Bounty Hunters - Celebrate The Saga

Operating on the fringes of the galaxy with moral ambiguity, bounty hunters work for the highest bidder, and relentlessly pursue their prey across space and on numerous worlds until they capture (or kill) them.

We’re honestly unsure if we should complain or rejoice over the Bounty Hunters Celebrate The Saga five-pack. There is already an inconsistency between them. Hasbro explained to collectors that the 5POA figures would make one final appearance in the eight Celebrate The Saga multipacks and then be archived, probably forever, or until a new need arises for them. They didn’t make clear that they’re mixing formats in these sets, And while the blending is subtle, there is no way to deny that the Bounty Hunters set contains a The Vintage Collection quality figure inside: R5-P8. For transparency, this is not the first time collectors see a well-articulated 3.75” version of R5-P8 in the toy line. In 2017, Disney produced a multipack of astromech droids from The Clone Wars, as part of their annual Droid Factory four-packs. That release of R5-P8 is excellent, but we finally have the character produced in the Hasbro Build A Droid format, which means that the astromech droid now has physical “foot” wires, instead of “painted on” ones. The takeaway here is that we have a collector-quality action figure amid four less-intriguing 5POA action figures. It feels like Hasbro snuck this droid in the set, and it doesn’t feel like it belongs. That said, it does bring value and worthiness to this five-pack.

R5-P8 utilizes the R5-series astromech Build A Droid tooling we first saw released with 2009’s TLC R5-A2 Droid Factory figure. Now, Hasbro gave the figure new, dramatic paint operations to capture the personality and design of the favorite The Clone Wars character, R5-P8. One setback is that the figure doesn’t come with the dome-cannon as the Disney Droid Factory version did. And Hasbro didn’t master the paint operations like Disney did either. It’s almost painful to see the shortcuts Hasbro took on the figure when you compare it to the figure that’s part of the 2017 DF R5-013/R2-C2/R5-S9/R5-P8 four-pack. So, it’s a bittersweet inclusion here. We love to see the updated legs with wires on this release, but at what expense? And with SO MANY other astromech droids in The Clone Wars series, Hasbro couldn’t find another character to include that hasn’t been attempted before in any 3.75” collection? We’re mostly disappointed that Hasbro didn’t release this R5-P8 figure as a new figure in The Clone Wars line. Because that’s where this action figure belongs, and it shouldn’t be part of the Celebrate The Saga collection. Let’s take a quick look at the “filler” figures also included in the Bounty Hunters multipack because they honestly don’t function more than that at all.

Hasbro pulled Boba Fett and Jango Fett from the 2013 Star Wars [Darth Vader/Revenge Of The Sith] line. This collection was the first line that changed 3.75” action figures to the 5POA format, and some don’t hold up well today. Thankfully, both Boba Fett and Jango Fett, while imperfect by a long shot, hold up better than most others from this time. Boba Fett comes with a removable jetpack and a blaster rifle, and Jango Fett comes with the jetpack from Geonosis and two Westar-34 blaster pistols. The paint jobs are clean, but the tooling looks aged, and it’s probably good that Hasbro plans to archives the tooling for these figures in their vault. We hope they don’t reopen that vault any time soon. Bossk and IG-88 debuted together in the Rebels Mission Series line. And here they are again, part of a quintet of characters that may or may not have shared screen time together. While Bossk looks alright, the character appears too small to other action figures. Worse yet is IG-88. The assassin droid is all too short and also cast in rubbery plastic, so the limbs bow, bend and don’t hold their shape well at all. Both Bossk and IG-88 look to share similar digital sculpting as their counterparts in The Black Series 6” line. This set retails for $29.98 and is a Fan Channel exclusive. You’ll find it almost everywhere you shop for toys online.