Anakin Skywalker - EI - Action Collection

In a galaxy far, far away, an evil force is gaining strength and threatens an entire civilization. Two courageous Jedi, a young queen, a Gungan outcast, and a slave boy named Anakin, band together to save a planet under attack as the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance.

The main hero of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is Anakin Skywalker. But he’s a young boy in the film, and that makes things a little more difficult when it comes to the toy they produce of him. The Episode I Action Collection line was an instant hit for Hasbro, and getting out quality figures is a major goal for Hasbro. While still positioning the brand for a standard 12 Inch Figures line with the first wave including Jar Jar Binks, Darth Maul, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, they needed to figure out how to get out the smaller-statured main characters out as well. Here is what they did. They branched-off a range of figures that stand about six inches tall in the 12 Inch Figures scale. And then they created waves of them and released them as an extension of the Action Collection line to help populate it with some of the other popular, yet shorter, characters in Episode I. Anakin Skywalker made his debut in the Action Collection line in the small-boxed Action Collection format, and he turned out excellently.

Anakin Skywalker utilizes an all-new buck. Approached very similarly to a 3.75” action figure, Hasbro worked in an impressive 16 points of articulation, across 12 areas. The inclusion of ball-jointed shoulders and wrists give this figure the extra articulation it needs to be as poseable as possible. Although most characters in the Action Collection line come with removable boots, Hasbro decided to make the boots as part of the figure, as in they’re not removable. Also, the boots are cast in a harder plastic, which also shows us that the intention was to have them as a seamless part of the figure from the start. Hasbro tooled Anakin Skywalker’s smaller body very well. They added his necklace but painted it on the figure instead of sculpting a separate accessory for around his neck. His costume is made up of soft-goods including a shirt, pants, a sash, and a plastic belt which is attached to the sash via a loop and snaps closed on the back of the figure. The costume is in place beautifully here.

Where Anakin Skywalker lacks is accessories. As we think back to the various scenes in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, it feels that Hasbro could have sweetened the pot a little bit more when it comes to things Anakin interacted with while watching the film. What about another style of pit droid? What about a grease gun? What about a wrench of some sort. What about anything small-sized he utilized in the Boonta Eve Classic? We understand that most of Anakin Skywalker’s tooling dollars went towards the buck, but it couldn’t have been cost-prohibitive to add something else for him to hold. Displaying 12 Inch Figures without any accessories is boring and almost pointless. There are exceptions where some characters have nothing, but most of the time, this isn’t the case. There’s one more thing we wanted to mention about Anakin Skywalker. The figure looks great, but we’re not too sure if this has a fair likeness to actor Jake Lloyd. It looks like Anakin Skywalker, but not Jake Lloyd. How is that for a paradox?