12" Stormtrooper and Dewback

Although this is an exclusive, I don't think you'll have too much trouble finding one.  Don't succumb to any silly scalper stories - these are just starting to ship, and over the next few weeks they should have plenty at your local Toys R Us.

Sculpts - **1/2
Nothing at all exciting about the Stormtrooper - I think we're all in agreement there.  The sculpting on the Dewback is marvelous, with some terrific detail.  But it's not a Dewback, at least not one I've ever seen before.  In the picture below you can see the small scale dewback along with the large dewback.  Somebody had something else in mind when he/she did this sculpt.

Packaging - Bupkis
Fairly attractive, with some nice interior graphics of Tatooine, but not very sturdy.  Finding one any where near mint will be almost impossible, and keeping it that way even harder.  And if you do free the beast, you better have wire snips and some time - it took about 15 minutes of cutting and twisting to get this guy out.  But the real reason they get bupkis here - the tail of the Dewback is twisted around to allow it to fit in the box.  Since it's hollow, this means it comes out squished or kinked.  If you do take this out for display, I recommend filling the tail with something.  One friend made a small slit in the tail near where it joins to the body underneath, stuffed the tail with material, and then glued it back up.  Otherwise, you're eighty dollar lizard is going to look pretty pathetic.

Articulation - **
The Stormtrooper himself is the standard 12" Stormtrooper that we've already seen several times before.  The Dewback has five points - I think Hasbro likes that magic number five - one at each hip, and one at the neck.  The tail also has a wire in it, but it poses very poorly.  You have pretty much one pose here, even with the limited articulation.

Scale - **1/2
This is an unusual section for me - normally I don't put up a score for the overall scale of the figure.  But I think it's worth mentioning in terms of something of this type.  And no, it's not truly in scale.  I'd say he's about 25% too small, perhaps better scaled for a 9" figure than a 12".  But I'm willing to cut them some slack here - even at this scale it's one major lizard.

Overall - **
While the sculpting is good (ignoring that it doesn't look like a classic Dewback), and the sheer size of this guy is pretty impressive, I'm not happy about the price or the fact that the tail is so cheap and comes out of the box pretty twisted up.  If you can only buy one of the new exclusives, stick with the much nicer Speederbike.