece, of course, unarticulated and immobile -
though her belt is only sewn on at the back seam, so you have the option of sliding up about a quarter inch up or down at the front, depending on whether you want her to have a regular waistline, or be one of those jailbait hussies with the low-riding hipster waistline. Besides the obvious extremities, the tips of all three lekku stand away from the body, the two in front for about an inch, the one in back about two inches. In order to maintain their points at the top and bottom, the lekku and montrals (the horns, basically) are packed pretty tightly full of whatever it is these things are filled up with, so Ahsoka's actually quite a bit more solid and weighty than you'd expect from a soft toy of her size - she's probably not a genuine danger to the toy's stated age range of 3+, but the kiddies could probably have some fun using her as a thrown weapon.
The orange of her skin is just about spot on, but her lekku/montrals and facial markings are a bit of an odd shade of very pronounced off-white -
it almost seems like the material's discoloured, but since the facial markings match the montrals (is that the Togruta equivalent of the carpet matching the drapes? Best not think about it, she's underage - by human standards anyway, although who knows how fast Togruta grow up? I mean, the clones are all technically early teenagers at best, and according to some of the novels and whatnot, they're fair game for sexin' up)... where was I? Oh yeah, off-white: the facial markings are cream-coloured while the whites of her eyes are, well, white, so it seems her body's "white" areas are supposed to be this diluted colour. Not the best choice, I'd have thought, especially with how stylised she is as a whole - I know her montrals et. al. aren't pure white, but they're close enough, and I wouldn't have deviated from that had it been up to me. It makes her look kind of grubby.
The face is where the lion's share of the detail work (if you can call it that) is, with the facial markings and eyes and lips, and an extra outline in off-white to represent her nose. That's one of the main problems with her, so far as likeness goes - with the nose flat, this comes nowhere near capturing Ahsoka's upturned, slightly angular nose. The other main problem is her eyes, which are lidded from the top only, with white showing beneath the cornea - Ahsoka tends to be either properly wide-eyed, or glaring a bit, with her lids a fraction closed from both top and bottom. Overall, even accounting for the SD stylisation, it's not a great likeness.
Speaking of markings, one thing it's worth looking out for if you buy one of these in person is the strings of beads on her montrals. Since the centre of the two strings is at a stitched seam, and the seams are stitched very tightly on account of how dense the internal whatever it is is packed in, you may find the markings representing the beads vanishing in at higher or lower points, depending on how much of the markings have actually been swallowed up inside the seam. The same goes for other areas where markings have to match up over seams - the sides of her gloves, for instance - but the beads are the most noticeable one.
That's pretty much it for this review - there's not a lot to say about SD Ahsoka that you can't get from the photos, really. If you're a Star Wars fan and you have a particular urge to own a 14-year-old girl you can hug... well, don't explain it to the sales clerk at Target like that, for one thing. There's nothing terribly low-quality about Ahsoka, but if, like me, Super-Deformed isn't your thing, this won't do anything much to change your mind.
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