I guess somebody must have told Hasbro about his little maneuver at the battle of Tanaab, because General Calrissian has hit the Black Series. With General Calrissian we are fast approaching the end of Lando variants in the Black Series line, and sadly not one of those figures featured his winning smile, but they do have a lot of other things to recommend, so let’s take a look at General Lando!
I really like the portrait of Lando on the side of the box as I feel like it captures Lando’s self-assured confidence perfectly with that slight grin, but it makes me wish the portrait on the figure had a bit more of that feel to it.
Lando comes with a blaster that fits in his removeable shoulder holster. It’s a tiny little pistol that barely has a Star Wars look to it, but there is a decent amount of detail in the sculpting and it appears accurate. I honestly do not remember the look of this gun from the movie, and would have preferred his X-8 Nightsniper from Battlefront II. I have a 3D print already, but a more durable plastic version would have been cool, but I could also see why they would go with the official movie version over that weapon. I would also have liked an alternate left hand so Lando could salute Han while wishing him good luck. Sometimes two grip hands can be a little dull for figures that aren’t holding lots of weapons or rifles.
The sculpting on the figure is good, but overall feels a little softer to me than most recent black series figures. I think it may be that most of the sculpted cloth has little texture, most is cast in plain plastic and the cape really dominates the figure. The feet are also on the smaller side, which gives his ankles an overly thick appearance. The hip joints and mid-torso stand out on this figure more than I’m used to seeing in this line too. The cape and holster are both easily removeable for a pilot Lando look from the Endor battle.
The cape looked ridiculously awful to me in the promo pics, so I was more pleased with the final product in hand as it seems to lay down better and the way it was packaged created some more natural looking folds in it. Unfortunately it doesn’t really rest around the neck like his cape does in the movie and it almost completely blocks the collar of his outfit from view. I’ll be on the look out for a 3rd party take on this, but the final product is far better than the promo photos and replacing it doesn’t seem like the emergency I thought it might be.
The likeness is clearly Lando, but feels slightly off in a way I can’t quite put my finger on, but I do like the way they sculpted the hair. The details of the face feel a bit more simplified than earlier black series Lando figures, and almost overly smooth.
The articulation is a little clunky with some really tough detents in the elbows and knees. The neck is super disappointing when compared to most of the recent wonderfully articulated necks from Hasbro because this figure basically has a ball joint at the head and it’s fairly loose and wobbly. It gets decent tilt, but up/down is minimal because of the hair sculpting and it really could have used that extra articulation at the collar. The mid-torso cut is also the ugliest, least well-integrated POA I’ve seen from Hasbro in a while and the hips look a little wonky too. I hate to keep harping on this, but the knees are awful. They look okay when not in use, but when bent 90 degrees it makes his thighs look really long compared to his calves and the knee just floats out there. The lower leg needs to be counter-sunk into the thigh better.
Paint is okay with some nice detail hits on his rank badge and communicator and the face print is clean and solid if slightly glossy. I think his over-shirt /vest could stand to be a bit darker brown in order to help differentiate between that and the lighter tan sleeves and collar a bit more. Billy Dee’s hair in these movies is not pitch black, it’s brown and I think the super dark hair on the figure just adds to the somewhat simplified feel.
Admittedly I ragged on some of the details of this figure quite a bit, but he does look pretty nice standing on the shelf, it’s just not as fun of a figure due to the clunkiness of some of the articulation. It’s not a bad figure, but he’s not the home run I wish he was in terms of likeness either. There was a stretch there with this line where they were blowing me away with the likeness and face printing on releases like Beckett, Val, and Dryden Vos and lately I’ve been less impressed. He also does really make me want a Lobot, Nien Nunb, or Shriv sooner rather than later. Lando can hang out with Jaxxon, but he’d really prefer not to.
Source: The Fwoosh
