Star Wars Vintage: General Grievous

Star Wars Vintage: General Grievous is, like previously stated, the current best Star Wars figure to ever be released. It's sculpt and articulation is amazing. It also comes with the amazing cloth cape. Finally, I can use something other than the Jedi/Sith robes on other figures. He comes with a blaster, two unlit light sabers, and two lit sabers.

First, lets compare it to my first Grievous. It's a little taller and the paint job is much more better looking. My old Grievous has a gimmick action when you press down on its head, his arms would swing. It also has holes in the bottom of his feet for use with a figure stand. Good because it only looks good standing up.

Let's get on with the review. Starting up top, the head is limited in movement to side to side motions. The travel for up and down is like one centimeter, probably a little less. Ever since Iron Man: Extremis, I just wish Hasbro would use that neck joint for most (if not all) of their figures.

Coming down to the body, the shoulders are ball-jointed. The arms are halved and can be moved independently from the shoulder. There is a shoulder-guard piece on the joint that restricts it from moving back all the way. A minor inconvenience in terms of live looking poses. At the double elbows are two smaller ball-joints with full 360 swivel movement on the pegs connected to the ball. There is one final peg swivel joint at the wrist. This little bit can slip off easily when posing. I wish this bit also had a hand swivel. The hands hold the light sabers and blaster okay. The hands need to be bent closed sometimes to get the proper grip strength. The waist has a ball-joint with adequate movement.

Moving to the legs, the hips are peg swivels. Typical Star Wars. The knee is ball-joiiii....wait...is that....double-jointed knees?! What sorcery is this?! Double-jointed knees on a Star Wars figure?! Wow...

And finally, the feet are ball-jointed, but lack holes for a figure stand. The leg above the knee is molded in soft plastic. This kind of helps with the lack a hip ball-joints to make poses look better. The legs can be softly bent to look good, but this figure has no balance. I was tempted to break out the Play Arts Kai stand, but I managed to find balance for all but one of the poses pictured.

Last thing to cover, the cape. God this cape is awesome. It's not made from a dress cloth thankfully. The pattern on the cape is nice, but on the inside is the most awesome detail. They have sewn four little pockets on each side of the cape to hold unlit light sabers. To complete the epic package, the cape is removable! It's not stuck to the figure in any way so I can use this on any other figure in the same scale!!!!

It's not the perfect Star Wars figure, but it's by far the closest one.

Pros:

Cape

Arm articulation

Knee and feet articulation

Can be posed in many different ways and look good

Cons:

Head movement

No hip ball-joints

Has bad balance and can't use a regular stand

No wrist joints

Here it passes the Orton pose test and simultaneously fails the Masataka pose test. (Fails because wrist can't be positioned right.)

This is my new testing pose, the CM Punk pose. Grievous fails. (Because of the wrists and head.) Revoltech Revy shows what a pass looks like.