Darth Maul

Disney’s Elite Series is an odd toy line. Designed with the collector in mind, and available exclusively through the Disney Store, the Elite Series features some of Star Wars most iconic characters, done in diecast metal.

Why? I have no idea. I’m not sure what void this fills.

On one hand, we’ve already got the Black Series, a rather nice, and affordable, collector line from Hasbro. Disney has decided to make a very similar product with less articulation, and made out of metal, for more money. On the other hand, who does not like diecast metal? The Elite Series ships and vehicles appear to be awesome, so why not figures?

Normally I would say adding metal to anything is a good idea, but sadly, this is not the case here. The use of metal here is out of place, and makes no sense in the context of the figure. Making a figure of a droid or robot? Use all the diecast you can cram into it. But humanoid figures? Diecast is weird.

Darth Maul comes in a fancy box, with plenty of visibility for the figure – they want to make the collectors happy who don’t open the figures.

The figure is heavy, i’ll give it that. The joints are solid, and it feels good in the hand. The figure looks good from the front, but on the back you get giant ugly screw holes.

Articulation is good, but not as good as the black series. No torso bend, no double jointed legs. The figure is a bit stiff in terms of posing. When you do push a joint to its limits, you chip the paint.

The head sculpt is rather nice.

Darth Maul comes with his signature double bladed lightsaber. The blades can be connected, but no way can you get both hands to hold the double blade at once.

I also had some crappy paint on my saber. Why were these not translucent? They are lightsabers, not broomsticks.

A stand is included.

In a sense, these are fake high-end items. What I mean by this is that on the surface these target the collector, but honestly, true collectors have better options and know better. These are targeted to the Disney Store and Theme Park customer, the type who gets caught up in “limited edition” lithographs, the type who pre-orders DVD’s that are being released from the “Disney Vault”.

I bet the reason why there are giant screw holes in the back is because Disney assumes 90% of the people who buy these will never take them out of the package, and therefore, never see the back.

When I went into the store to buy one, I was actually looking for Phasma. The lady who worked there then proceeded to hand me a pamphlet which lists all the dates all the releases come out on. Then she said I would need to get on a list, and THEN be in-line at the store when they open to get one. That crap may work with other Disney stuff, but I just don’t have the patience to jump through those hoops for a mediocre product. Oddly enough, Darth Maul was that week’s release, and I just walked right in and bought it randomly.

Adding diecast to these figures was probably the only way they could produce these figures, as they may fall into a different licensing category. Doing them in plastic would conflict too much with the Black Series I think.

Unless they do some droids in the line, these are not worth the effort to track down. Save your money for the Black Series instead.