A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

v Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan is a trusted advisor in Chancellor Palpatine's inner circle. An impassioned supporter of civic virtue, Bail regrets that to counter the Separatist threat, the Republic must deploy a newly discovered clone army. Although the Republic garners an equivocal victory at the Battle of Geonosis, it is only the first step in a much larger, carefully conceived Clone War. The noble Senator stands in somber observation as thousands of clone troopers, marching in military formation, board countless warships and disperse throughout the galaxy to new battlefronts. - From the Hasbro Star Wars Saga - Bail Organa (Alderaan Senator) action figure's package blurb   Introduced in 2003 as the 33rd action figure of the Saga line,  Bail Organa (Alderaan Senator)  is the very first figure depicting one of the future founders of the Rebel Alliance.   As "action figures" go, this is a good example of how Hasbro lavishes attention to detail on figures who...

Garindan, a Kubaz informant, works only for the highest bidders - usually the Empire or Jabba the Hutt. Garindan followed the young Skywalker and his mentor Ben Kenobi through the alleys of Mos Eisley.   - From the package blurb.  The shadowy spy retroactively named Garindan only appears briefly in  A New Hope  as the shrouded figure with the long nose and goggled eyes, he is the character who tips off the Imperial stormtroopers that Luke and Obi-Wan Kenobi have gone to Docking Bay 94 in Mos Eisley.  He appears twice or thrice, following the Jedi Knight and his new apprentice through alleys and bystreets and muttering into a handheld comlink in a squeaky language.  Garindan is not identified by name in the film or the 1976 Alan Dean Foster-penned novelization; the figure is also known colloquially as "Long Snoot" because of his long proboscis.  The Figure:    Height:  1.85 Meters Status:  Spy Classification:  Kub...

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.... It is a time of turmoil in the galaxy. A decade after the Naboo crisis and the election of Senator Palpatine as Supreme Chancellor, a new menace to democracy has emerged as Count Dooku, a former Jedi Master, becomes the leader of a Separatist movement that has enticed ten thousand systems to secede from the Galactic Republic. In the face of this and other crises, the Galactic Senate has allowed the charismatic and seemingly incorruptible Supreme Chancellor to remain in office despite constitutionally mandated term limits. Quiet, unassuming, and devoted to maintaining peace and justice in the galaxy, Palpatine seems to be reluctant to use force against the Separatists. But as it becomes apparent that the 10,000-strong Jedi Order may be becoming overextended in its efforts to maintain the peace throughout the galaxy, Palpatine's stance on negotiations shifts to a harder line as his operatives in the Senate and elsewhere push for the crea...

(C) 1998 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd.  You have to hand it to Jabba the Hutt. He might be the slimiest, most vile gangster in the galaxy, and he does surround himself with scum and villainy, but man, he does have some redeeming qualities.  Er, two redeeming qualities: he likes good music, and he likes dancing girls. He has been known to hire such renowned groups as Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes -- the jazz-like band that was present at Chalmun's Cantina in A New Hope -- and Max Rebo's Band, currently playing at Jabba's fortress-like palace on Tatooine.  Although the core of the group is the trio of Max Rebo, Sy Snootles, and Droopy McCool, the Band has been known to hire additional musicians, including Joh Yowza, a Yuzzum from Endor; Barquin D'an, a Bith musician (and relative of Figrin's), and three shapely backup singer-dancers, Greeata, Lyn Me, and Rystall.  Hasbro's Jabba's Dancing Girls is one of the 10 three-figure Power of th...

Photo Credit: JediBusiness.com Five years after the Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance has driven the evil Empire into a distant corner of the galaxy. But a new danger has arisen: the last of the Emperor's warlords has devised a battle plan that could destroy the New Republic. Before the death of Palpatine, Mara Jade was the Emperor's right hand assassin. Five years later and now a successful smuggler, the last thing Mara expected was to stumble upon her former arch-enemy - Luke Skywalker. - From the package blurb, Mara Jade. In 1991, eight years after the theatrical run of Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and eight years before the premiere of Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Bantam Spectra published Star Wars: Heir to the Empire, the first volume of Timothy Zahn's best-selling Thrawn Trilogy cycle of novels. Though a few authors had written several novels set in George Lucas's Star Wars galaxy during a seven-year-period close to the...

For the past 34 years or so, Kenner and Hasbro have produced many diverse lines of Star Wars figures, from the Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi production waves to the current Star Wars collection, and as toy making technology improves and more tiny details can be added, the figures themselves are much more attractive and detailed. Costume variations and weathering, accessories (such as lightsabers and blasters), even characters' faces look more detailed and less generic than their 1978-1985 counterparts. For several years now, Hasbro has released multi-figure sets called Scene Packs, Cinema Scenes, or more colloquially, three-packs (so-called for the usual number of 3.75 inch scale figures in each box), which are assortments of action figures posed in front of a nicely printed backdrop to form a mini-diorama of specific scenes from particular Episodes. Starting in the late 1990s with such Scene Packs as Purchase of the Droids (featuring Uncle ...