Dark Trooper

Review by JoshB

I preordered the Dark Trooper from Hasbro Pulse as soon as it was announced, and I think I waited almost a year for it to arrive. While waiting, it arrived in retail stores, so what's the point of pre-ordering? This was already a "deluxe" Black Series figure at $35, and then tack on shipping from Hasbro, this thing ran me about $43 USD. That's too much.

I was so excited for this Dark Trooper design, and I have to say I am kind of let down by it.

The figure comes with a gun, two exra hands, and two effect parts.

I'm exhausted just looking at the box. So little useful information on it. Just garbage. I'm so over it.

Let me preface that for a maybe $20 figure I could grab off the shelf this would have been fine. Jazwares is doing it all day long with Fortnite, but Hasbro can't seem to get the prices right for something like this. I would be far less critical if it was cheaper.

The gloss black sheen is nicely done all over the figure, with tight minimal paint apps. It looks good.

The whole top chest armor is a floating piece, and the shoulder pads are attached to it. It sits loosely on the body and does not feel like part of a robot.

None of the pistons work, they are just for show. There is an ab ball joint under the armor.

Being glossy, it is a dust magnet.

The shoulders have that shoulder crunch to move forward and back, but that motion is limited by the armor. After that you have a peg-ball joint, bicep swivel, elbow joint, forearm swivel, wrist swivel and rotation. That's not too bad.

There's no waist joint as it relies on the chest ball joint. There's a belt with pouches that bugs me because it feels not centered and I can't adjust it. That's probably a character design issue rather than a toy issue.

You can see that the armor at the top of the legs limits motion, as well as the ball shaped upper thigh above. The Empire learned nothing from the battle droids.

With a droid, there should be no excuse to limit movement. Look at the IG series droids - they can move in every which way. Here it's just the design mantra of the Empire. First of all, make it look cool, after that, who cares if it works.

I mean look at this range of motion. I don't blame Hasbro here. No double elbows, no double knees. If this droid drops something, it's all over.

The variant hands pop on and off easily.

This brings me to another nitpick about this droid's design. This is a droid for WAR, right? Why not build the weapons INTO THE DROID? The Super Battle Droid was an example of this done right. It makes no sense for any kind of war droid to have to HOLD a weapon. To add insult to injury, there's no place on this droid to store the gun, so he's got to hold it the whole time. Bad design, Empire.

But hey, it LOOKS COOL.

The effect parts plug into the feet to simulate flying - but no flying stand is included, and there is no hole in the figure to use it with common stand systems.

At least it looks cool.