Toy Review: 2010 CW42 Cad Bane (with TODO 360)

04/29/11

Cad Bane and TODO 360

 

Great.

I knew I should never have bought that Snow Bunny Padme action figure. I knew it would lead me down this path. Envy leads to want, want leads to temptation, temptation leads to me blowing a whole month’s toy budget on a completely new line that has nothing to do with anything else in my existing collection.

Now that I’ve started with Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I can’t stop:

 

Those are the figures I got from the last Toy Kingdom toy launch. Before that haul though, there were several smaller purchases that included a Mace Windu, a Cato Parasitti, and a Cad Bane.

Cad Bane has been a figure that I’ve been wanting to get for the longest time. The first version of the figure looked ok to me, but looked like it had no knee joints. Coupled with the line’s simple swivel hips, it was a deal breaker. I kept looking at that figure everytime I was at Toy Kingdom, but promptly put it back. An action figure without working joints is boring.

Then I heard that there was another version coming, this time in a vehicle bonus pack that had Bane’s speeder. I was excited by the news, but then crashed when I saw it in person. The head sculpt looked odd to me, and he’d lost his jacket’s coattails. Coattails are cool. Almost as much as bow ties and fezzes.

Again, deal breaker.

Then more news. A 4th version (the 3rd one came in a Target Exclusive 2-Pack with an IG-86 Assassin Droid) coming at the end of 2011, this time, with a better head, knees, and coattails. Prayers answered, thank you Hasbro the benevolent.

And to make it even better, he came with a pet!

 

If you’ve been following the Star Wars figure line, then you know they’ve changed their packaging a couple of times since it first came out. Instead of the white, rounded bubble pack that came with Padme, the newest card is blue, square, and features heavily the Galactic Battle Card Game.

They are a lot easier to stack than the old ones, and that means a lot less space taken up, so a plus in my book.

The back reads like this:

“Cad Bane and TODO 360 sneak inside the Jedi Temple. Bane has a well-deserved reputation as a ruthless bounty hunter. He is hired by Darth Sidious to steal a Jedi holocron. He and his techno-service droid gain access to the building and break into the well-guarded holocron library.”

That story arc from the first season of The Clone Wars was one of my favorite, so it’s easy to understad why I bought Bane first.

 

Another reason he was first on my pull list when I started the line was the fact that he’s got such great accessories. The first version had the hat, two pistols and a rifle. That’s some great gear!

This one’s got even more. In exchange for the rifle, 2011 CW No. 42 has his sidekick in “Holocron Heist”, TODO 360, plus a satchel (this time removable). A more than fair trade if you ask me.

Especially since TODO is so damned adorable.

 

How can you not “AWWWW…” at that face?

TODO’s not much of an action figure himself. He’s got one point of articulation; a ball and socket joint at the neck. The rest of him is basically just a tiny little statue, but that’s all right. I do wish he came with a stand though, since he’s supposed to float around on his anti-grav feet.

The sculpt on Cad Bane is just as nice. I passed on the 2nd version because it looked a little too cartoonish for my taste. This one has the same sort of scowl, but ends up looking a little more realistic, and with much better proportions (the 2nd figure looked too broad shouldered).

From what I can tell, the lower half of Bane, his forearms, and his hat are re-purposed from the 2nd figure (the one with the Pirate Speeder). The rest of him looks new to me.

 

The Hasbro Star Wars line really likes to use real cloth where ever it can. For Bane, they made his coat tails out of a very thin leatherette. Sadly, it doesn’t work as well as they probably hoped. One, it’s too thin, so it doesn’t hang right at all. Two, it’s not cut right, so it doesn’t wrap around his waist as far as it should. There’s also no space between the two flaps, since Hasbro just used one narrow strip of fabric and snipped a line down the middle of it, not taking away any material.

Boo.

They should have at least cut away a thin isosceles triangle to seperate the coattails.

 

That’s the biggest gripe I have about this figure, but I’ll list others you might want to consider before you buy.

• He doesn’t hold his pistols very well, his hands not having been molded small enough to grip them perfectly.
• His articulation, while better than the first release, still leaves something to be desired. He’s got no ankle articulation at all.
• His small footprint, light weight and lack of ankle articulation make him very unstable. He’s the first to fall off my shelf when I re-pose my small Clone Wars collection.

But really, all that pales when the figure itself is seen. He’s a FUN toy of a very cool character, AND he comes with the most adorable droid to ever come out of the Star Wars continuity.

How can you not love it?