Ok, wife called it a night, so I was itching to take some pics and do a bit of a review of the clone trooper I picked up yesterday. So I dragged him in out of the car and played around a bit. I also snagged one of my two SA clones for a little comparison.
A little blurry (they get better) but you can see the scale is pretty good and they differ in only a couple of places. The helmet is obvious, but the left shoulder is different and the new clone does not have the articulation in the waist that the SA clone does. You can see the SA twists better (well, at all is the right way to phrase it) but also note his right arm can straighten completely, something the action feature prevents the new clone from doing.
One thing you're going to have to be careful of when opening this guy is that there are two parts hidden in the package. I almost missed them, but there are two shoulder pads hidden in behind the picture of the clone trooper on the inner bubble. I didn't notice them initially and one of my early complaints was that the one shoulder looked really weird. The next picture shows why: there are two peg holes that the shoulder pad fits into. The pic is a bit blurry, but you can see the hole...
One shoulder pad is plain, no markings.
The other has an Imperial insignia, a harbinger of some change coming in the course of the movie.
Sorry about a couple of the pics again, I couldn't get the to rotate in photobucket and I'm too lazy to reload them
You can clearly see the differences in the right and left shoulder in this shot. Paint is different and it looks like they just didn't bother to take the black as far
As far as poseability goes, they're pretty close to equal. The ankle articulation is superior in the SA clone, who also has the waist articulation. During training, they were fairly evenly matched.
But the superiority of the SA clone shone through at a critical point:
The right arm of the new clone trooper is clearly hampered by the action feature. He just can't get it as high as the SA clone and that could spell trouble when trying to get the attention of your training sargeant. Fortunately in this case, it was enough.
Both troopers were able to take the necessary
break being certain to not break the unspoken rule of looking away. You can see the effect the action feature has on the, um, posterior region and hips. Only the right leg moves to initiate the action feature, but the hips do little in the way of movement, so it won't be nearly as poseable as the SA clone.
The SA clone came only with the blaster. It appears that this blaster is identical to the new one that the new clone comes with as well. Plastic is not too bad, not overly flimsy so it should stand up well. The difference in size you see is just an artifact of the camera angle, they're identical. New blaster is above in the picture.
The new clone also comes with a rifle. It's the same sculpt as those that came with the clone commander (red designation?) and the two pack clones. The plastic is about the exact same consistency but on mine at least, the silver speckling has been reduced. The new rifle is on top in the pic. They are identical in size.
It's not a perfect figure and like most of you, I'd be really happy without the action feature. With the action feature though it is still leaps and bounds ahead of the red clone we received as a basic figure for Episode II. So they stepped it up a notch here. I will be picking up more of these guys, no doubt about that.
I'll try and fix the rotation of the pics and if I get really motivated, reshoot some. JD can feel free to host them if they like
