Star Wars The Black Series Hoth Luke Skywalker review – Archive Series

I’ve had a ton of fun with this year’s snowstorm and caught up on a ton of my snow-theme characters. I didn’t have the Star Wars Black Series Hoth Luke Skywalker, but thanks to a good friend and supporter of the Lyles Figure Files channel Steve, I now have him from the Archive Series. Not shockingly, Luke skips past the review queue and is on deck right away.

As I’ve said a hundred times, Luke Skywalker is my favorite movie character. If there’s one character I’m going to spam buy all of his figures, it’s Luke. The Hoth look is an important one since this is where Luke gets Obi Wan’s message to go to Dagobah to train with Yoda after nearly being mauled by a Wampa.

Let’s see if Hoth Luke is another great addition to the Empire Strikes Back Black Series Luke collection.

Packaging: The Archive Series setup is a basic blister card with a callback to the old Black Series presentation with the greyscale image of Luke.

As always, the Black Series bios are fantastic setting the stage for Luke’s next move after surviving the Wampa.

Likeness: Hasbro makes this Hoth Luke very much a figure of the moment. It’s a post-Wampa attack, but Hasbro tried to have it both ways to some degree. The original Hoth Luke and Wampa set featured a Luke with a bruised and blood scarred face.

The scars were sculpted in so while this figure doesn’t have the paint deco on the face, Luke is clearly not in pristine shape.

A good thing about the lack of battle damage paintwork is tossing a pair of the Hoth Trooper’s goggles on Luke largely hides the damage around his eye. And it gives the illusion of a pre-Wampa Hoth Luke.

I like the expression Hasbro went with here as it’s neutral and not in anguish as he’s trudging through the snow. Luke’s helmet/hat turned out nicely with the left radio antennae device sharply sculpted. I like Hasbro’s decision to make Hoth Luke’s hat scarf cloth as it can actually get caught in the air with a little breeze.

The figure is very nice with excellent detailing on the standard Hoth trooper gear. As a commander in the Rebellion, Luke has more bars on his attire. I dig the waffle pattern of the vest and how Luke’s belt and holster line up. The bars carry over to Luke’s right arm and the thicker glove pieces have sculpted elements as well.

Luke’s legs have the same detail as the Hoth trooper but are clearly shorter to accommodate his height. His boot is intricately done with pronounced lacing trailing down to the top of his boots.

Paint: Hasbro is traditionally strong with the paintwork on the Black Series figures.

Luke’s face printing gives his eyes larger blue pupils than he should have though it’s not as noticeable thanks to the built-in shading courtesy of the hat helmet.

Paintwork on the precise details like the bars, belt accents and boot laces are mostly sharp. The right arm bars are a little sloppy.

Scale:  The scale of the seven main OT characters is great as there’s plenty of diverse heights. Luke is taller than Leia but is looking up at Han and Chewie. As well as the other Hoth Troopers.

Articulation:  In this Hoth gear, Luke isn’t fighting off a bunch of Stormtroopers, but does need some mobility to take down the Wampa.

He doesn’t have the full range of movement as the Hoth trooper — most noticeably with the cut in the elbow that simulates a double-jointed articulation point. It’s good enough to hit a convincing double-grip lightsaber pose however.

Hoth Luke gets a mid-torso joint and that has a surprising amount of back & forth and left & right range. The neck joint allows for very good back and forth movement.  He’s pretty poseable and the vest skirt piece doesn’t restrict his movement much at all.

Hoth Luke Skywalker has:

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

Accessories:  Hoth Luke gets two accessories about the normal accessory count for the line.

Luke gets his lightsaber. The hilt is very well detailed with paint apps largely matching up with the source material.

His second accessory is his DL-44 blaster. It features the brown handle and the silver tip along the barrel.

Worth it?  Luke’s figure runs around $17.99. That feels like a fair price for him.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Hoth Luke is an essential figure for any Hoth setup and with the exception of deeper set elbows and an alternate non-damaged head sculpt this is a very strong addition to the line.

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, I earn from qualifying purchases.