Obi-Wan Kenobi - ROTS - Basic (III 1)

Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi Master and a General in the Clone Wars. He embarks on a dangerous mission to stop General Grievous in an attempt to bring the war closer to an end.

Do you find it ever so slightly odd that Hasbro opened up the Revenge Of The Sith line with Obi-Wan Kenobi instead of Anakin Skywalker, or for that matter Darth Vader? Ultimately it doesn’t mean a hill of beans what figure kicks off a line look of basic figures. But it can foreshadow to collectors what kind of products they’ll be getting for the remainder of the year and the quality they will be. Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Collection 1 figure which means to you that it’s been impeded by an action feature. And it is. Mimicking the same exact action feature as 2005’s ROTS Anakin Skywalker (III 2) figure, Obi-Wan Kenobi comes with the ”Lightsaber Attack!” branding which is sure to make some of the kids happy, but we’re not really sure about that. We have felt for years that Hasbro has an uncanny ability to make “most” of their Obi-Wan Kenobi action figures look pretty good. And we reluctantly admit that this version of Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn’t have that bad of a portrait either. It really does resemble him. But once you get beyond the head, you’ll start seeing a strange disconnect in accuracy and resemblance of this character. And it’s all because of the need to incorporate the action feature.

But where the figure may score higher marks for having a good likeness, it really suffers terribly in aesthetics. The swinging “Lightsaber Attack!” feature works very well, but if you inspect his arms you’ll notice that he has very wonky proportions – almost to the point of them looking non-human. When his lower legs are squeezed together, Obi-Wan Kenobi is able to swing his lightsaber quite freely. From this perspective, the figure is a true success. But it’s a figure that won’t satisfy the adult collecting crowd and they’ll be expecting a retry almost immediately. We did. In order for the action feature to function as intended, the lightsaber in the alternate hand attachment needed to be permanently affixed. It’s just the nature of the beast. But you do get a plain hand attachment and a separate lightsaber hilt that attaches to a hole in his belt as well which makes the pain of the action feature a little more bearable. You’ll just have to decide if this is a figure that is definitely needed in your collection first of course. Again, Obi-Wan Kenobi may have some “redeeming” qualities, but it lacks in very important areas. Aesthetics and usable articulation are high priorities for us, and he lacks in both areas for us.

Remarkably, both Anakin Skywalker (III 2) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (III 1) interact quite well with each other. You can battle them against each other side by side or pretend they were friends at this point and just have them battle Separatist droids and the like. Accepting that they’re both very far from being the best action figures Hasbro has produced, they will look alright next to each other on a shelf somewhere and of course work like a charm if you’re into using them for the purpose they were designed. It’s hard for us to claim that Obi-Wan Kenobi (III 1) is a great opening figure for the Revenge Of The Sith line. Because we feel that action features are not needed in the form of being worked into figures (we’re fine with bulky accessories having action features), we’d go so far to say that it’s essentially a waste of Hasbro’s tooling budget to make action figures of this caliber. There are so many ways to make action figures (and play-sets) kid friendly. But we feel strongly that this isn’t the way to do it. There will be a ton of differing opinions on this and we’re fine with that. But it doesn’t mean we have to like it.