Darth Sidious is here: A Toy Review

August 17, 2024

Darth Sidious has arrived!

The figure looks amazing. The soft goods are decent, and the color matches the sculpted hood well. He is very poseable and comes with his lightsaber and extra hands. The extra hands are lightning effects.

Here is the new Darth Sidious next to a customized Emperor Palpatine with robes from Josh’s Custom Capes! I love Josh’s wired robes, but at $25 the Hasbro ones are decent.

The lighting effects are a great addition to the figure! It’s also great that these accessories did not push it into the deluxe category. Be careful when swapping the hands, as the peg is very tight. You may want to warm up the hands first.

It pairs well with Mace Windu and Anakin. I do hope we get a Revenge of the Sith Yoda soon!

Overall, there aren’t too many complaints about this figure. The hood could have been soft good or swappable with pulled-back pieces. It would have been nice to see a “normal” Chancellor Palpatine head included though. The other issue is that the inclusion of soft goods and lightning hands puts other mainline releases of figures to shame. The archive and 40th anniversary Palpatine referenced the Amazon deluxe set but didn’t come with lightning effects. Both were priced at $24.99. There is a rerelease of the Amazon Deluxe set with new packaging. That set is $44.99 but does include a throne and two additional head sculpts, in addition to the lightning hands. The other figure release that this applies to is the mainline release of Starkiller from The Force Awakens. There was an exclusive version that came with an extra head, lightning hands, several extra hands, 2 sets of lightsaber blades, effects in blue and red, and a force effect base – while the mainline release of Starkiller only came with one lightsaber and no additional accessories. And the last is every mainline release of the live-action Ahsoka which never came with a cloak for her.

It does beg the question of which features and accessories should be standard, and which ones will push it into a deluxe-level figure? If this release had been a Deluxe, would it still have gotten it at the Deluxe price of $33.99?