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Review |
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| Sculpt: |
| General Grievous, the cyborg leader of the Separatist forces, leads an attack on the Republic capitol world of Coruscant and kidnaps Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, in REVENGE OF THE SITH. The character was introduced in the animated series STAR WARS: CLONE WARS as a cold-blooded Jedi hunter, but became somewhat more cowardly and calculating for his film debut. While much hype surrounded Grievous, who at one time was to be voiced by Gary Oldman but was ultimately voiced by Lucasfilm supervising sound editor Matthew Wood, he ended up being a rather ineffective screen villain. He was played up much more menacing in the CLONE WARS cartoons, comic books, and novels. This sculpt is recycled from the ROTS Sneak Preview Grievous, which ended up being the best version of all the 3 3/4-inch versions of him. The head is pretty spot-on, while some of the detailing in the limbs and torso are just a bit off. Sadly, the figure was terribly undersized ... usually depicted in a hunched over position, the fully upright character was just a tad over seven feet tall (2.16 meters)! Other than that rather unfortunate fact, the figure is pretty decent. The removable cape is nice, it plugs into two holes in the figure's chest, and has a fair amount of textural detailing to it. Hasbro could have tweaked this sculpt just a bit, but since they didn't, he gets 8 out of 10. |
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| Paint: |
| This Grievous has been given a far more film-accurate paint job. It is molded in an off-white plastic, with gun-metal gray and silver paint apps to his body. His eyes are yellow, with a maroon "skin" around them. There is a black line above each eye socket to represent carved lines in his face mask. His protective organ sack in his torso is a metallic green. His cape is a medium gray, with a deep maroon lining and a light gray symbol on the back. 9/10.This Grievous has been given a far more film-accurate paint job. It is molded in an off-white plastic, with gun-metal gray and silver paint apps to his body. His eyes are yellow, with a maroon "skin" around them. There is a black line above each eye socket to represent carved lines in his face mask. His protective organ sack in his torso is a metallic green. His cape is a medium gray, with a deep maroon lining and a light gray symbol on the back. 9/10. |
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| Articulation: |
| Grievous has ball-joints at the neck, both shoulders, and both knees. There are standard planer-cut joints at the chest, elbows and hips. Overall, there's a fairly good level of poseability to the figure, although its cape does limit shoulder movement; removing the cape allows pretty decent "battle" poses: 8.5/10. |
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| Accessories: |
| Character-specific figure stand, a one-piece lightsaber, an electrostaff, and a blaster. Although the "Sneak Preview" wave was supposed to come with the standard gunmetal gray interlocking base/figure stands in use since the Saga '04 line, they aren't included. Grievous was initially supposed to come with two lightsabers, but the blaster appears to have been swapped out at the last minute: 8.5/10. |
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| Packaging: |
| The same The Saga Collection card as the rest of the series, with a character-specific background image--in this case, the bridge of Grievous flagship, the INVISIBLE HAND. The insert image is promotional art, and has The Saga Collection logo to the right of the character image. The figure's name is just below TSC logo, with its collection number (General Grievous is Saga #030) just to the right. Just to the figure's left is the new series of five arrows, indicating the placement of the hologram figure. The cardback features a film image of Grievous wielding an electrostaff, and has text that explains the character, along with the diecut display area for the Exclusive Hologram Figure: 8.5/10. |
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| Availability: |
| As of this writing, the figure has been at retail for over two months; it's also available at many online retailers. Originally rather scarce, recent case revisions had made him more easily available: 8/10. (The ultra-rare Ultimate Galactic Hunt packaging variant gets a 1/10, but won't factor into this review.) |
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| Conclusion: |
| Grievous was the second most-hyped character in ROTS, just after Darth Vader himself. The original Sneak Preview figure was decent, but this film-accurate paint job is a welcome addition. Hopefully, a correctly scaled, super articulated version will be released sometime in the future. Until then, this Grievous stands in with a respectable 8.4/10. |
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