Star Wars The Black Series Clone Wars Mace Windu review
Genndy Tartakovsky‘s Clone Wars macro series was awesome for its portrayal for many reasons. Not the least of which was giving numerous Jedi, who had glorified cameos in the prequels, terrific showcases of their skills and power. Mace Windu wasn’t exactly a background player, but he had some of the coolest moments in the series.
My favorite was easily Mace being the reason for General Grievious’ asthmatic state. That’s the one thing I wish the CGI Clone Wars left intact from its run. Binging Clone Wars hasn’t been healthy for my wallet and when I saw the Black Series Tartakovsky style Mace was actually available, I pulled the trigger faster than you can say this party’s over.
Lets see if this unique take on Mace was worth tracking down or if it needs to be Force electrified out of my tallest window.
Packaging: This isn’t as fun as the 2021 series with the die cut clone helmet, but I do still love this unique Clone Wars packaging.
The back feels like it’s wasting a lot of space with the timeline of Lucasfilm’s 50th anniversary. It shortchanged adding a bio for Mace. Instead we just get a generic write up of the Clone Wars.
Likeness: Instead of going with a style that matched the Tartakovsky animation designs, Hasbro reimagined it as if the live-action actors were in these animated attires. That means the head sculpt is a solid likeness for Samuel L. Jackson.
Mace had one of the more dramatic redesigns for this version of the Clone Wars. He’s got armored shoulder pads styled in the clone’s white and black color scheme complete with sculpted lines and panels throughout.
The pads go over Mace’s cloth Jedi robe. His robe sleeves are bunched up — like the cartoon — to show the clone forearm armor. In another shift from his normal look, Mace also has a clone belt with sculpted pouches. It’s a a cool redesign and one I wish lasted a little longer.
While I’m wishing, it would have been great if Hasbro used the forearm armor design from the longer Clone Wars so we could in theory have both CW versions of Mace.
Paint: There’s no issues with the paintwork here. The clone armor has minimal black lining and it’s all pretty clean. Ditto for the head sculpt, which really looks sharp with the face printing.
The tunic’s different colors are fine although his boots are too light, which is a weird thing to mess up.
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Scale: Mace was about a half a head taller than Obi-Wan Kenobi and he should be just about a little taller than Anakin Skywalker. It’s close enough I guess.
Articulation: Ma has solid articulation and can strike some good poses thanks to the semi-floating torso. His shoulders feature terrific up and down range in large part due to the flexible material used for the shoulder pads.
Not surprisingly, the skirt restricts some of the movement with his legs so you’re not going to get a lot of dynamic kicking or crouching poses.
Mace Windu has:
- neck
- ball-jointed shoulders
- elbow (with swivel)
- wrist
- wrist hinge
- torso
- hips
- thighs
- knees (swivel)
- ankles
Accessories: Since Mace’s Jedi cloak is incorporated into his clone armor, he doesn’t have a lot of viable accessory options save his lightsaber.
It’s well detailed and not done in an animated style. The purple is done in the usual translucent although I really think it’s time to overhaul that design to have more of the white inner beam of the saber.
Worth it? Mace really shouldn’t be more than $25 max, but he’s clocking in around $28. He’s just a simple $20 figure that we’re paying about $10 more for the packaging? I got mine for $23 so I didn’t feel too bad, but the dedicated Clone Wars series has never been collector wallet friendly.
Rating: 9.2 out of 10
With just a bit more range in his shoulders or elbows this would be a perfect Clone Wars-era Mace. Everything else is so solid though that even with the articulation restraints this is one of my favorite Clone Wars figures.
Where to get it? The Tartakovsky Clone Wars series was exclusive to Walmart. Mace is available on Walmart.com and also available at Amazon. If you time it right you can get him cheaper than from Walmart.
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