Imperial Senate Guard - TBS [P4] - Six Inch Figures (GG08)

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed follows Darth Vader's secret apprentice, trained to hunt down and destroy Jedi, while Imperial Senate Guards impose the will of the Emperor on the galaxy.

The Black Series 6-inch collectors are continually growing weary of Hasbro trying to convert existing action figures into new characters, especially when the existing tooling doesn’t match the new character. We’ve seen the laziest of shortcuts made to the likes of RC-1138 (Boss), but we probably accuse Hasbro of being lazier with the Imperial Senate Guard. The character is from the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game and looks a lot like a blue Emperor’s Royal Guard, but also has many unique parts. A character like this deserves a full retool because of its distinct differences, not the buck of a character from Crimson Empire forced into the peg hole of The Force Unleashed. The figure is a disaster from head to toe, and it doesn’t have the robes to cover the incorrect body armor. We also noticed differences in the shape of the character’s helmet, so we don’t believe Hasbro should have reused any part of the Imperial Royal Guard tooling to develop this video game character. And as expected, Hasbro didn’t retool the hands either. They designed them for the force pike accessory, but this character comes with a long-hilted lightsaber, and it barely stays in its hands.

It may have behooved Hasbro to repack the Emperor’s Shadow Guard, released years ago. Yes, that character isn’t screen-accurate either, but Hasbro managed to hide its sins thanks to the beautiful soft-goods robes. They also set a precedent with the 3.75-inch version released a decade earlier, so collectors expected them to reuse existing tooling. As huge fans of The Force Unleashed video game multimedia event, we’re happy that Hasbro still sees these engaging characters as valuable augmentations to the 6-inch scaled line. At its release, the Emperor’s Shadow Guard came with an all-new lightsaber accessory. You know well by now that we were very disappointed in the thinness of the lightsaber blades in the 6-inch line, something Hasbro improved over the years. But because they’re using existing tooling here, we’re back to a razor-thin blade, which looks ridiculous. We also feel that Hasbro still got the color of the blade wrong. All previous versions of ESG collectibles across different lines appear to come with a neon red lightsaber blade. We think Hasbro missed an opportunity to get this detail correct.

But if they can’t get the character correct, why would we expect them to get the accessories right? To add insult to injury, the Imperial Senate Guard comes with an MSRP set at $26.99. Now, GameStop probably has much say in what they will charge for their action figures. Still, perhaps Hasbro should lower the cost of the repainted figures for the retailer to share the savings with collectors who don’t want to drop that kind of money for an incorrect and rehashed action figure. We wish we had more excellent things to say about the Imperial Senate Guard action figure. But it feels like a complete waste of time and energy for everyone who shares an interest in The Black Series 6-inch Gaming Greats collection. There are many opportunities to produce an excellent cast of characters for collectors, and the ground is fertile, and the options appear endless. But Hasbro can’t keep taking these shortcuts for the premium collectors line, and otherwise, in the long run, it will hurt their bottom line. We do, however, hope that Hasbro focuses on more characters from The Force Unleashed and gets more Gaming Greats characters in The Vintage Collection.