STAR WARS - The Black Series - Series 5 - CHEWBACCA Review !!!

I purchased this six inched scaled Chewbacca figure at the price of  $19.99 from a local Walgreens . It caught me by surprise somewhat, because I was not expecting to see these figures at any Walgreens store, since Walgreens did not carry these figures when they first came out . As for Chewbacca the character, as a figure he gets reunited with his buddy Han Solo as his co-pilot . In my opinion a character of this magnitude should be considered a warrior with a primitive weapon such as a battle club. Instead Chewbacca carries an advanced weapon in a rifle . And by looking at him who would ever thought that this guy could pilot a plane ? One would think that Chewbacca would be a simple minded beast, but he is no where close to being simple minded. In fact he seems very intelligent despite not being able to speak . First are pictures of Chewbacca while inside the box. For those of you that like to collect your figures without opening them , these pics are exactly for you .

When you remove Chewbacca from the packaging , he is a very nicely detailed figure . His fur is displayed in shades of light brown and dark brown tones. And despite looking kind of skinny the figure has some good weight to it. Holding it in your hands he feels kind of weighty. And since he's somewhat of an animal character, a beast, he should feel this way. As it would seem that underneath all of that fur is nothing but pure solid rock hard muscle .

Even though this series is in the six inch scale, Chewbacca is a very tall figure, standing a little over seven inches tall. As for accessories , Chewie comes with three of them . I'm going to call him "CHEWIE " for the rest of the way because "CHEWBACCA" is a long name. He comes with his satchel, which is already wrapped around his shoulder, a laser rifle and I do not know what the other weapon is called but I think it is called a bolo, not sure . Chewie's satchel does not open and close by the way, however it is a nice decorative piece loaded with cartridges for his gun .

Note about the rifle . The top piece of the rifle, the double barreled sniper scope comes off and snaps back on together again . I discovered this by accident . No where on the packaging or inside does it explain that his gun's top piece can be detached . I thought I broke his gun at first , but soon realized that the piece can easily snap back on . One thing I can say about a lot of today's toys , is that you may discover some things about them after you purchased them that were not mentioned before. One problem however is that it is very difficult to get Chewie to hold his weapons. You can with some hard work . Here's a look at a couple of my efforts at trying to make him hold his rifle.

The hole for his trigger finger just is not wide enough, making the rifle difficult to fit into either hand.
Now that Chewie is reunited with Han Solo, take a look at the pics below at how he towers over his buddy. Amazing because Han is no short guy himself .

Not only is Chewie really tall, but the size of his limbs are impressive . His arms are long like broomsticks, and are thicker than some figure's legs . Both of his hands are large enough to cover Han Solo's whole chest almost . I swear if Chewie was real he would definitely be over seven feet tall and would probably weigh some where around the 400 lb - 500 lb range . And for the first time ever, I never measured an action figure's wing span before , however I was so impressed with the length of Chewie's arms I did just that .

As you can see Chewie has a wing span of around seven inches . Amazing . His arms are almost as long as he is tall . He should be a very good shot blocker in the sport of Basketball with arms like that . Speaking of tall seven inch figures, here are some comparison shots comparing Chewie to other seven inch figures from other lines . Here I'm comparing him to the Avengers Hulk figure , Thunder Hawk from the Street Fighter video game franchise, and finally a Big Show figure from the WWE Mattel Elite series .

                                                      FINAL   THOUGHTS
( 1 ) ARTICULATION - Nice all around articulation except for the head . No up and down movement in the head. I assume this is due to the hard plastic fur on his neck restricting movement somewhat. Other than this gripe excellent articulation .
( 2 ) STANDING  ABILITY - There are no balance issues with this figure. He stands really well once you get him in the proper stance .
( 3 ) WHAT  I  LIKE  BEST  ABOUT  THIS  FIGURE ? The overall sculpt and attention to detail is nice. His fur is nicely detailed and shaded . Plus adding one of the most popular Star Wars characters to my collection is a good feeling . Great to pair him with his buddy Han Solo .
( 4 ) WHAT  I  LIKE  LEAST  ABOUT  THIS  FIGURE ? The restrictions I mentioned in his head movement  in the Articulation category . Plus it is hard to make him hold his weapons .
( 5 ) WHAT  COULD  HAVE  BEEN  DONE  TO  IMPROVE  THE  FIGURE ? Make it easier for him to hold his weapons buy widening the trigger finger gap in his rifle . Place riveted ball joints in his neck for better head movement .
( 6 ) GRADING  SCALE - On a scale of one through ten I give this figure a 9.5 . A very high score despite the two gripes, restricted head movement and difficulty holding weapons . I would have given Chewie a perfect 10 if not for those gripes .
( 7 ) FINAL  ANALYSIS - Overall I think Chewbacca is a great figure . ( NOTE ) I'm going back to calling him his actual name again instead of "Chewie", since this is the end of this article . Having this guy in your collection gives the feeling of a somewhat temporary closure , since if you have a Han Solo figure you're reuniting the two . Now all we need is a Millennium Falcon to go along with those two to get that complete feeling of closure and satisfaction .