Darth Vader - ROTS - Collectible Figure And Cup

Darth Vader confronts Luke Skywalker in a lightsaber duel in the Cloud City of Bespin. Vader wins the battle when he ruthlessly severs Luke's sword hand. Then Vader reveals a devastating secret: that Vader is, in fact, Luke's own father, and that he plans to turn Luke to the dark side so they can rule the galaxy together.

The third and final wave of the Revenge Of The Sith Collectible Figure And Cup sets was difficult to acquire. Not all of these TARGET exclusives made it to all stores. And stores that did receive didn’t have them in their inventory computer and were put out on the shelf with clearance tags on them. Although initial waves sold quite well, it seemed as if those who were collecting them lost interest altogether. What’s sad is that the final wave contained some of the nicest artwork of all of the cups received, and with core characters like Darth Vader, Princess Leia, and a Stormtrooper, they should have been immediate hits. If you were fortunate enough to find them, you could testify how nice the sets are. They’re not nice for solely the included figures, of course (Hasbro got really cheap with this line by including figures from The Power Of The Force “2” era), but for the collectability of the cups. Darth Vader may be the wisest re-released figure of this wave. Hasbro took the Darth Vader figure from the Toys R Us exclusive Imperial Forces multipack and included it here. The Darth Vader from this multipack is a recast of 2001’s POTJ Darth Vader (Emperor’s Wrath) figure, which has always been a collector favorite.

As a reminder, Hasbro had recast the mold into solid black plastic. This action removed the transparent properties that the original Power Of The Jedi base figure had to recreate the effects of Force lightning. This refreshed version of Darth Vader is a great sculpt and works perfectly in this new light. Darth Vader comes with a removable cape and lightsaber. All of the figures in this sub-line are light on accessories, but that’s fine since they aren’t the reason to buy into this line. Darth Vader comes with eight points of swivel articulation. The standard six points of articulation are included here of course, but then Hasbro also added a swivel bicep and swivel right wrist to make him more compatible with the included lightsaber accessory. They’ve also designed a complete removable plastic molded cape. It’s a little too flyaway for our tastes, but it fits him well and looks great on the figure when you have him fully assembled. It’s quite impressive how differently this figure looks without the “Force lightning” effect. Darth Vader looks like an all-new figure now. For those that missed out on the Toys R Us exclusive version, this is your second chance to acquire this unique version of Darth Vader.

Is Darth Vader issue free? Not necessarily, in our opinion. The helmet is pretty accurate for the most part, but the nose area is a little too “pug” in our estimation. The legs are at a slightly awkward lean and because no articulation exists below the hips, you’re very limited with how you’re able to pose him. With the way they made Darth Vader, he is a solid and fair representation of the onscreen character. From the waist down he might not be too articulated, but there is enough movement from his waist and above so you can pose him as needed. It’s evident that one Darth Vader action figure after another is going to get boring quite fast. So we’re thankful to Hasbro for choosing a version of him that hasn’t been spread throughout the market all that often. Hasbro will continually revisit older sculpts, and if they change things up as they did with this figure, we believe it makes them noteworthy releases. Still, the star of this set is the included cup which features fantastic graphics from The Empire Strikes Back. We never thought that these cups would look as incredible as they do, but we’re glad that Hasbro decided to do a fantastic line like this. Besides, this will likely be the last they ever do.