Commander Bly - R - Saga Legends (SL26)

Goodness gracious. There are just some characters that Hasbro needs to avoid like the plague when choosing candidates for the simplified five-points-of-articulation lines. The best example to date is probably Commander Bly from the fourth wave of Rebels Saga Legends. Not only does the final figure give you a sense that Hasbro wasted tooling dollars on such nonsense, you actually begin to get irritated at how they could do something, like this unmerciful deco, to a clone commander beloved by so many fans. Perhaps it’s outrageous to take things personally when it comes to making action figures, but let us be clear. It would have been better to not have never received Commander Bly in this line than to get what Hasbro considers a releasable final figure for the Saga Legends line. You would think the factory workers would be embarrassed by it too. Commander Bly is the textbook definition of a train wreck. In fact, we’re almost unable to tell if the sculpt has any redeeming qualities and factors because the deco is so incomplete and atrocious. We’re also perplexed that they even added Commander Bly to the lineup. Hasbro explained to us that they would be walking away from the Prequel Trilogy and Expanded Universe (for other reasons too) to focus on Original Trilogy items for a great lead up to The Force Awakens. It seems with basic figure lines’ size at an all-time low that slots should be reserved for the most relevant figures. Commander Bly doesn’t fit this bill in the least.

Let’s talk about the horrid deco. How can the Saga Legends and Mission Series lines be so incredibly inconsistent. The Rebels characters actually had good to excellent paint operations. Multiple use of colors were used to give the outfits depth and distinction. By comparison, figures based on characters from the films and The Clone Wars seem to have budget constraints in the deco that the Rebels figures don’t. That may be utter paranoia in our assessment, but analyze this for yourself. Why is it the characters that adult collectors want the ones that are looking the worst? This isn’t envy. It is just a nagging, perplexing and frankly annoying trend we’re seeing in these lines now. Commander Bly is missing over 50% of his NECESSARY deco. The body glove parts are all white (perhaps many are used to this now – we’re not), the two-toned mustard yellow colors on his helmet are nonexistent, the contrasting brown stripes running down this thigh armor is nowhere to be found and all of the framing black lines of the bucket are completely lost in limbo somewhere. It doesn’t even remotely resemble Commander Bly’s colorful and awesome color flashes that adorn his armor in Revenge Of The Sith. OK, maybe we’re exaggerating a little bit. He does have yellow thigh armor. Are you satisfied now? One thing that they did do an admirable job with is the center yellow chest stripe. Unlike the superior 2005 ROTS Commander Bly (III 57) figure, it has the correctly shaped stripe. (Too bad the good version has a screen inaccurate stripe on it.)

With only six points of articulation (the inclusion of a hinge-jointed macrobinoculars makes the sixth point of articulation – don’t get too excited here), a molded kama is anything but ideal. However, we imagine that many of us are used to it thanks to the 2013 SW [DV/ROTS] Captain Rex (SL10) figure we received early in this budget range of figures. Sadly, no positive strides have been taken to improve the aesthetics. There is a bonus here however. Commander Bly comes with two functioning holsters that stow his two DC-17 blaster pistols when not in use. (It’s quite astounding if you think about it that Commander Bly, including the removable macrobinoculars, comes with three separately sculpted accessories. It’s also sad that we’re praising this since it’s such a rarity in the modern line. But Commander Bly’s most serious issues are the paint operations. The longer we look at the figure, the more we find things wrong with it. Look at where the “mouth” would be. Hasbro couldn’t be bothered with filling in the white space with the mustard yellow color for a seamless (and correct) look. The yellow stripes on his boots are completely missing as well. And the plastic is of such a cheap quality that Commander Bly has the touch and feel of what many have referred to as “cake topper” plastic. There is honestly not that much difference in the plastics utilized here. (Doesn’t that sound awful?) We were looking forward to this figure. We even were happy about the articulated macrobinoculars. But as one of our readers have cleverly said, Commander Bly “is a deviled egg without the paprika.”