Star Wars The Black Series Han Solo (Hoth) review – Archive Series

If there’s one film that will sucker me into buying all the various looks of characters it’s Empire Strikes Back. Hoth is one of my all-time favorite movie locales and contains some of my favorite moments in one of my favorite films alongside Godfather and Avengers: Endgame.

Han Solo in his Hoth attire is an easy pickup for me. Anytime we get snow in my area, I bring out all my snow-theme characters. When I trotted out the Snowspeeder, I really wish I had the Hoth Han and Luke to get rescued by it. My ESB collection is steadily growing and now I just need some snow to really pull this off.

Let’s see if Han is a worthwhile addition or just needs to be put on ice.

Packaging: The Archive Series is more of a throwback to the old Black Series presentation than the current mural-enhanced packaging. It features a big blister card and an angular greyscale insert drawing of Han Solo.

This is my first Archive figure and I really dig the back, which shows the original package and the year it was released. In this case it was 2018, which was longer than it sounds.

Han has a great bio, which isn’t long yet explains all the crucial elements of the character.

Likeness: Hasbro hasn’t had any problems with Harrison Ford’s likeness. He’s been the easiest of the Star Wars main three from the Original Trilogy and he really hasn’t had a bad likeness with any figure. That trend continues with this one. Even though it’s obscured by the hood the likeness is dead on and another terrific Han portrait.

I really like how the figure turned out. Han’s hood has a nice sculpt with a good approximation of fur. His gear is scaled appropriately as well with the goggles encompassing his hat without looking too oversized.

It’s nice to see the sculpt work that went to the hat, which we’d never see anyway though it is removable if you’d like to try that look. The hood surrounds them both and is close enough to the head so it doesn’t look overly massive.

The scarf piece is connected to the hood creating a gap between the hood and coat, which wouldn’t be awesome in snowy temperatures.

Han’s jacket was for the vast chilly Hoth air but wasn’t overly bulky. The figure’s jacket reflects that streamlined appearance while incorporating important details like his Rebel alliance rank. His jacket has a good amount of texturing, folds and patterns throughout.

From the waist down, Han shares the legs and boots with the Hoth Trooper so it has plenty of detailing on the legs with folds and the waffle pattern of the kneepads and laced boots.

Paint: I’m firmly in the camp that Han’s coat was dark blue. Sure, that’s not a standard Rebellion color, but that helped make Han stand out and still be an individual even as a high-ranking Rebel Alliance leader.

Hasbro went with the seemingly now canon color of brown. It’s a flat brown and looks fine although the previous Hoth Han did come with the blue jacket. The previous version with the Tauntaun had the coat in blue for what that’s worth.

Han’s rank on his coat actually has different colors, which is nice. His belt is just missing the silver button on the left pouch. My figure just had a few paint scrapes and a popped air bubble in the scarf.

The paintwork is solid though I wish Hasbro could have figured out a clever way to pepper in some white speckles of paint on the coat to simulate the snow that was constantly on it.

Scale:  Of the six main OT characters on Hoth, Han is the second tallest next to Chewbacca. There’s not a ton of scenes of them all interacting together, but he does wear this for half his time in Hoth for scale reference.

Articulation:  Han isn’t fighting a bunch of Snow troopers in Hoth. Besides taking out a Probe Droid he’s riding a Tauntaun and literally chilling.

Still, for those of us who love re-enacting the big ESB moments, it is important to be able to have him leaning and taking aim at the Probe Droid.

Han’s got the usual Black Series articulation and of course now I really wish I had a Tauntaun for him to ride.

Hoth Han Solo has:

• neck
• shoulders
• elbow (with swivel)
• wrist
• wrist hinge
• torso
• hips
• thighs
• knees (double jointed)
• ankles

Accessories:  Han gets two accessories, which is fine since they’re the main ones he used in this attire.

First up is his macrobinoculars he used to help track down Luke. The larger center circle and the second larger one’s slots should be painted black.

That’s a curious omission as Hasbro is normally pretty good about getting even the minute details down on Black Series accessories. Not that it matters since the binocs are so big Han can’t hold them in his hands.

His second accessory is his blaster. The silver tip area of the blaster looks good right down to the ridged barrel. It’s got the brown handle, but it looks like there’s two admittedly small silver studs missing on the paint apps.

I won’t knock Hasbro for missing them though it’s not 100% screen accurate if you’re a stickler.

Hasbro does have a Hoth Han figure with his hood down if you prefer that look.

Worth it?  Han’s archive figure normally retails for $22.99, but thankfully I was able to get him for $7.99 through holiday sales. Can’t be mad at that price for any Black Series figure save Grogu who’d still be overpriced.

Rating: 9 out of 10

The hood implementation and the elbow range are the main issues holding Han back. This was a really fun figure to break out into the snow and absolutely worth grabbing for that price.

Where to get it?  It seems like you couldn’t miss this figure on shelves for months and now the supply seems to have dried up. You can get him from secondary sellers for just about retail price through Amazon.

As an Amazon Associate and Entertainment Earth affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.