“You already… have, Luke. You were right. You were right about me. Tell your sister… you were right.” – Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983).
There’s an ongoing joke here at IAT that theme weeks spell doom. Whenever I try to have a little fun, maybe do some extra reviews, or give myself a larger goal than just posting a few reviews – something bad happens. We saw it last week with Absorbing Man Week and the site crashing.
This week, we’re reviewing Star Wars Exclusives all week (to coincide with our Entertainment Earth Giveaway). My doubling down on two theme weeks in a row must’ve angered the review gods. Both Sam & my wife got very sick on Sunday into Monday and then passed it on to me for yesterday. While I was waiting for the sweet release of death, or you know to just not have to live in the bathroom for the rest of my life, there really wasn’t time to get a review in there.
I feel better this morning though and as I’m washing all the clothes and bedsheets from the last few days, I snagged some pictures of the recent Walgreen’s Exclusive Darth Vader. This figure, “Emperor’s Wrath” Vader depicts our intrepid villain as he finds the light within himself and attacks the Emperor to save Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi.
He’s very similar to the original release, with two noticeable differences: his head and his right hand. The original Vader was ostensibly a ROTJ Vader based on the smaller details, so it makes sense that most everything would be carried over.
His right hand is the simpler change of the two. It pops off now and some red & blue circuitry details have been painted at the joint to replicate what we saw in the film. It’s a small detail, but I love the extra painted details there. It’s still clearly a peg hole on an articulated joint, but I appreciate the effort to do more than just have it pop off and not think twice about how it looks. I do lament the loss of the ball-joint though. I think they could’ve done both.
The head is entirely new and it’s pretty amazing. The first thing is the sculpt itself. It’s so much better than the basic release. The removable helmet feature was cool, but somewhere in the process, that helmet got a little mucked up. It looked wide and Vader ended up with big, doughy sad eyes. That’s not really a thing you want on your dark lord action figures. This new head sculpt is difficult to really study since it’s clear purple, but I imagine a few customizers will or already have painted up this head is a gloss black and I bet it looks spiffy. Continue to Page 2…
I’m torn on this one. I bought it but haven’t opened it. It’s one thing to have one-scene variants in a 4″ line,but I don’t know if I want to go down this road in the 6″ line. And yet I never did pick up his 4″ counterpart in the Vintage Collection …
That last picture… that’s perfect. Well done, sir!
I’m not sure I’m going to get this guy. I only saw the original 6″ Vader once, and skipped it for later…which never came. I’ll have to see it in person before I really decide.
I did get TFA Han today, and passed on FN-2187, and snagged Biker set last week for $20. Really just looking for Snowie and Snap at this point, and hoping we see Lando and some ladies announced this wkd!
That last pic makes the review tho!
(and I wonder if it’s something in the water mid-state? I went down to visit a friend by FtLW for NYE and by the time I hit Rolla, I had no less than FOUR “photo finishes” in that final stretch. Not the first time, either. Then he had a fit he had to wait another day to see TFA. ofw.)
I hope you all feel better soon!
Great review and hilarious comics, as always.
Locational exclusives. Bah.
Some of the guys over at The Fwoosh have done custom paint jobs with the head. Looks pretty great!
yet another thing I just can’t find in New York… we have one Walgreens with a dinky little, usually empty/picked clean, toy section… killing me
I finally grabbed one yesterday here in Australia. Not finally in that I found him, he’s been weirdly easy to obtain here at a local chain called Big W. Like they got a heap of him here. Regular waves, stores seems to get one case but this Vader they must have got at least 4-5 cases per store. 😛
I actually bought him from a re-seller though, who I’d just the previous day bought an Obi Wan for a friend who’d been chasing him. Paid RRP on the way home from getting stuff for my 4yo’s birthday (and actually saw a heap of this Vader at the Big W I went to, but I didn’t want to stiff the guy I said I’d buy from).
I could pick another one up tomorrow easy enough and may just do so (well, maybe in a week or so) because I actually really like him after a play. I’ll keep him displayed with no hand and I added the blue electricity pieces that came with the DCUC Superman Blue to make him all zapped up. But I’d like to grab another to repaint the head for a normal Vader and then use my original Vader’s head to display the Seb Shaw head.
Also gave the lightsaber to Anakin so he’s wielding a blue and red now, in conflict (sidenote, how crazy are Anakin prices now??? This figure was selling for $20 at The Reject Store in Australia, a factory overstock chain, just before Christmas). If I get another Vader, I’ll probably hook up Palpatine with the saber. 😛
That last picture was hilarious
See even Kylo Ren has to collect all the variants.