Toy Review: ‘Star Wars’ Black Series Has A Mixed Showing With Episode III Obi-Wan Kenobi

After taking a look at an array of other major collector action figure lines, we decided to jump into one of the biggest ones we have yet to have looked at. Star Wars Black Series from Hasbro is one of the juggernauts of toys. Hell, Star Wars itself is a toy juggernaut, dominating pretty much all play spaces.

So kick off our look at some of the most recent Black Series releases, we’re looking at one of the greatest heroes of the franchise — Obi-Wan Kenobi, based on his design in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is arguably one of the greatest heroes of the Star Wars universe. Starting the saga as an already aged and worn down Jedi Master (originally played by Alec Guinness), the prequel trilogy showed him growing from an apprentice Padawan leader to a skilled leader, general, and Jedi Master. Ewan McGregor played the hero through the trilogy, as well as a later limited series, with James Arnold Taylor portraying the character in the Clone Wars animated series.

Now this figure itself at first glance is fantastic. But as I unboxed it and had it in hand, I found a pretty big flaw that’s going to be a common threat through the line-up of figures I’m planning to review this week.

On the plus side, this figure is McGregor’s take on the character in Revenge of the Sith cast in plastic. The figure looks exactly like Kenobi’s design in the movie. It would fit in whether you simply want a shelf piece, or if you wanted to recreate one of the film’s classic scenes… save one. Which I’ll get to in a minute.

As far as movement and posability, it’s mostly very good. The figure was incredibly posable right out of the box, and any flaws it had in that respect was dispelled with a quick hot water bath. The biggest problem is that Kenobi’s Jedi robes — though very flexible and pliable — don’t allow the figure to raise his arms above his head. Obviously, that does create some limits for poses, but otherwise, it was good to great.

Where this figure falls short is in the accessories. The figure simply comes with a lightsaber. No alternate head, hands, or weapons (which in Kenobi’s case could have included the blaster he used to stop General Grievous or the magna-guard’s staff he used for part of the fight with the general). It’s just Obi-Wan with a fairly neutral look on his face. An angry face and a couple alternate hands (maybe a fist and some sort of force push hand) would have gone a long way.

Overall, this is a great figure. I had a lot of fun with it in-hand and look forward to having more of the latest figures in the line in-hand.