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Aren't you a little non-Jango to be a Stormtrooper?
Luke Skywalker and Han Solo subdue
a couple of stormtroopers and steal their uniforms. With their faces hidden by the helmets, Luke and Han can now walk through the Imperial battle station and search for a way to escape.
Best to tell you this right away: we weren't originally planning to review this figure. But when we mentioned him in the Han Solo (Stormtrooper Disguise) review, a lot of people seemed surprised that Luke even existed. Well of course he exists! Did you really think Hasbro was going to pass up on the opportunity to put another Luke into a new assortment? Even if it's a Luke we've seen (many, many) times before. There's certainly never been a shortage (no pun intended) of Stormtrooper Lukes, though they've mostly been available in box sets and multi-packs, while this one is a single-carded release.
Original plans called for Luke to get a new sculpt, but that didn't happen. He re-uses the mold from the 2006 comic pack version, but thankfully skips the awful "comicbook" coloring that saw Luke's armor dusted with baby blue shadows and sporting red eyes.
The figure itself is kitbashed from several pre-existing bodies, but it's not like you can really tell one Stormtrooper from the next at a glance. Spooky white space armor, lots of detail, etc. etc. etc. You know the score. With the helmet on, he stands just over 3¾" tall - he should really be a bit smaller.
Just as with Han, Luke gets a new belt. Why a new belt? Well, as you remember from several different reviews, the gun didn't really fit in the holster the way it should. The figure does include a blaster, of course, and while it still doesn't sit quite right, the fit is definitely better. The little canister on the back of his belt is removable, as well, so be careful not to lose it. The belt isn't the same between both figures, either: their canisters attach differently.
Luke has the usual Stormtrooper helmet, of course, but it's not the same mold as Han's: it's slimmer, to better fit Luke's head, and generally has a few minor sculptural variations in the features. It's a good examples of how two different representations of the same object can vary quite a bit. Beneath the headgear, Luke has some serious helmet hair: his Dorothy Hamill 'do has been plastered down by wearing a sweaty helmet while he wandered around the Death Star.
Like most of the current Stormtroopers, this one has good articulation: a ball and socket head,
balljointed shoulders, elbows, chest, knees and ankles, plus swivel wrists and hips. The legs are designed to leave him with a very narrow stance, befitting the character's youthful inexperience and lack of confidence. Again, making him shorter would have been a smart choice - as it is, you can barely tell Han and Luke apart.
Having inherited the "Build-A-Figure" concept from ToyBiz when they picked up the Marvel license, Hasbro has wasted no time in applying the idea to their other properties. Most Star Wars figures these days come with a part of the unfortunately named "Build-A-Droid." The "BAD" (see? told you the name was unfortunate) piece included with Luke is the right left leg of R5-A2, an orange droid that was hanging around Mos Eisley.
Putting Luke Skywalker in a Stormtrooper disguise isn't the most original idea in the toyline. The first version was made in 1984, the penultimate year of Kenner's original Power of the Force line, and this is the seventh version since then. But even if he's existed before, no version has been this good, and that has to count for something.
-- 07/26/09
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