Chewbacca - TBS [P2] - Six Inch Figures (#04)

Chewbacca is Han Solo's copilot on the Millennium Falcon. The powerful Wookiee is a courageous fighter, skilled mechanic and loyal friend who joins the fight to save the galaxy.

"Rrrooaarrgghh! Awrggh! Rwaah-oh-oh!"

Man, oh man. We say that many times when we can’t decide on how to properly assess a new Star Wars action figure from Hasbro, especially when we want a fair and accurate opinion to go out to the masses. Often times this means the figure is bittersweet. Or more simply put it means that the figure is usually so good and so bad at the same time. When it comes to The Black Series [Phase II] Chewbacca (#04) 6” figure, the wrestling we’re experiencing isn’t found within the sculpt, because that is beautiful. We are struggling with the functionality of the articulation function and what little movement you can get out of the figure despite what is seemingly a very well articulated figure. Perhaps we shouldn’t have opened up this review so enigmatically, but Chewbacca has us thrown for a loop.... a little bit. We love how he looks. No one can deny that Hasbro did a fantastic job on the sculpt. We would have preferred his mouth closed or just closed more, but aside from that Chewbacca really is a remarkable sculpt in a line that is wrought with one controversy after another. At his release, Chewbacca is the tallest figure in the entire The Black Series 6” line. He looks perfectly scaled next to Han Solo and other figures in the line. Based on his appearance in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Chewbacca is hopefully going to make many collectors happy and hopefully restore faith in the line that has experience one uphill battle after another. Chewbacca may be a new ray of light for The Black Series 6” range and we have to say that he stands out from among the rest of the figures already released.

Not only does Chewbacca have a wonderful sculpt, he has also been given a pretty decent paint job. He seems a little too light in some areas, but we believe Hasbro did that as a concerted effort to draw out more of the texture of the fur. There are plenty of instances of contrast which work hard to bring out this extra texture. And speaking of the fur, we will be shocked if anyone is displeased with how it turned out. But it is how Hasbro approached the fur that leads to the figure’s detriment. Hasbro sculpted hanging fur to cover the joints. It’s beautiful and big thanks goes to Hasbro for this. But this limits the full articulation capability of the premium joints they added to give Chewbacca the greatest range of movement possible. We don’t know if this should be weighted as a major or minor complaint either. Chewbacca does possess a great range of motion regardless of his limitations, so should we be pointing out that we’re a little disappointed that he doesn’t have more movement? We’re honestly stuck. For instance, don’t expect his head to turn as needed or desired. While a wonderful convention having a carved out section for his bandolier to lay flatly on him and a space on the right side of his neck area to tuck it under, Chewbacca instantly looks awkward and silly when this accessory isn’t in place. So why make it removable then? At the same time, what else could have Hasbro done to make this feature better? We don’t know if they had any other options quite honestly. So again, should we be pointing this out as an issue?

We are however thoroughly impressed with the bowcaster accessory. Just like the 3.75” range, Hasbro decided to cast this weapon in three separate pieces. To our surprise, Hasbro decided to omit the strap that goes along with the bowcaster, but we are nevertheless impressed with its design and how well it can be held in his hands (both can hold it). What we are slightly disappointed with is that Chewbacca is unable to hold it with both hands because his hands aren’t sculpted to accommodate that and his elbows don’t bend enough because of the hanging hair. The head sculpt is good but not entirely perfect for us. His eyes are a little too deeply set in and there is no way at all to see his piercing blue eyes we clearly see in the film. But as a whole we think this Chewbacca figure looks pretty darn alright. As with the 3.75” Chewbacca figures, expect the 6” sculpt to be used multiple times to bring us all of Chewbacca’s looks throughout the rest of the Star Wars films where he seems to have a slightly different hairdo in each one. Packaged collectors are going to go nuts. Intended to be #13 in The Black Series [Phase I] orange line look, Chewbacca was temporarily canceled and released in The Black Series [Phase II] as #04. We have decided to give Chewbacca a relatively good score despite nitpicking on multiple facets of the figure because we truly believe that many of the “issues” are unavoidable here. But we would encourage Hasbro to save articulation when it won’t be fully utilized. Then and only then will they save money and keep MSRPs at bay so collectors can maintain supporting the line.