FINN – FIRST ORDER DISGUISE
STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES (HASBRO)
“To carry out a mission crucial to the Resistance, Finn adopts a First Order officer’s uniform, going undercover and doing his best to blend in among his former ranks.”
Toy companies seem to have a hard time making toys of Finn exciting. When the product for The Force Awakens first hit, all of the Finns were in his jacketed civilian style look. While that’s certainly his main design from the movie, it was perhaps not the most thrilling, especially to a customer base that wasn’t yet familiar with the character. For The Last Jedi, where Finn is sporting a look very similar to the one from the last film, toy makers wisely chose to use Finn’s disguised look from later in the film as his initial go-to for the figures. While Hasbro gave us the standard Finn for their smaller basic line, they did the Officer’s uniform for his Black Series release, which I’ll be looking at today!
THE FIGURE ITSELF
First Order Disguise Finn is part of the second assortment of TLJ-themed Star Wars: The Black Series figures, hitting just after Force Friday II, alongside Leia, Poe, Maz, and the Guard. He’s figure 51 in the line, placing him between the Guard and Leia numerically. The figure stands about 6 inches tall and has 27 points of articulation. His sculpt was technically new to him, but all but his head was almost immediately re-used for the First Order Officer included in a TRU-exclusive two-pack with Ackbar. Given that it’s largely just a standard Officer’s uniform, that’s a rather sensible re-use, and I have no doubt it was part of what made this particular look appealing to Hasbro. It’s a solid sculpt, and also makes for a very easy to pose, very playable figure. The only truly unique piece is the head. They could have just re-used the first Finn head, but they didn’t. I’m not entirely sure why they didn’t, since that was a pretty solid sculpt and had a decent Boyega likeness. While I certainly don’t dislike this sculpt, I do feel it’s resemblance isn’t quite as strong. From a purely technical standpoint, though, it’s the better piece, with sharper detailing and better relative scaling to the body, though, so it’s not a total loss. The paint on this guy is generally pretty decent work, with pretty clean detailing and a palette that’s a good match for what’s seen in the film. I wish the pupils on my figure were a little better centered, but they aren’t as bad as some figures I’ve gotten. Finn’s packed with a removable helmet, a pistol, and a riot-control baton. The hat’s a good fit to the head, and isn’t overly bulky like some removable pieces, so that’s good. The pistol’s pretty basic, but a good match for the material. It’s a little hard for him to hold it, since his hands aren’t really designed for it, but it’s still a welcome addition. The best piece is definitely the baton, which, rather than being a simple re-use of the one from TFA, has been totally re-tooled, so that it now can be properly extended into attack mode. It’s a really fun piece, and I hope it sees re-use elsewhere.
THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION
As with Rey and Kylo, Finn is a figure I passed on when I first saw him (sensing a theme to this week’s reviews?), since I already had the TFA Finn and this was a non-standard variant. I ended up grabbing him at the same time as Kylo, while I was actually on my way back from seeing the film for the second time. Despite not being the standard version of the character, I really like this figure, and I think he’s an improvement on the standard Finn from TFA. I’m hopeful that Hasbro will find a way to release his standard look from TLJ somewhere down the line, though, because I’d like to have it in this quality.
