Poe Dameron - TFA - Armor Up (Space)

An ace pilot, Poe Dameron is a leader in the Resistance's fight against the evil First Order. He soars into battle behind the controls of a modern X-wing fighter.

Hasbro certainly knows how to make us all the action figures they want us to buy. If you’re just a casual collector or observer of The Force Awakens line, you’ll probably notice some double dipping going on with the line. It seems that some of the same figures are packaged and then packaged again in a different format. This much is true. But you’ll probably have to look a whole lot harder at figures from the Armor Up line because if you think you already own them, well, you might actually not. This is especially true for the Poe Dameron figure. Sure, he was released as 2015’s TFA Poe Dameron (Build A Weapon) figure donning his X-wing pilot gear and he was packaged in a slightly different manner as a pack-in figure with 2015’s TFA Poe Dameron’s X-wing Fighter. But an all-new outfit of him wearing his Resistance uniform is available, right now, only in the Armor Up line. This means you’ll need to plop down and extra $7 for a silly single accessory just to get this unique outfit. As you know, the Armor Up line is a hotbed of controversy. Figures with Build A Weapon parts of the same or greater size as the Armor Up accessory sell for $7 less. And we believe that all has to do with the packaging in which these figures are placed.

Pack the figures on a flat card back with a bubble and it just screams “basic figure” to whomever is buying it. However, place that same figure (even with less accessories sometimes mind you) in a deluxe larger sized box and add in an exclusive costume-like accessory and you can jack up the MSRP to nearly $15. $15 is an abomination for an action figure with five points of articulation. And we hope there are enough complaints about this format that it forces Hasbro to scrap it altogether and sell these figures for no more than the deserved $7.99 MSRP. For us, we find it bad form to offer an “exclusive” sculpt in an elevated format and then charge significantly more money for it. That’s just a slap in the face. Just put all of these figures in the Build A Weapon line and then call it a day. We don’t need the stupid Armor Up pieces anyway. They make the action figures look ridiculous anyway. Poe Dameron is especially frustrating in this format because this is a version of the character that people assuredly are going to want to track down. And Hasbro is basically saying to us all, “Well, you can have him, but it’s going to cost you almost double the price….” Hasbro will tell you retailers set the prices and that’s true, but they also have to pay a certain wholesale cost and that’s determined by Hasbro.

The truth of the matter is that Poe Dameron is a nice, albeit imperfect action figure. The paint operations could be much better. On our sample his eyes and eyebrows are especially uneven which makes him look odd… and that’s being nice. Anything that messes up the likeness of a figure really sticks in our craw. The head sculpt is well tooled. But it’s the way it’s been painted that sort of ruins it. The rest of his outfit is very reminiscent of various Rebel Alliance uniforms we saw in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The tan jacket with the khaki green pants and black boots make him look like a true military person. And even despite the minimal articulation, Poe Dameron looks pretty cool. He comes with a large blaster rifle and it can be held nicely in both hands. It’s been cast in a metallic gray color and has quite a bit of detail for such a small accessory. The extra Armor Up accessory is plain dumb. Unless we just haven’t seen it yet, Poe Dameron’s Armor Up accessory isn’t correctly colored (when compared to the other Poe Dameron action figures we’ve seen). This doesn’t mean he doesn’t switch helmets somewhere within the film; and hey, maybe it’s accurate for that blue X-wing starfighter we saw him standing next to in the stills. No matter; we still don’t see how Hasbro can justify the price of this line.