Deluxe General Grievous

Height: Approx. 10.5cm to top of head.

Articulation: 10 total points of articulation: ball-jointed neck; 6 points total in arms- 2 swivel shoulders, 4 swivel elbows; 3 points in each leg- swivel hips, double-jointed knees. Two spring-loaded arms swing out to sides when head is pressed.

Accessories: Cape, Lightsabers x4, Grappling Hook Launcher.

Colors: Molded gunmetal, bone white, clear green, and clear blue. Painted red, gray, bone white, dark green, silver, yellow(eyes), and black ink(weathering).

Release Data: Released April 2nd, 2005 for an MSRP of $9.99. This item is still in production as of this writing (April 17th, 2005)

Gallery: 8 images.

Author: RAC

The Figure

Previously seen in the Clone Wars animated series and accompanying toy line, General Grievous is now available in cinematic form. Apparently part of the leadership of the Separatist droid armies, he's been portrayed primarily as a hunter of Jedi with a number of lightsabers he keeps as trophies. There are currently four versions of the General available in the 3-3/4" Revenge of the Sith line: one "Sneak Preview" figure with two arms, one Basic figure with four and another with two, and finally this four-armed Deluxe.

The Head

Like the droids he commands, Grievous' appearance is very slender and skeletal, and his helmet design does a far better job of looking like a skull than the Battle Droids' heads- he's much more imposing. Looking out from under this helmet is a pair of very ugly, sunken-looking yellow eyes.

The head is once again ball-jointed, which gives a good tilting range and good swivel. Although, you may have to re-angle the head to turn it 360 degrees, not that I think it matters too terribly much. The mechanism to make the front arms spring up is built into the neck, though it's placed below the ball-joint- a wise engineering decision, in my opinion. If you only want one arm to spring up, you need only press the head towards one side or the other instead of straight down.

The Arms

Grievous has four arms which share a single pair of shoulders, though each has its own elbow. These simple swivels allow the arms to practically double over due to the shape of the joint and the thinness of the arms. The small, clawlike hands hold their lightsabers fairly well, though the green saber with the shorter grip is a bit looser in most of the hands than I'd prefer. The Launcher, though, is a bit harder for him to grab hold of.

The front two arms swing outwards when the head is pressed in order to swing their lightsabers. It's an okay action feature, though I'd prefer a springless figure that accurately reflects Grievous' original design "gimmick"- two arms that split into four. None of the current crop of Grievous figures do this to my knowledge, but I'm sure there will be more versions sooner or later.

Due to the weathering effect on the figure, you may need to carefully free up the elbow joints when you first open the figure.

The Torso

The torso is pretty much proportionate to the arms and legs and continues the skeletal motif of the design. It's nicely sculpted, but lacks any type of waist joint. There are a pair of subtle slots around the collarbone that the cape is supposed to plug into, but I'll get into that under the Accessories entry for the cape.

The Legs and Feet

Once again, we have swivel hips. They do okay, and the shape of the hips give more range than usual, but as I've said, ball-joints would do more. The knees are much better, marking the only instance of the swivel-hinge combination on this particular figure. Ankles would be nice to have here, but Grievous does at least have very broad clawed feet, so he does a bit better than Count Dooku in his ankle-free state.

Paint and Detailing

This version of General Grievous is very dirty-looking- it's been weathered extensively. The decoration style is similar to- and roughly of the same quality as- the Gundam Battle Scarred line which can still be found pretty regularly in US toy stores. It's a well-executed effect- he looks like he's been through some pretty rough fighting lately. The rest of the paint is even and, though it's not the most appropriate word given the decoration, clean. The only exception is one of his lightsabers, which isn't painted quite enough, with part of the grip blending into the clear blue blade.

Articulation gets 7/10

Sculpt and Deco get 8/10

Accessories

-Cape

Plastic capes are a double-edged sword. Executed well, they can do more for a figure than your average cloth cape can at this scale for a small sacrifice in articulation. Executed poorly, do more to a figure than I care to think about- they can interfere with posing and fall off frequently. Unfortunately in General Grievous' case we have a good(so to speak) example of the latter.

The cape has two pins, which as I mentioned above are meant to fit into the two sockets on his shoulders. Pity that the pins are spaced incorrectly, for starters. The cape doesn't really want to stay on. Next, there's the shape it's been molded in, which pulls the figure backwards when standing upright and hits the ground before the feet in most other poses. And lastly, it's molded curled inwards, meaning that at any given time the cape either wants to be wrapped around his left calf, or occupying the same physical space as the calf. It's a very frustrating accessory, and worse yet it's supposed to be on the figure pretty much at all times.

-Lightsabers

Four lightsabers of varying design. They're all molded pretty sharply, with detailed "energy" flares near the emitters. They fit in the hands well enough, though the size of the hands makes them a bit wobbly no matter what. The shorter of the green ones, as I mentioned above, is a bit tough for him to get a good grip on that shouldn't be melting his hand off, realistically speaking. A couple of the blades are very slightly curved, and there doesn't seem to be much that could be done about this. The lightsabers are once again the single-piece variety, but there's no way to store them in deactivated form anyway.

-Grappling Hook Launcher

So, assuming you're a toy company, what do you do to make a Basic figure into a Deluxe? Why, add a pointless missile-firing accessory, of course! The Grappling Hook Launcher actually launches a big claw, and gets a respectable six feet or so of distance. Both missile and launcher are rather interesting looking, and have a reasonable amount of detail in their sculpts.

The problem is in the grip- I have a strong feeling that this accessory was never designed with this figure in mind. Assuming you can get Grievous' tiny, tiny hands around that fat handgrip, he's just too thin to hold the weapon up with any degree of success whatsoever. For once, the cape actually comes in handy, though, since it helps hold the figure up while it tries to hold this thing. It's an accessory that didn't really need to be there, and it's not worth another $4 tacked onto the SRP.

Accessories get 5/10

Closing Remarks:

General Grievous is a well-sculpted, nicely decorated figure with decent articulation, a so-so action feature, and infuriating accessories. The cape hampers the figure in a number of ways, and the Grappling Hook Launcher is useless. The "Battle Scarred" paint job is nice, but it's not worth four bucks.

I paid the SRP of $10 for the figure, and I think I'd actually be more satisfied if it hadn't come with the launcher. If this were the only Grievous on the market and you were a fan of the character, I'd advise you to give it a try. But since there are three others now and probably more coming, I can't really recommend this one. It Could Have Been Better.

-RAC 04/15/2005