Completing (for now) the Lando Trilogy (for now. . . ), skiff guard Lando presents the great character in his temporary Return of the Jedi Jabba’s palace guard appearance. There’s a tiny bit of cross over potential for this figure, as the removable helmet fits on Tobias Beckett from the Solo sequence of figures, so it could be possible to kitbash an in-disguise Beckett from his movie, but we’ll touch on that later on, whenever we get around to Tobias Beckett.
Lando is a character who has a limited number of looks, and now with this figure, three of the four have been released in the line, leaving only General Calrissian from the later portion of Return of the Jedi left unrealized, but probably in the works somewhere. This figure comes with limited accessories, those being the removable helmet and a staff weapon, and nothing else. Lando, in this incarnation, has no other accessories, so we’ve got that “screen accurate” thing covered. Joint wise, all the usual elements are here, and the sculpt is excellent, par for the course. This may be the same head as Cloud City Lando, but I’m not entirely sure on that. The helmet obscures his face about as well as it does in the movie.
I’ve always thought that it was a bad move in the movie to have Lando pull down the facemask so that we could identify him. Even as a child, I knew this meant that our heroes would win the day in Jabba’s palace, and that simple action of revealing himself to no one but the camera and audience, if avoided, would have been able to create some real tension in the early going of the movie. Jabba’s palace is actually a pretty harrowing place: the Rancor is eating people, Han and Chewie are locked up and Han is temporarily blind, Leia is captive, and when Luke shows up, he’s pretty quickly overpowered and they all end up on the sail barge. But we know Lando is around, so we know that in time, things will work themselves out. Had we not known Lando was on site, we could maybe have developed concern for these characters, as opposed to essentially waiting for the plan to show itself.
Lando’s staff is a bit short, so it doesn’t touch the ground when he’s holding it unless you make his arm pretty slack. He cannot stand, like, at attention, with the knob of his staff on the floor. While I do confess to not knowing if this is screen accurate, I’m not sure why they would not have just made the staff long enough to reach the ground.
While the figure is up to Black Series standards that we’ve all come to know and expect, I can’t help but think it’s a little bit bland. The colors are all fairly light, with nothing particularly strong and eye catching. Currently at Coffin HQ, Skiff Guard Lando is standing guard on a bookshelf while some adjustments are made to the Star Wars detolf so as to accommodate him, and he practically blends in to the spines of the tomes around him, while most figures stand out pretty boldly. The browns and tans of the guard outfit are pretty light, making all of them run into generic “tan”, and even the parts that are supposed to be metal or at very least metallic colored, such as the chest plate, are drab and muted. While this is probably Lando’s least iconic look, it could have been fancied up a bit to make it eye catching, and it’s really just muddied. There were chances here to inject some highlights in to the figure that would have made it a brighter one, but they passed. While this is reasonably consistent with thematically similar figures, such as the Target exclusive Gamorrean Guard, I can’t shake the feeling that Skiff Lando is destined to reappear in the Archive series with a flashier paintjob and all around more striking look.
I also could have sworn this figure had been released previously, but have been told several times by a credible source that it wasn’t. Apparently this figure was first seen several years’ worth of conventions ago, with some other figures that have long since been released, in one of those large “previews of coming attractions” displays at SDCC or some similar venue. A simple mistake, to be sure, but this Lando comes as part of the second wave of Solo figures alongside Hoth Leia, Val, Rio, Dengar, and the Patrol Stormtrooper, a Wave that seems real cobbled together in my opinion, despite them all having some connection to Han Solo. The Wave contains a trio of figures from Soloitself, and then the OT figures, and it is this somewhat mixed yet thematically appropriate line up that has me confused, I think. At any rate, this figure does complete the Lando Line-up to this point, with the aforementioned General version the one that’s missing.
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