Admiral Ackbar - POTF2 [FF/TKC] - Basic

A respected member of the Mon Calamari species, Admiral Ackbar serves as a senior Rebel Alliance adviser. He commanded the attack on the second Death Star from aboard his personal flagship during the Battle of Endor.

Admiral Ackbar was a hit for collectors right out of the gate. As the line struggled to break out of character selection from A New Hope, all that changed in 1997, and Kenner/Hasbro began releasing secondary and tertiary characters from aliens to background fodder to help flesh out the 3.75” basic figure line. Admiral Ackbar was one of the standout figures in 1997, and it’s holding up quite well a year after its initial release. Kenner/Hasbro chose Admiral Ackbar as a carry-forward figure in the Freeze Frame Action Slide line. The basic figure line for the first time includes a special pack-in premium, something that surprised collectors, and also increased the MSRP for each figure by a dollar. With the ability to work in a real slide projector, the Freeze Frame Action Slide premium piqued the interest of the nerdiest collectors around. Imagine creating an abridged version of the Original Trilogy by collecting all of the slides! More importantly, having pack-ins like this feel reminiscent to the 1985 The Power Of The Force line from Kenner, which all came with a collectors coin. Getting something extra with Star Wars figures feels special, and makes the pack-in extra-collectible. It’s nice to have a piece of Admiral Ackbar forever immortalized from a scene in Return Of The Jedi as a collectible pack-in premium. And as a mainstay in the Star Wars line, we’ll likely see new action figure versions of him again sometime in the future.

One of the most respected and revered characters, Admiral Ackbar, was high on Kenner/Hasbro’s list to produce, and they tooled a wonderful and elegant version of the character in The Power Of The Force “2” line. With a complex mottled skin pattern, and complex details in the head and neck area, Admiral Ackbar is action figure art. Because Admiral Ackbar isn't involved in a great deal of action, Hasbro developed an "off-screen" weapon called a comlink blaster that fits the right hand like a glove. Believe it or not, the accessory interacted with the character seamlessly. Sadly, no vintage Kenner baton was included, but let’s be honest. Admiral Ackbar didn’t have that accessory in the film either. Collectors were impressed with the sculpt and didn't care what was or was not screen-accurate anyway. Admiral Ackbar has a gorgeous head sculpt. It still seems like slight artistic interpretation of the on-screen character as the head is much wider than the character in the film. But we don’t believe anyone can deny how excellent the sculpting is all around. There is no question that this action figure is Admiral Ackbar. The figure is affected, again slightly, by a bulkiness that has plagued so many other characters in The Power Of The Force “2” line, but this time it is notably diminished, and the figure is pleasing to the eye as a whole.

Admiral Ackbar’s deco is nearly perfect, and it is more than evident that a lot of thought and consideration went into how this action figure was to be painted. The tunic is colored in cream, and the rest of the outfit is bright white with yellow blood stripes running down the length of both outseams of the pants, all the way up to the figure's armpits. The yellow is extremely bright, by the way. It looks very nice. We’ll admit that the shade of color of Admiral Ackbar’s skin fits somewhere within the shade of red used on the costume, but it isn’t perfect here. It’s a bit too orange. But it is so hard to fault it because the washes, shading, and the attempt to recreated the mottled pattern on the “shell” of his head is so admirable. We are quite impressed with how everything has turned out here. The eyes are wide with huge pupils, characteristic of the Mon Calamari species. There is a lot to appreciate here, and collectors will love what Kenner/Hasbro did with Admiral Ackbar. The new Freeze Frame Action Slide line for 1998 borrows many of the aspects of the “red” and “green” line looks, but there are plenty of differences too, especially the backside of the card which features an image of the character and a short bio, now in paragraph form, instead of a list of stats. And for the 1998 version, the changed quite a few of Admiral Ackbar’s paint operations, especially in the portrait.