Sideshow Collectibles - General Obi-Wan Kenobi

10-18-2008

On Friday the most recent 1:6 release from Sideshow arrived on my doorstep in the form of General Obi-Wan Kenobi.

This is both the first figure to have armor and use the new body developed jointly between Sideshow and Hot Toys which has some benefits over previous releases. 

The best improvements are the hand and leg pegs.  They are much longer and more sturdy than the Sideshow figures and allow a very nice range of motion.  Secondly it seems as though the joint structure in the figure works more smoothly and feels less prone to snapping.  That's one thing that I haven't liked about the Sideshow bodies up till this point.

Specifically on this figure, however, those same joints are kind of loose and because Obi-Wan is wearing a full body suit under his armor, some poses don't hold as well as they could.  This could be strictly with my figure or could be due to this being the first release on the new style body.

The armor pieces are well sculpted and aren't the rubbery pieces we've seen in the past from Hasbro.  The leg and arm pieces are shaped in such a way that they stay on well yet don't totally hinder the articulation.  Unfortunately the lower leg pieces are somewhat loose and while they look fine, do have to be adjusted in order to pose the feet. 

Soft goods have been a plus on nearly all of Sideshow's releases to this point and Obi-Wan doesn't disappoint.  The tabs and cloak fit very well and look incredible over the armor.  The body suit fits extremely well both over the body and under the armor.  It has nice detailing on it and really adds to the look of the overall figure.

Sideshow always includes some top notch accessories with their figures and Obi-Wan continues the streak.  He has two very nicely detailed lightsabers, one hilt only and one ignited.  I still think that Sideshow's lightsabers are the best I've seen in any scale (not counting MR replicas of course).  There are three pairs of hands in the box including fists, pointing/trigger hands, a hand for the lightsaber and a left hand for basic or force gesturing. 

I bought the exclusive release which included a replaceable right gauntlet with a holo of a Clone Trooper attached.  This piece slips on by removing the right hand and taking the standard gauntlet off.

The head sculpt is really nice with a lot of detail in the hair and beard.  Since this figure is based on an animated version of Obi-Wan I wouldn't have subtracted any points if they'd done a stylized version of Obi but this fits in well with the ROTS figure that's already available.  My only complaint is with the paint job on my figure; there is brown paint inside the ear which makes it look like Obi-Wan either has an ear hair problem or he needs a Q-tip badly.

The floppy joints on the figure are really the only major distraction for this release.  I'm hoping it's just an issue with this particular figure or with the first batch of figures with the new body and not something that is really widespread.  The armor, while it looks nice, does have some looseness to it that reminds me this is a collector item and not really a toy.  While it's not that bad, I'm kind of happy that I didn't jump in to the Stormtrooper and Utapau Clone releases.

One other thing to point out is that the biceps armor was put on backwards on my figure.  Not sure if this was just one assembly problem or if more were shipped out like that.  It was a rather simple fix, just spin it around, but with the multiple pieces of armor on these figures something assembled upside down or backwards, in an area where spinning it isn't possible, could really distract from the overall look and function of the figure.

I think that fans of Obi-Wan should definitely add this piece to their collections.  The execution on the armor points to good things to come from Sideshow and the new body will add a lot to future pieces.