Not a ghost.
Celebrate the season with specially designed
Star Wars figures from The Black Series.
Today, Reuters and the AP provide news stories to media outlets digitally, sending stuff out to all their members in mere minutes. However, in the late 1800s, major metropolitan newspapers would provide syndicated content to smaller papers by literally shipping them pre-made physical printing plates, so all they'd have to do was ink them up and start stamping them on the paper. The thick metal slabs reminded people of the steel plates used in the assembly of steam boilers, and eventually that idea transferred from the physical object to the content printed from it, and so that's why today any generic text repeated without thought over and over in different releases - like the back of every one of these Holiday Edition figures, for instance - is called "boilerplate."
The Black Series Tusken Raider was released in 2017. Then immediately
rereleased as a Retro Collection carded version. Then five years later as part of the Mandalorian "Credit Collection." But only the first version had any character info on the packaging: Fearsome desert savages inhabiting the rocky Jundland Wastes, Tusken Raiders are the foremost reason Tatooine colonists do not wander far from their isolated communities. Extremely territorial, Tusken Raiders will attack with very little provocation.
Before the Halloween Edition figures debuted, Hasbro's designers got together to brainstorm ideas, and came up with dozens
of potential repaints. It's not difficult to see why someone would come up with the idea of turning the Tusken Raider into the Invisible Man: bandaged face, full robes... that's him, alright! The execution does, unfortunately, suffer from the figure being molded entirely from translucent plastic. There's a ton of detail, but we can't see any of it. The bandoliers across his chest? The tall pouches on the belt? The tattered lower edge of the skirt? Might as well not be there.
There is one part of the figure that gets paint -
or two, rather. The Tusken's goggles are separate pieces that get glued into the head, which wasn't something obvious until now, when the head being 100% clear means you can see the pegs going in there. Anyway, the goggles here are solid black, presumably an effort to create the Invisible Man's glasses, rather than empty holes in his mask. The original figure had an outer softgoods cloak, which might have helped this one: make it from purple/burgundy fabric instead of tan, and leave the body beneth clear, and it would honestly make the homage a ton better.
The skirts we do get are plastic, which means they have big slights up the side lest the leg articultion becomes useless. And like Rustin said when he talked about the original, swivel/hinge elbows are less impressive than double-hinges, even if that was chosen specifically to
deal with these big sleeves. He moves at the ankles, knees, thighs, hips, waist, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, and head. The spikes on the head mean his one article of clothing - the hat Cad Bane didn't get - will not sit on the head securely, perching way too high up and falling off easily. They should have maybe snipped those off? Other than the hat, his only accessory is a data pad with an image of himself on it - art, specifically, of a black hat and glasses against a powder blue background. Why is he carrying a photo of himself? Is it supposed to be a mirror? Kind of a pointless inclusion, no matter what it is.
The Halloween Edition figures, like the Holiday Edition ones before them, include a small pack-in buddy to make the price more palatable. In this case, that's slightly more literal than usual, since the buddy is a BD droid - you know, the cute little cube that Cal Kestis came with.
This isn't the first BD in the Holiday Edition series: the 2022 Protocol Droid also came with one, but since I famously didn't get that figure, this is my first. Unfortunately, it is frankly not great. IN order to tie it in with the Invisible Man theme, the body is clear and the head is solid black. It does match the bigger figure, true, but it doesn't mean anything - it's clear and black with no sense behind it. If it's supposed to represent the cat the police spray-painted in the 1933 movie, that was white, not clear.
You can see why the Tusken Raider as the Invisible Man wasn't one of the first Halloween Edition figures released. It's a clever idea, to be sure, but there's no "right" way to make it. If you paint it, like he's wearing a normal robe and bandages, then it won't really "read" as being the Invisible Man on the shelf, and so won't attract attention; but if you do it entirely clear, like this toy, then there's absolutely no reason it needed to be a Tusken Raider, and would work for literally any mold at all. The fact that some people think this is supposed to be a ghost tells you how much it failed at getting its very concept across. Hopefully the other 2026 figures will be better.
-- 10/03/26
How would you have made these designs work? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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