It’s been a real hot minute since I’ve touched anything Hot Toys or even Sideshow. I’ve more or less left high-end collectables behind in recent years in favor of model cars, but here I am, back in the fold. This is what happens when a pandemic causes a lockdown and a quarantine that leads to a binge of all 133 episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV show.
I had this item on pre-order through Sideshow since mid-2020, which surprised me at all that it was available as a brand new item on Sideshow’s website. I thought they had done a million clone troopers including Cody in 1/6 scale before?
After some digging it looks like it was true – Sideshow had previously released a 1/6 scale Commander Cody under their Militaries of Star Wars line, which was different because it wasn’t technically a Hot Toys item.
This new Hot Toys release looks to be much more realistic and deserving of the Movie Masterpiece title than the previous release. They seem to be particularly proud of the Temuera Morrison head sculpt, enough to have it as the leading portrait on the box instead of a much more iconic Clone Trooper helmet.
As a kid who grew up with the prequels as they released in theaters, I always loved clone troopers. Admittedly, I was never deep into it enough to know the intricacies and unique differences of Cody’s specific armor, but it seems Hot Toys got pretty much every detail down to the T.
First impressions are of this definitely feeling like a movie-level prop more than any old Star Wars action figure toy. There’s pretty much no metal or die-cast in the figure (as expected) so it doesn’t have much weight or heft, but the quality of the plastic armor and fabric under-suit is top-notch.
Remember these Hot Toys figures are closer to dolls in the traditional sense rather than mass-produced action figures. This figure is pretty much a human-style base wearing a full-body black fabric skin suit with armor on top – nothing like the usual Star Wars figures you find at WalMart.
I do love how worn and scratched-up the armor looks – very true to the look from Revenge of the Sith. I suppose my only complaint is that all the battle damage is very clearly just paint and decals – the armor itself is perfectly smooth. I think adding some actual surface scratches/burn grooves or pits would elevate the weathering, but as it is it does look very nice.
I never knew Cody had a jetpack. Does it actually allow him sustained flight Mandalorian-style? It’s so tiny.
I appreciate the effort to make the jetpack attachment entirely seamless – it pops onto Cody’ back via magnets, which means no ugly peg holes or connection ports. The downside is the magnets aren’t super strong – the jetpack pops off very frequently when handling and posing the figure.
In hindsight though – if there’s a magnet in Cody’s back armor it’s technically modular right? We could stick any number of things on him now.
Weapons loadout. Standard DC-15A blaster carbine we see Cody use them most in Clone Wars media, plus the longer DC-15A blaster rifle and a pair of DC-17 hand blasters.
Articulation isn’t actually fantastic. The fabric under-suit is made out of a fairly stretchy material, but it can only go so far before I fear tearing it. Combine that with the multiple armor plates and Cody has a bit of a hard time reaching his arms above his head.
Hot Toys also does include a plethora of extra expression hands. What bugs me is they didn’t include standard left and right closed fists, or standard left and right relaxed open hands. What if I wanted to pose Cody fist-fighting a droid?!
The DC-17 blaster pistols feel weird with Cody. I’m sure there’s some point in the Clone Wars show where he picked them up and used them, but it feels like a very ARC Trooper/Rex style that doesn’t suit him.
You may have noticed by now that Cody’s right wrist doesn’t have the fabric covering that his left wrist does (it’s just a plastic ball joint). This is because the entire right forearm is designed to be swapped out with a replacement unit that has a holo-pad affixed to the palm with an LED. The forearm itself holds the 3 batteries (included in the package) needed to power the holo-pad light.
Commander Cody. The time has come.
The light up effect coming from just the base of the holo-pad and illuminating the clear stick-on hologram figure is a neat look.
I can’t even talk shit about Hot Toys going through the trouble of including a whole ass extra forearm with built-in LEDs and batteries just for the sake of recreating a single 30-second scene from ROTS because they actually include multiple hologram options.
Included are the Senate, Obi-Wan, a clone paratrooper, and Yoda.
Sir, please surrender or I’ll have to shoot.
I was honestly a little disappointed to open the box and find out that the Temuera Morrison head portrait is supposed to swap with the Cody helmet, instead of being capable of wearing the helmet. Unfortunately the helmet innards just aren’t wide enough to accept the head sculpt.
What was pleasantly surprising to find is that the helmet visor is actually made of an opaque tinted plastic. Even in person the visor doesn’t look like anything but solid black plastic, which I thought was such a missed detail for such a high-quality figure. Turns out it’s just really good at looking solid black despite actually being tinted.
The head sculpt is very impressive, especially compared to the previous Sideshow head.
As nice as it is I don’t really care for it. I think Temuera Morrison was shown more in the prequel trilogy as Jango Fett than he was as the face of any of the unmasked clones.
Hot Toys does include a dedicated and specialized environment display stand for Cody, with a sand-themed base that’s presumably meant to piss off Anakin.
Something I don’t like about the base is that there are molded-in feet openings in the sand, meaning you can only have Cody’s legs and feet in a particular position on the base otherwise it’ll look strange.
All told I really think this is the definitive Clone Trooper figure template – I can’t wait for Rex to arrive next year.
