501st Legion Clone Trooper, The - Real Action Heroes

For his attack on the Jedi Temple, Emperor Palpatine provided DARTH VADER with a band of elite CLONE TROOPERS known as the 501st LEGION, their distinctive blue-marked armor setting them apart from other ranks. With their crack markmanship and coordinated team maneuvers, they successfully outflanked, and mercilessly destroyed, the doomed Jedi trapped within the Temple.

Never officially appearing on Medicom Toy’s own product listing page, The 501st Legion Clone Trooper was technically a Sideshow Exclusive piece, although it was never officially advertised that way. Limited to 1000 pieces, it quickly was bought up by collectors desperate to add a quality figure based on Vader’s Fist from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith. While a newly colored clone is always a cool release, there wasn’t any new ground broken here as it’s just a gorgeous repaint of 2007’s Clone Trooper Real Action Heroes release. To be quite honest, between all of the recent phase I and phase II clone releases in the last couple of years, they are becoming a little tiresome instead of exciting as they should be. It just goes to show that too much of the same thing isn’t good in general, no matter how many different flavors of clones you’re looking to add to your collection. The 501st Legion Clone Trooper is however a breath of fresh air because Medicom Toy did an excellent job on the paint job which for us determines how well a collectible ultimately turns out. We’re impressed with the final results. And aside from the wish to see the phase II bucket get a completely new sculpt, we are quite satisfied with this release.

It’s outstanding to us how dull the plain white Clone Trooper is in comparison to The 501st Legion Clone Trooper figure. It doesn’t seem like rocket science, but it’s amazing what a palette of color does to a drab white canvas. The 501st Legion Clone Trooper has gorgeous blue color flashes on the helmet and pretty much the rest of its armor. But that’s not all. Medicom Toy has added various white and black “battle-damage markings to give the war-torn armor some character, and to show that these clones are warriors in a futile war. The saving grace of The 501st Legion Clone Trooper is indeed the paint job. As you know very well by now, the armored figures in the Real Action Heroes line are done quite well, but typically the armor pieces inhibit the range of motion you can get from the various points of articulation. The same is true here. You can certainly attain some very cool poses with The 501st Legion Clone Trooper, but you may also be disappointed with what you cannot achieve from this figure as well. While too expensive to army build, the $150 MSRP is made more palatable thanks to the very nice paint job The 501st Legion Clone Trooper has received. It’s bittersweet at best, but we’re happy with the results.

As you also probably know by now, we’re not entirely thrilled with the phase II head sculpt of these Real Action Heroes figures. The shape of them is much too oblong as they appear to have a boxier appearance in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith. Interestingly, the snazzy paint job on the helmet helps to hide some of those “issues” we find in the helmet’s sculpt. The helmet is a solid piece. It isn’t removable and their obviously isn’t a clone head to reveal underneath of it. It seems that there should be no excuse why the head sculpt would have some issues with its proportions. Like all other clones, or at least it seems that way, The 501st Legion Clone Trooper comes with a set of interchangeable hands , a DC-15 blaster and a display stand that breaks down into four separate pieces. With some futzing and with patience, you can attain some very neat display options for The 501st Legion Clone Trooper. While we love most of what has been brought forward in the Real Action Heroes line thus far, we think that their finest work isn’t with the clones. They are nice, just not perfect. And for this price, they need to be very close to perfect. That’s not asking too much, is it?