Aayla Secura
Aayla Secura is one of the few characters in the prequels that had always come out looking gorgeous in action figure form. The Saga version was quite nice, even though it was more like a mini-statue with moving parts than a toy. The 2005 version is still today quite good and was even re-released in translucent hologram form in the final waves for the Revenge of the Sith line.
Afterwards, we got a beautiful, superbly articulated version done in the animated style for the Clone Wars line but Hasbro went back to the design board and finally came up with the definitive version for the character in the Star Wars Vintage Collection.
This version of Aayla Secura (VC58) had a rather troublesome distribution history, being scheduled in a wave that got pushed back, saw limited release and was eventually phased out of the case revisions but, luckily, Hasbro seemingly had some left over stock on their overseas warehouses and that got distributed at the beginning of 2013 in what they called an “All Star Assortment” to compensate for the cancellation of the Build-a Droid line derived from Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm.
While Aayla’s head sculpt is an excellent portrait of gorgeous Amy Allen, at first I was a bit thrown off by her body proportions. You’ll see, after a year or so of seeing Clone Wars Aayla on my desk, the more realistic physique of TVC Aayla seemed rather thin at first, but it was fairly easy to adjust to it.
Her costume does not allow for a lot of sculpted detail, but all of the garment pieces seem to have some sort of texture added to them and her belt piece displays a nice amount of fairly minute ornamentation.
Aayla has the following articulation points:
• Ball jointed neck.
• Pegged hinge shoulders.
• Pegged hinge elbows.
• Swivel wrists.
• Floating torso.
• Swivel waist.
• Pegged hinge hips.
• Pegged hinge knees.
• Pegged hinge ankles.
The swivel at the waist will not see much use, since the overall appearance is better when belly and hips are aligned, but it does allow subtle posing. The obvious improvement over the Clone Wars version is the inclusion of lateral movement to the hip design, although the rest of the joints remain the same.
The paint job on Aayla’s costume is rather simple, being mostly brown with glossy paint applications on the leather pieces in her outfit. The exposed skin areas are left in the color of the plastic they were cast from, and only the head-tails display a few spots in a light gray hue. The paint application on her face is easily my favorite part, from the neatly painted eyes and elegantly arched eyebrows to the brightly painted lips.
Aayla comes with very few accessories: a brown fabric robe, a lightsaber hilt with a peg to attach it to her belt and a fully ignited lightsaber with a blue blade. The robe is a bit large for the figure, but not to the point of being unmanageable.
Overall, TVC Aayla Secura is one of the most satisfying action figures I have added to my collection this year.
Errex Score: 98/100
Category: Featured, Star Wars, Toy Reviews