Darth Malgus

October 13, 2012 | By More


 

Straight from the Star Wars: The Old Republic videogame, by developer BioWare, comes Darth Malgus, the 96th figure in Hasbro’s Star Wars Vintage Collection. Malgus jumped to the spotlight after the screening of a promotional video for the game, where he is seen walking up to the entrance of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant just prior to an all-out assault carried out by Sith forces.

 

The title of that particular first video is Deceived, but later on BioWare released a couple more, titled Hope and Return respectively, each depicting Malgus’ at some stage of his ascent in the higher echelons of the Sith Empire. All of these events are set several hundred years prior to the events depicted in the Star Wars prequels.

 

The videos feature action that would rival (or even surpass) the choreographed fights seen in any of the Star Wars feature films. Malgus was so well received that Hasbro promptly included him in the production schedule for the 2012 collection.

 

Darth Malgus’ character design owes a lot to the Sith Lords we have already seen, both in toys and other media. The bigger influence is Darth Vader, of course, but there are also bits of Darth Malak and Grand Moff Thracta thrown in.

 

The end result is unique enough to stand as an original design and at the same time, pass off as something that would inspire the latter day designs, even though this is the exact opposite situation.

 

Malgus is bigger than Vader and even though both armor designs are quite similar, Malgus’ doesn’t have as much life-support functionality built in, apart from a respirator mask. The level of sculpted detail is quite nice in general, but the head sculpt is the really uoutstanding part, with the deep-set eyes and saggy, decayed skin.

 

In role-playing game terms, Malgus is what one would call a Tank-type character, which I think is reflected by the articulation design Hasbro gave him, consisting of:

 

• Ball jointed neck.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Swivel wrists.

• Swivel waist.

• Swivel hips.

• Pegged hinge knees.

• Pegged hinge ankles.

 

The sculpted armor pieces restrict a little bit some of the joints but as a whole, the range of movement is good enough.

 

The paintjob on Malgus is neat and clean, although at first the solid gray areas beneath his eyes seemed a tad excessive to me. After a while, I realized they serve to highlight the glowing red eyes and balance out the brightness of the silver respirator.

 

Malgus wears a fabric cape that can be removed by taking out the chest armor and he also wears an outer cloak that has a wire sewn into the base of the hood. Both fabric pieces are rather thin and let the light shine through them if worn individually, but paired together they work just fine.

 

However, the outer cloak is rather finicky to pose right because the seam that contains the wire ends up being rather bulky, and the fabric just doesn’t quite drape right at this scale, which can be very frustrating at times.

 

As far as weapons go, Darth Malgus comes armed with a red bladed lightsaber and also includes a deactivated hilt to hang from a hole in his belt. I like this lightsaber hilt because it looks like even deactivated, it can be used as a hatchet.

 

Even though the cloak issues may prevent him from earning a Figure of the Year nomination, Darth Malgus is, without a shadow of doubt, one of the best action figures produced by Hasbro this year, in my opinion.

 

Errex Score: 96/100.

 

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Category: Featured, Other Games, Star Wars, Toy Reviews, Video Games

About the Author ()

I've been collecting action figures since the original Kenner Star Wars days. Nowadays, I still collect pretty much anything that catches my eye.

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