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El-Les

August 24, 2013 | By Errex More

Right at the start of the third season of the Clone Wars TV show, we got a look at the training process that each clone cadet has to go through in order to join the ranks of the Grand Army of the Republic.

One of the new characters introduced in that episode was El-Les, a male arcona bounty hunter hired to drill into the clone recruits the abilities they would need later in the war. Now, the arcona are not a new species for Star Wars collectors, since we already saw one (Hem Dazon) released back in the days of the Saga line, although the animated version has a few differences to that design.

The sculpting style is necessarily more stylized, befitting his origin as a digital model used for the show. However, back in 2006 Hasbro pretty much came up with a decidedly non-human lower leg design and this new Clone Wars arcona has pretty much standard legs.

Of course, it could be said that for arcona, having such morphological differences is normal, like they did with Ponda Baba’s species on account of the continuity error that gave that character two different types of hands.

Whatever, El-Les is a pretty cool new design. The head sculpt is quite nice and has a stern, calm expression. He also wears a padded leather jerkin that bulks up his thin frame and interestingly enough, the tiny shoulder pads are separate pieces that rotate all over with the arm, allowing for a full range of motion to the shoulders. The overall articulation is very good, consisting of:

• Ball jointed neck.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Pegged hinge elbows.

• Swivel wrists.

• Swivel waist.

• Swivel hips.

• Pegged hinge knees.

Even though the rubber skirt piece that simulates the lower edge of the jerkin is made from a reasonably pliable material and has an opening at the front, El-Les cannot really raise his legs to a sitting position, but he still has a fairly decent movement range.

The overall color scheme reminds me a bit of Embo, another bounty hunter also released in the Clone Wars line. El-Les does have a little bit of shading applied to his head, but his clothes and apparel are painted for the most part in solid blocks of color. There are also small colorful details, like the trim around the neck or the diamond pattern over his left bracer that really add up to this figures’ appearance.

El-Les comes armed with a pistol and a rifle, both molded in a very dark brown plastic with silver accents applied on the gun barrels and rifle stock. El-Les can carry the pistol on a holster molded onto the skirt piece and grab his rifle easily in two hands.

Being a 2011 release, El-Les also includes a silver plastic display base, a blue die and the corresponding statistics card for the Galactic Battle Game.

Overall, El-Les is a pretty good action figure that should appeal to anyone with a taste for bounty hunters or interesting–looking aliens.