BIKER SCOUT & SPEEDER BIKE
STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES
We interrupt the regularly scheduled “Birthday Stuff” reviews for a quick little venture into a galaxy far, far away. You might notice that there are two reviews today. Yeah, they’re both by me, I just screwed up the scheduling. See, I originally intended to publish the Green Ranger review today, just like I did, but I decided I wanted to take a break from the birthday things to review something I was very excited about. Sadly, the day got away from me, so I didn’t get a chance to stop the Green Ranger from auto posting. My bad! Anyway, that means there will be two reviews today, just cuz.
The subject of this review comes from Hasbro’s Star Wars: The Black Series, their very popular 6-inch scaled line of Star Wars figures. So far, they’ve put out three series of figures with another three planned. In addition to that, they’ve also started offering a line of Deluxe figures and vehicles, starting with Jabba the Hutt and today’s focus, the Biker Scout and Speeder bike!
THE FIGURE ITSELF
The Biker Scout stands about 6 inches tall and features 31 points of articulation. He’s based on the basic scout design from the final battle on the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi. The Biker Scout features an all new sculpt. No re-use from any of the previous figures, and not even any upscaling of pieces from the 3 ¾ inch Biker Scouts. The sculpt is probably the most accurate take on the design over the years. All of the proportions look just right, especially on the helmet, which is a really key area of the design. Do be mindful if you pick one up in person: the helmet is made of softer plastic and it gets pressed up against the packaging in such a way that might warp it a bit. The arms might be just a tad too long, mostly due to the elbow joints, and the hands might be slightly too small, but it doesn’t look too bad with the right pose. The uniform features some pretty great texture work to differentiate the armor from the cloth parts of the costume, which gives the figure a nice bit of dimension. The paint work on the Biker Scout is pretty good, by Hasbro standards at least. The basic paint work is pretty clean, though the visor is a bit fuzzy on the edges. He has a wash over a few of the white areas. It brings out some of the details well, but it might be better if it were just a little bit more subtle. The Scout includes a blaster pistol, which is nice, but mine broke putting it in his hand, so be careful.
THE VEHICLE ITSELF
The Speeder Bike is effectively the title half of this set, even if the Biker Scout may have gotten more of the tooling put towards him. The bike is about 10 inches long, and about 2 inches tall at its tallest, with articulated back flaps and a rotating gun on the underside. The sculpt is really quite intricate, with lots of really cool details hidden in the various nooks of the sculpt. It looks to be really accurate to the movie, which is cool, and I’m glad to see a speeder bike that is mucked up by an exploding feature. The paint work is pretty good overall, but it is a bit varied. The metal under-workings have some really nice dry-brushed silver details, which is pretty cool, but the silver details on the main body are a bit more solid, which makes them look a bit too placed. Otherwise, the paint is nice, with no slop or bleed over. The Speeder Bike includes a clear(ish) stand that plugs in via ball joint, allowing the bike to be posed in mid-flight.
THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION
I found this set at my local Target yesterday. I actually found it completely by accident, since I wasn’t expecting it to be released just yet. I was there looking for a couple of other things, and came across this bad boy, which was very exciting! The Biker Scout is my favorite Trooper design from Star Wars, so I’ve been patiently awaiting his release since the beginning of the Black Series. I am thrilled to finally have this set, and it’s hands down my favorite item from the line!
The Figure In Question 