Monday, May 20, 2013

Outside The Lame Cloth Cloak, The Vintage Collection Darth Malgus Lives Up!


The Good: Good coloring detail, Good accessories, Wonderful articulation, Great balance and poseability
The Bad: Cloth elements are entirely incongruent and the outer cloak is just plain sloppy.
The Basics: The Darth Malgus is a decent Sith to beef up one’s collection, but it is hardly the perfect grail figure fans might have wanted.


A few weeks back, I was legitimately, pleasantly surprised when I walked into a store and found, of all things, a Darth Malgus action figure just sitting on the shelves! While the figure peaked in price around $50 last year around the winter holidays, it was recently re-released in wide release (why don’t they do that with Ponda Baba and Bastila Shan?!) and its price has been dropping pretty steadily and can occasionally be found out in stores now.

For those unfamiliar with the Darth Malgus, this is one of the most significant Sith Lords from the Old Republic. An obvious precursor to Darth Vader, Darth Malgus has an armored, robotic-looking body and a pale, shriveled head (like Vader without the helmet).

The 4" Darth Malgus is one of the Vintage Collection Expanded Universe debut figures!

Basics


The Darth Malgus figure stands 4 1/8" tall to the top of his bald, gray head. He is a Sith who is especially armored and looks vicious and easily defended. This figure is made of hard plastic, save an incredibly lame cloth cloak – which does not fit and does not actually attach to the figure! – and a ridiculously thin black cloth cape that comes out of the back shoulders of the figure.

This toy is a pretty wonderful sculpt, which is easy enough to do because the Darth Malgus was an entirely digitally created character. As a result, the heavy Sith armor is modified slightly from what one is used to for Darth Vader and the tiny head is distinctive with its breathing apparatus and forehead ridges. This sculpt includes a lot of detailing, like additional elbow and back of hand guards. The forearms of Darth Malgus are detailed with additional controls and the fingers, while gloved, look like they would be perfectly articulated!

Darth Malgus is colored with the standard black and steel coloring of Sith armor. There are highlights for tiny lights and controls all over the figure and some of the pads are glossy and other portions are matte finish, which makes the armor stand out over what would probably be cloth on the actual character (had it existed). There is little other coloring detail on the main figure. However, the Darth Malgus's head looks pretty much like it is supposed to, with surprising depth and shading on the grays for the character’s skintones!

Accessories

The Darth Malgus is a Sith and comes heavily armed with only two versions of his distinctive, lethal-looking lightsaber. The hilt only portion is a 1 1/6” long steel-gray cylinder with the forked end where the lightsaber blade would otherwise be. The hilt has a tiny peg which fits into a tiny hole on Darth Malgus’s belt and it looks exceptional there!

The lightsaber itself is 2 7/8” long and is the same hilt with a translucent red blade in it. It fits perfectly in either of Darth Malgus’s hands and looks great and dangerous in his grasp. The coloring of both lightsabers matches the complexity of the figure’s colorscheme, which sells the accessories wonderfully.

Playability

The four inch toy line was designed for play and Darth Malgus is very impressive for that. First, the figure has great balance. Flatfooted, the Darth Malgus figure is pretty solid, and because of the lower half articulation of the figure, he has incredible posing options, on par with the latest and best Star Wars figure I've reviewed. As well, the holes in the bottom of his feet allow him to stand tall on any number of playsets in outlandish poses or attach to pegs on vehicles.

Darth Malgus holds up even better in the articulation department! He has hinged ball and socket joints at the ankles, knees, elbows, and shoulders which allows him to have an impressive range of motion for those joints. He also has simple swivel joints at the head, wrists, waist, and groin socket. This is one of the most poseable Sith figures ever made!

Collectibility

Darth Malgus is part of the Vintage Collection line that was released in 2012 and it is one of the harder ones to find, despite making a resurgence in the primary market at the moment. Darth Malgus is Vintage Collection figure VC96 and because Siths there are so few Sith characters, it has been an exceptionally fast-selling figure. That said, this figure has probably already peaked and it seems like it will be a long time before it appreciates in value. Fans who actually take it out of the package are likely to be irked by the cloak quality, but for those who want a cool sith, so long as it is not recast, one imagines this figure will at least retain its value for quite some time.

Overview

Despite the Darth Malgus’s cloak being a huge pain in the ass, this concept figure that Star Wars video game fans love is hard to find and worth it for those who can get their hands on it.

For other Star Wars Vintage Collection figures, please check out my reviews of:
VCP03 Boba Fett
VC01 Dengar
VC05 AT-AT Commander
VC09 Boba Fett
VC10 4-LOM
VC11 (Twin Pod) Cloud Car Pilot
VC14 Sandtrooper
VC15 Clone Trooper
VC17 General Grievous
VC21 Gamorrean Guard
VC22 Admiral Ackbar
VC29 Kit Fisto
VC30 Zam Wesell
VC33 Padme Amidala (Peasant Disguise)
VC38 Clone Trooper (212th Battalion)
VC39 Super Battle Droid
VC41 Stormtrooper
VC43 Commander Gree
VC46 AT-RT Driver
VC48 Weequay Skiff Master
VC49 Fi-Ek Sirch
VC50 Han Solo (Bespin Outfit)
VC51 Barriss Offee
VC53 Bom Vimdin
VC54 ARC Trooper Commander
VC56 Kithaba (Skiff Guard)
VC57 Dr. Evazan (Cantina Patron)
VC58 Aayla Secura
VC61 Boba Fett (Prototype Armor) Mail-In
VC64 Princess Leia (Slave Outfit)
VC65 TIE Fighter Pilot
VC71 Mawhonic
VC73 Aurra Sing
VC82 Daultay Dofine
VC85 Quinlan Vos
VC86 Darth Maul
VC87 Luke Skywalker (Lightsaber Construction)
VC88 Princess Leia (Sandstorm Outfit)
VC89 Lando Calrissian (Sandstorm Outfit)
VC90 Colonel Cracken (Millennium Falcon Crew)
VC91 Rebel Pilot (Mon Calamari)
VC95 Luke Skywalker (Hoth Outfit)
VC106 Nien Nunb
VC108 Jar Jar Binks
VC111 Princess Leia (Bespin Outfit)
VC112 Sandtrooper
Endor AT-ST Crew
Ewok Scouts Two-Pack

8/10

For other Star Wars toy reviews, please check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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