Hermi Odle

Appearance:

Hermi always reminded me a bit of a Muppet, something like Sweetums. His robes defining his shape more than anything else. That said, the soft goods on this figure may be some of my favorite ever.

There are a couple of reasons. One, there’s more than one piece, the brown cape piece covering his back and his green scarf-wrap thing. So not only two pieces, but two colors as well. Great job on this one!

The second thing about the soft goods is the weathering. These aren’t straight from the bolt of cloth cut pieces. The edges are tattered, they are wrinkled and appear very worn. I was really impressed with the little cut at the top of the ridge of his back. It’s a logical place to see it and just really adds to the look.

Poking out from the soft goods are a couple of great arms and feet. The big left hand is stretched out and looks cool. The colors on the wrist pieces match the soft goods well enough. The long feet remind me of a a first grader pulling snow boots off with wet socks.

I have to say the tongue and ears are my favorite parts of this figure. The ears are so small they almost look cute. The tongue is sculpted half out of the mouth, as most of the reference photos show Hermi. Mr. Odle’s head has that droopy eyed sad look that he should.

Time for a bit of a nit. I really wish Hasbro would develop a paint scheme or method to convey slime or goo or wetness. Hermi’s tongue is a great example where this is needed. They way it’s painted looks flat and painted on, it should glisten slightly. For that matter I think his whole body looks a bit flat.

Fun:

Figures like this are always fun to open because you never know what’s waiting underneath for you. In this case there are some pretty cool details. He actually reminds me quite a bit of “El Gigante” from Resident Evil 4. I was surprised to find him more of a muscle type character under there. I figured on a big lump with little detail.

Due to his size, I was really expecting minimal articulation with this guy. Again another surprise. Articulated ankles? These let me adjust his center of gravity a bit to get him to stand better. However, the ball jointed shoulders were clearly a plus. with his shoulders and cut wrists, he has way more posability than I expected for a background character. You know, If they made a Rancor with this same articulation, it would rock.

Of course you can’t talk about articulation without mentioning his mouth. Yes, Mr. Odle has a moving mouth. They even went the extra mile and added some paint ops to the roof of his mouth.

Of course, Hermi comes with the required coin for this year. This one has Jabba’s tattoo logo on the back. He also comes with one of those long vibro axe thingees that are popular among
Jabba’s thugs.

Overall:

This has been an up and down year for me as far as SW figs go. There have a been a couple of standouts CZ-4, and a lot of figures that came close but didn’t quite get it right. However, Hermi Odle turns up on the positive side of the scale. Like CZ-4, it seems like Hasbro wanted to do right by all the fans that had long wanted him and not just put a big lump of plastic in a blister with Hermi’s name on it.

Well done, and well executed, Hasbro.

Now, how did I make it through all that withoutan Oodles of Noodles joke?

Engineernerd Score: 90/100

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