March Madness is long gone, but we’ve got our own Final Four for you this Star Wars day, May the Fourth: the final four entries in our top ten fan-favorite action figures from Hasbro’s Vintage Collection!
We’re celebrating Hasbro’s recent announcement of the Vintage Collection’s revival next year by looking back at some of the standout figures from previous waves. Here are the last four figures to make our cut:
Fan Favorite Characters
Is any Star Wars character associated more with action figures than Boba Fett? Since his toy debut in 1979 as the famed Kenner mail-away figure that didn’t fire a missile as promised, the peerless bounty hunter in Mandalorian armor has been a consistent must-have for kids at play and collectors alike.
Boba Fett (Prototype Armor)
Source: Jedi Temple Archive
The Vintage Collection has seen four Boba Fett figures. This 2011 figure from Wave 8 was one of two available only by mail (5 UPC codes and $6.99 required). Unlike the other, but like the 1979 original, this figure didn’t feature rocket-firing action, but proved more popular all the same.
This Fett figure evokes the original concept for the character, an all-white armored look not seen on screen, apart from a 1978 test shot, until Star Wars Rebels’ third season.
Sticklers for detail point out that because the figure uses a Boba Fett mold from 2004, it’s closer to an albino version of the costume seen in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back than it is to Joe Johnston’s vintage, unused design. Even so, with 15 points of articulation and a blaster rifle, grenade launcher, and removable jetpack as accessories, this figure deserves an honored place in any Boba Fett devotee’s collection.
Ponda Baba
Source: Jedi Temple Archive
“Walrus Man,” as Kenner called him back in 1978, has the honor of being the first (in film release order) of many Star Wars characters to suffer a violent amputation. For his Vintage appearance in 2011, Hasbro capitalized on Ponda Baba’s disarming claim to fame (rim shot and reader groans here), giving the figure a detachable ball-jointed right arm!
Even better, he came with a “burned” (though unbloodied) arm stump – the better for creating his adventures immediately following his run-in with Ben Kenobi.
Ponda also got an extra pair of flipper-like hands – a fun nod to a continuity gaffe in the cantina scene (an error, amazingly, left untouched in the Special Editions) – a blaster and bar glass, a screen-accurate costume, and, of course, his canonical name.
All the fine and fun attention to detail make it easy to understand why Star Wars fans like this Ponda Baba – even if he probably wouldn’t like them any more than he liked Luke.
A Dark Side Duo
We began our list with a pair of sinister Star Wars characters; we end it that way, too. (Mostly – more in a bit.) But while both Darth Sidious and General Grievous appear in the films first, neither of these villains has shown up on the silver screen.
Darth Malgus
Source: Jedi Temple Archive
Bioware’s massively popular MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic introduced the world to Darth Malgus, a Sith Lord who fought the Republic some three millennia before the Battle of Yavin.
An immediate hit with fans of the game when it launched in late 2011, Malgus made his way into The Vintage Collection the next April. Even on the 3 3/4-inch scale, he cuts an intimidating figure, thanks to his bulk, his detailed suit of armor (the chest armor is removable), and his soft, flowing, hooded cloak. His piercing red gaze matches the crimson hue of his lightsaber, and the paint job on the rest of the meticulous head sculpt depicts the injuries he sustained on Alderaan. Those wounds forced him to rely on a respirator – foreshadowing the more extensive life-support equipment a future Dark Lord of the Sith would need, thousands of years later.
Starkiller
Source: Jedi Temple Archive
Our last Vintage selection also comes from the world of Star Wars video games: Darth Vader’s secret apprentice Galen Marek, better known by his codename “Starkiller” (an appropriation of Anakin’s and Luke’s original surname from early Star Wars drafts that predates the First Order’s lethal weapon in Star Wars: The Force Awakens).
Introduced in the late (and lamented) LucasArts’ 2008 game The Force Unleashed, Starkiller initially used his extreme sensitivity to the dark side of the Force as Vader’s expert assassin. In time, however, he turned to the light and even (a long time ago, in a continuity far, far away) came to be honored as the original organizer of the Rebel Alliance.
This Vintage Collection release, from June 2012, was Starkiller’s first solo carded appearance as an action figure. Although he isn’t as articulated as some exacting collectors would prefer – his lack of a ball-jointed waist and ball-hinged hips hurts his poseable possibilities – and his tunic is hard plastic rather than soft cloth, he bears an excellent likeness and comes with a generous ten accessories, including removable chest and back armor and gauntlets, and a pair of lightsabers.
These figures get our votes for some of the best of The Vintage Collection past. We can’t wait to see who, in addition to the Rey figure announced at last month’s Star Wars Celebration, the future will bring!
Let us know in the comments below: What The Vintage Collection Star Wars action figure would you include in this list, and why? Which character do you most want to see as a part of Hasbro’s revived The Vintage Collection?
