Obi-Wan Kenobi - TAC - Basic (30 05)

Obi-Wan travels to Utapau to confront General Grievous. The general is a master with the lightsaber, as is Obi-Wan, so the duel between the tenacious Jedi and the ruthless cyborg is grueling. But in the end, a well-aimed blaster shot by Obi-Wan destroys Grievous’ organ jar, putting an end to the general’s mission of destruction.

How in the universe do we describe the 30 (77-07) Obi-Wan Kenobi (30 05) figure that is based on his appearance during Order 66 in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith? We love it and are eerie of it at the same time. To be fair, he borrows most of his parts from the 2005 ROTS Obi-Wan Kenobi (III 55) figure, so you definitely know you’re getting a quality product here. But Hasbro took a few steps backward developing the new head sculpt. But it’s not like they didn’t have good intentions in mind. They clearly did. Their goal was to recreate the look of Obi-Wan Kenobi when he crawled out of the water on Utapau after being blasted by his clone battalion. This required a tweaked head to be sculpted so that a rebreather could be attached without issue. Well, we feel that as long as you keep that rebreather in his mouth, this action figure is pretty cool. Otherwise, and we’re ashamed to say this because we don't have dirty minds, but he looks like a scaled down blow up doll. (So keep that rebreather in his mouth at ALL times!) It’s probably one of the smallest accessories a basic figure has seen and it’s quite hard to manage it in your fingers, so be careful with this or you might otherwise lose it forever. But the inclusion of this accessory definitely makes the figure here!

Obi-Wan Kenobi also comes with an electrostaff that he swiped from a MagnaGuard and there isn’t much to talk about here other than that it’s a neat accessory for him to handle. You can have him fight off additional MagnaGuards as well as General Grievous if you so desire so there is some new play value with this version of Obi-Wan. He also comes with a droid blaster, but because of his widened left hand, it’s hard (nearly impossible) for him to hold multiple accessories at once. Perhaps the thing we are most excited about with this model of Obi-Wan Kenobi is that Hasbro fixed the ankle joints to match the color of his boots. More often than not, these joints have been colored in a light shade of beige (that matches his outfit rather than his boots). Other Obi-Wan Kenobi action figures based on this mold both before and after this figure have been designed with the beige joints. We find this a travesty and something we wish Hasbro would tighten up. It’s become a chronic issue in the basic figure line. So that was a long way of saying that it’s nice to have an accurate version of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He’s super-articulated and his paint job is simple but excellently done. And we amaze even ourselves that we rarely grow tired of another Obi-Wan Kenobi action figure in the basic figure line even when Hasbro only makes small enhancements like this to him. We have reached a point in the basic figure line now where it is imperative for Hasbro to create every scene specific version of the main characters to keep the line new and fresh. Some see this as milking the market, but we see it as needed (and a pure joy). We would much rather prefer a tweaked and updated figure over a straight repack of the same ones year after year. A release like the TAC Obi-Wan Kenobi ensures that the line won’t get stagnant. Obi-Wan Kenobi (30 05) isn’t the perfect incarnation of him, nor is he a figure that we ever expected to get. But Hasbro did a good job on making him unique and no matter how you look at it, it’s kind of cool that we can pinpoint this action figure to a specific few seconds of film. The 30 (77-07) has shown that Hasbro is taking some aggressive steps at keeping the line fresh and exciting. We think the first wave of it is exactly proving this. Obi-Wan Kenobi may not be a must-have, but you should definitely get him for your Utapau scenes!