Hasbro Star Wars - Power of the Jedi Anakin Skywalker (Mechanic) Review

When Star Wars fans of the 1977 Generation, particularly those of us who were in out "tweens" and early teens first watched it in 1983, the end of Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi was satisfying enough - the Empire's second Death Star has been destroyed, Emperor Palpatine is dead, and Darth Vader has reverted to his true Anakin Skywalker persona, albeit by having to sacrifice his life to save his son Luke from the Emperor's dark side lightning attacks.

Yet, in some ways, this ending, while logical and very moving, seemed at the time fairly abrupt unless you watched the Classic Trilogy very carefully for subtle little hints of what was in store for Darth Vader. Some, like the villain's Sith name were almost dead giveaways (Darth Vader = "dark father"), while others, such as Luke's Aunt Beru's observation to her husband Owen that "Luke's just not a farmer...he has too much of his father in him" and his reply ("That's what I'm afraid of") only made sense once the entire trilogy of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi was complete.

Perhaps this was because screenwriters George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan distilled many of the then-nonexistent Prequel Trilogy's salient themes and backstory into several dialog scenes between Yoda and Luke, Ben Kenobi and Luke, and Luke and Leia. With only these nebulous plot points, Lucas gave out just enough information to make viewers buy into the "return of Anakin Skywalker" finale but not reveal the Jedi-turned-Sith Lord's past until 1999's Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

It is a matter of record that The Phantom Menace is, in the eyes of many Star Wars fans, the weakest of the entire saga, To some, Lucas's alleged overreliance on CGI made the "galaxy far, far away" less real, others hated the admittedly childish-at-times Jar Jar Binks, while still others think the film is too long and too talky.

Much of the fans' ire, sadly, is focused on Lucas's choice to introduce Anakin Skywalker as a nine-year-old boy who was, along with his mother Shmi, a slave on the desert planet of Tatooine. Some of the criticism centered on Jake Lloyd's acting, but a lot of it stemmed from Anakin's age, his almost angelic "good li'l guy" personality, and his almost Christ-like origins - he was conceived by the Force itself, it seems, to be the Chosen One who restores balance between the dark and light sides.

While it would have been neat if Lucas had not deleted a scene in which Anakin gets into a scuffle with a very young Rodian named Greedo - the same Greedo that loses a gunfight with Han Solo in A New Hope - after the Podrace sequence, the choice to make Anakin a generous kid whose only flaw is that he is afraid to lose loved ones dovetails nicely into Return of the Jedi's theme of redemption; if Anakin's core values - generosity, compassion, and love - had been totally consumed by his flaws, the story would have had a shallow ending.

Anakin Skywalker (Mechanic): The Figure

Nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker lives on the desert planet Tatooine where he serves the junk dealer Watto. He's a natural mechanic and talented pilot who doesn't realize that he's extraordinarily strong in the Force. - From the Jedi Force File in the package 

Considering that Anakin Skywalker is the Prequels' central character, it's not surprising that Hasbro, which by 1999 had shed the name from its Kenner subsidiary from its various toy lines, would release several variants of the basic Anakin 3.75-inch scale action figure.

Most of these were, naturally, produced for the Episode I collection (1999-2002); this line, of course, focused only on The Phantom Menace and its dramatis personae, and because Anakin wears his slave's outfit - with a few articles of clothing added for the Podrace and the Naboo dogfight scenes - throughout almost the whole film, the only noticeable difference is the "weathering" of his clothes from figure to figure.

One of the reasons why I like Anakin Skywalker (Mechanic) -- other than the fact that I like the character -- is that this figure is very nicely detailed. Considering that the toy is only about two inches tall, Hasbro's Computer Assisted Design/Computer Assisted Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) tools and techniques help create more accurate replicas of the Star Wars films' characters than was possible in the late 1970s and early '80s. Anakin Skywalker (Mechanic) is a good example of Hasbro's vastly improved sculpt-and-paint jobs.

The first thing that I noticed when I was given this figure by my friend Rogers was how much Anakin Skywalker (Mechanic) resembles actor Jake Lloyd (who, in turn, was cast partly for his resemblance to Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the Classic Trilogy). With his sandy blond hair cut in a slave's simple haircut, his piercing blue eyes, and a serious-yet-kind expression, the figure's head and face are finely detailed.

Also worth mentioning is the wonderful replication of costume designer Trisha Beggar's utilitarian outfit for Anakin.

Here, Anakin wears rough work clothing: a typical Tatooine-style combination of loose long-sleeved tunic, a belt, a pair of pants, boots, and leg wraps to keep out the ever-present sands of the desert planet. He is even depicted with a necklace given to him by his mom.

In comparison to other Anakin Skywalker figures based on how he appears in The Phantom Menace, the boy's clothes are really stained. no doubt from the various oils and other substances that leak from the various broken droids and Podracers in his master Watto's small junk shop. Since I don't recall seeing Ani look so grimy when he first appears in Episode I in the "are you an angel" scene where he meets Padme, I can only guess that this is a speculative "day before" figure. (It's not the first time Hasbro issues a speculative version of a figure; in later "waves" of The Power of the Jedi collectibles, you'll find an Arctic version of Qui-Gon Jinn and a Sith training one of Darth Maul.)

Unlike the unrealistically pristine depictions of characters' clothes from the Kenner collections from the '70s and '80s, Hasbro's action figures wear costumes which more accurately resemble George Lucas's "lived in" Star Wars universe. Instead of wearing clothes that look as though as Shmi Skywalker had bought them at the Tatooine equivalent of Neiman Marcus, Anakin Skywalker sports work clothes that look weather-beaten and stained from long hours of cleaning bins and fixing broken droids and other mechanical things.

Accessories:

Perhaps in anticipation of a chorus of Why the %^&* should we shell out $7.99 for yet another figure of Anakin in his Tatooine outfit? questions from parents and collectors, Hasbro decided to include not only the prerequisite Jedi Force File booklet along with the figure, but also a "droid hydrospanner wrench" and an Ottoga 222 droid to "justify" the figure's existence.

The hydrospanner wrench is a smallish tool that looks a little like an ordinary wrench, with only a few cosmetic differences to set it apart. In its bubble pack carded package, it "floats" above Anakin's head; the boy already has his hands full holding the "separated" leg of the "broken" Ottoga 222.

The Ottoga itself probably counts as a figure in its own right; except for the separated limb, which can be reattached since the droid's "hip" has a socket into which it can be mated to, It's been given a blue-green/rust red paint job, and unlike the more anthropomorphic protocol droid C-3PO rebuilt from spare parts by Anakin, the Ottoga 222 is one of the more "alien" looking work droids seen in the films, with a thin torso and mechanical-looking limbs combination topped off by a smallish cylindrical head.

Comments:

While it is true that this figure isn't exactly "necessary" if you already have most of the Anakins from The Phantom Menace, Anakin Skywalker (Mechanic) is still a neat little rendition of the future Jedi Knight-and-Sith Lord that refers to his ability to fix all things mechanical.

To its credit, though the figure's small size precludes inclusion of a lot of articulation points, Hasbro did well when designing the Power of the Jedi version of Anakin at the height of his age of innocence. The right arm is not in a rigid positon but bent slightly at the elbow so the figure can be posed in a "fixing something" stance holding either part of the Ottoga 222 or the hydrospanner in his right hand.

Also nice is the decision to not sculpt Anakin's face to have a smile, even though the character does grin when he's happy in various scenes. Anakin, after all, is supposed to be this prematurely serious and intense kid, so to give his action figures an "expression" that's sunny and happy all the time would have been a mistake. He is, before going off with Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi to Coruscant, a slave, clearly not a position in life that lends itself to much smiling.

My Viewpoint:

While recognizing the very superfluous nature of this collectible/toy, I am still impressed by the amount of attention to detail Hasbro lavished upon Anakin Skywalker (Mechanic). Though small, you can still see that the boy's eyes have white sclera and blue pupils, the famous Luke-like haircut is nicely rendered, and the stains on his clothes, particularly those on his work tunic's left side and right sleeve, do give Anakin's outfit that rugged, lived-in, worked-in look that fits the Star Wars films' "realistic" sensibilities.

As with all the Star Wars figures of this scale, parents should be aware that Hasbro does not recommend this toy for children under the age of three; the small parts are a choking hazard, especially for "oral stage" toddlers.