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Republic Commando Boss (CW11)

September 29, 2012 | By Errex More

For me, one of the highlights from the Clone Wars Season 3 episode “Witches of the Mist” was the appearance of the clone commandos from Delta Squad. I have been a fan of both the video-game and the series of books by author Karen Traviss for several years now, and even though there had been action figures made from the group before, their showing up in the TV series gave me hope of seeing improved versions of them.

Unfortunately, the new Republic Commando Boss action figure (CW11) didn’t quite live up to those expectations. Boss is styled after the animated look used in the Cartoon Network series, which is actually fine. The overall level of detail is good, although not as extensive as it was in the realistic version of the character.

What really irks me about this figure aren’t his looks, but his articulation.

Since Hasbro decided to cut back on joints, Clone Commando Boss got almost as much articulation as the realistic version that was released in 2008 battle pack, in which all of the Commando figures used design from the 2006 Clone Commando Scorch action figure. The new 2012 Boss got stuck with:

• Ball jointed head.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Pegged hinge elbows.

• Swivel torso.

•Swivel hips.

And that’s pretty much it. I could live with the simple swivel torso and if push comes to shove, the fixed stance legs could also be tolerated, but the really annoying omission is that they left out the wrist swivels. Boss does have a slightly improved shoulder range, but that just doesn’t compensate for the missing wrists joints, which are simply a must for characters that lug around big guns like these commandos.

About the only nice thing I have to say about this figure is that the deco is actually better than on the old realistic Boss figure, with a cleaner finish and burnt orange markings painted onto his armor, mostly because on the realistic version the orange hue was almost neon bright.

Boss comes armed with an animated style DC-15 carbine and a pair of pistols. Included also are a large backpack that opens to house both pistols, a small length of cord tied to something that looks like a flanged mace.

The backpack attaches to a peg hole on Boss’ back, but also has a clip that goes around his waist for a firmer grip. This backpack also features a spool for the cord to wrap around and both the grapple thingy and the pistols can be fitted inside securely.

The gimmick about the backpack is that it also has sort of a hook on the upper edge from which the figure could to zip along the line, if the included cord had a useful length to begin with.

Also included in this package are a display base made of tin colored plastic, the corresponding Galactic Battle Game card and a game die molded in black plastic covered with golden recessed symbols.

It is hard for me to rate this figure. Even though I like the overall appearance, I found the limited articulation to be especially annoying because it ended up being even less useful than the 2006 design, and that was barely tolerable at the time.

In the end, I guess Republic Commando Boss would probably withstand fairly well the rigors of regular children play patterns and that should probably count for something, but it is also the first Star Wars figure I buy in a long time that I feel I could do without.