Yoda (The Master) - GOA - Basic

A Jedi Master and mentor to many Jedi in training, Yoda proves through his impressive use of the Force that one should never judge another's power based on size alone.

Not all of the repackaged figures in the Galaxy Of Adventures line are terrible. Take for instance Yoda, the action figure that surprised us all in 2017’s Star Wars [The Last Jedi] because Hasbro added premium articulation to the figure. Now over a year later they’ve repackaged him (with very few differences aside from the elimination of Force Link 2.0 technology) for the Galaxy Of Adventures line, and we have to admit he’s a nice addition to the line once again. Yoda is an outside-of-the-box action figure that Hasbro squeezed into the 5POA format. We’re not so sure if Yoda is truly deserving of the 5POA designation as he comes with ball-jointed articulation and more accessories than the basic 5POA action figure. He has all of the key expectations collectors demand. His sculpt is decent, he is mobile, and his accessories, while not all accurate to the Original Trilogy, are accurate from the entire Star Wars saga point of view. When Yoda arrived in 2017, many collectors were pleased with the results. Now that Hasbro re-released him, we imagine there will be new collectors who find him a worthy addition to their collections as well. If you can get past the fact that he is an action figure with limited articulated, you can focus on the sculpt and see a well-designed action figure. Hasbro has expressed time and again that if a certain Star Wars character, by its design, doesn’t need articulation in a certain spot that they would overcompensate for its shortage somewhere else. Yoda is a “case in point” example of this. Yoda (this figure) is a success and failure all wrapped in one.

Yoda is a simple action figure that comes without any hip movement, but Hasbro graced with ball-jointed shoulders, a swivel waist, a reverse ball-socket head, and two ball-socket feet and all of these points give him more movement than you probably realize. The reverse ball-socket head is especially smart. It allows you to cock his head and hang his head low just like he did in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. It also gives him a range of motion that we haven’t seen in the line to date. Articulation junkies are probably going to be impressed. From an engineering standpoint, Yoda looks great. We wish that they didn’t sacrifice leg movement here. And aside from some coloring discrepancies (in our opinion), we think this version of Yoda works pretty well. Product lists describe Yoda as sourced from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith and all of that makes sense. Before knowing that detail, it’s just as easy to source him from Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. After all, if Yoda comes with a lightsaber accessory, those two Star Wars films are your only options. So, it’s a bit bold of Hasbro to use the same version of Yoda to now source him to The Empire Strikes Back. As a result, you may decide to keep him sourced to the Prequel trilogy instead. Sadly, the miniature comic is sourced to the Original Trilogy, so Hasbro technically made a mistake here. Still, we have to give Hasbro credit. In an almost noncommittal way, Hasbro seemingly tooled a hybrid likeness of Yoda from both the OT and PT. How tricky of them.

While not an accessory technically, Yoda’s cloak shell is removable too. When you remove it, you can’t help but notice how long his lower body is in comparison to the rest of the figure. It gets covered up well when fully assembled, but Yoda looks off a little bit thanks to his long static legs and super-short torso. It’s not the end of the world of course. These are kids toys, and the focus here is the playability and interactivity, not the screen accuracy. Though many collectors would beg to differ with us on such a notion, we feel that Hasbro has provided Yoda with other things to make up for where the sculpt falls short, no pun intended. We would have liked to see the ball-socket ankles be a little more utilitarian. We didn’t find that they helped with the balancing of the figure much at all. In fact, they almost worked against the figure’s center of gravity. We feel that next time they attempt Yoda, they should just focus on giving the legs more movement instead. As far as paint operations are concerned, we’re delighted with how the deco on Yoda has turned out. There is a great deal of detail carved into this figure, and the paint brings it out beautifully. This is a hard figure to dislike. Yoda certainly isn’t perfect, but to say he is junk wouldn’t be close to being accurate either. It does feel, however, that the best part of the Galaxy Of Adventures line best part is the miniature comic pack-in premium. The artwork is beautiful, and the storyline is unforgettable. We feel this line is worth it for that alone, but the MSRP is still quite unfair.