Constable Zuvio - TFA - Build A Weapon (Desert)

A vigilant law officer on a mostly lawless world, the tough and humorless Constable Zuvio keeps order in a frontier trading post.

There is a strong rhythmic pattern beating between The Force Awakens line and The Black Series [Phase III] line. It seems that for every 6” figure made, there is already a corresponding simply articulated 3.75” figure hanging around made from the same digital files. Of course, we don’t know for certain which came first, the chicken or the egg, with regards to the two different scales. In any paired example one could have preceded the other. But the clear indication that each “duo” of figures originated from the same source files couldn’t be more evident in the sculpts when compared side by side. The same is true for Constable Zuvio who has a stunning The Black Series [Phase III] action figure and then this figure, meant for kids and collectors who adore simply articulated action figures. Constable Zuvio has a pretty nice sculpt for a 3.75” action figure. You can see the similar expression on both scales. The rest of the sculpt follows suit as well, However, you can see the tremendous lack of paint operations and we’re not so sure we are able to understand their omissions. Some very important colors have not transferred over the 3.75” version at all. We know that The Force Awakens line is meant to be a budget action figure line, but Hasbro cannot make sacrifices like this on the figures. Pennies should have been saved with the simple articulation. Money must be utilized towards better paint jobs.

We have to admit to you that we’re not crazy about the look of the Constable Zuvio character. Who are we to judge, but we just don’t feel the Star Wars vibe with him at all. Assuredly, we probably felt similarly to many Prequel Trilogy characters that we now adore and are completely synonymous to Star Wars for us now. So we’ll give Constable Zuvio some time to bake yet. Interestingly and without hopefully sounding inconsistent, we do see strong resemblances of The Clone Wars character Embo to Constable Zuvio in both appearance and attitude. We imagine however it has a great deal to do with his hat though. Another inconsistency to our claim that Constable Zuvio doesn’t feel like a Star Wars character is that if you carefully look at his outfit (especially the chest armor and the upper body glove), we can’t help but notice a strong connection to Boba Fett, thanks to the red and green colors and shape of the patterns of his armor. (This is even MORE poignant on the Constable Zuvio 6” figure because the yellow paint that is missing on the 3.75” version was added for the 6” figure.) Could there be some connection to Boba Fett and Constable Zuvio? It’s a leap, but it may indeed be possible. The rest of Constable Zuvio is admirably painted, especially the facial sculpt. But like we mentioned earlier, some important details, like his boots for example, leave a lot to be desired. Thank goodness we have a 6” version which takes the complete color pallet of Constable Zuvio into consideration.

Constable Zuvio comes with two accessories. One is a backpack and one is some sort of force pike with a very sharp blade at the end of it. The accessories interact very well with Constable Zuvio. There are three holes in his back to accommodate the complicated backpack. (The Black Series 6” Constable Zuvio has the same design to accommodate its backpack as well.) The back as well as the force pike has intense detail. And call us whiners, but the backpack is more chrome that the armor of Captain Phasma in both scales too. Why Hasbro couldn’t have applied the same technique to the Captain Phasma Build A Weapon figure as well as The Black Series [P3] Captain Phasma is beyond our comprehension. We imagine collectors would have been significantly more impressed with this approach instead. We digress. It will be very interesting to see how the character of Constable Zuvio develops in The Force Awakens. Again, it seems like there is some importance to this character in Episode VII. Otherwise he would seem like a background alien that might be eventually made, but certainly not in the first or second wave of a brand new line. You may wish for more articulation for your 3.75” Constable Zuvio action figure, but even though this figure only comes with five points of articulation, Hasbro designed him very well. And the detail is very impressive. We hope one day that they’ll return to the days where all basic figures were super-articulated, but it looks like those days are long gone.