Well, these have shown up at retail. The ones I found all had squished clamshells. You'd think for premium packaging and price Hasbro could have packed them more carefully. The cards inside survived fine, but I'm thinking my carded ones have to stay inside the clamshell because of the OTC silver banner thats incorporated into the front of the shell. How very frustrating.
I cracked open all three (Leia, Ben, Han) and... I'm not all that impressed.
They're still the closest thing to the "ultimate" representations, but they miss by a nose. Here's my typically negative slanted thoughts:
Han doesn't seem to have waist articulation and his vest is not a seperate piece like previous versions. Still, he's got great articulation otherwise and the headsculpt is the closest ever.
Leia's soft goods seem to be rather pointless. A soft goods hood would have been more appropriate. She has ballsocket style knee articulation. Why? Who knows. She can sit, I guess, if there was a place or scene that she needs to be sitting. For us concerned with Lando's arm articulation, Leia is a preview - it limits poses to holding a blaster or cupping her hands, ala the card image. A neutral stance just ain't happenin'. But like Han, the headsulpt is sweetness.
Now here's where I'm shocked - I really like Ben! With a bit of work you can actually manipulate the SG cloak to look very realistic, which seems to have to do with its bulk and the fact that it's a very heavy material. He still looks silly without it though. The headsculpt is nice and its is an older style ball joint, with the ball at the bottom of the neck, inside the torso, so he has a bit of up-down movement as well as left-to-right.
EDIT: Oops, gotta retract my comment about the waist thing on Han. It moves, I'm just a wuss at forcing it to move.
