A jean jacket, brown skirt and a printed polyester shirt.  One thing is certain.  The seventies were the seventies regardless of the galaxy.  The coming of a new Star Wars movie in 1999 was bitter sweet for collectors.  On its face, new Star Wars movies were a good thing, but it also meant a hiatus for original trilogy figures.  At the time, there were many figures we needed to get to.  In 2014 we still haven’t gotten to some of the original Kenner figures.  So when the possibility of dwindling opportunity for new original trilogy figures faced us in 1999, it was a reason for concern.  When the last wave of figures before the line became exclusively sourced from Episode I was announced, it was a large letdown.  That wave was mostly rehashes of core figures.  Fortunately one of the figures was a never before made character in Aunt Beru which included a never before made droid as an accessory.  Aunt Beru with Service Droid was the figure from the Flashback wave that collectors were gunning for. 

The figure is wonderful and awful at the same time.  It’s wonderful because to date it is the only original trilogy Beru Whitesun Lars figure in the 36 year run of Star Wars action figures.  In that same time, Dengar has had four figures and all he did is stand there on the deck of the Executor with a diaper on his head.  Despite being a figure with a lot of issues next to its modern counterparts, I can’t tell you how happy I am that it exists period.  I’m not sure Hasbro will ever update Aunt Beru.  I don’t think it has a place is the current marketplace climate.  It wouldn’t flop worse than the Legacy Collection Breha Organa, but it wouldn’t be the fastest seller.  The only place I could see for an update is in a retailer exclusive packed with an updated Uncle Owen, but that would likely have a prohibitive price point for the casual collector.  Personally I would pay feety pajama money for such a two-pack, but I try not to project my own collecting eccentricities to the hobby as a whole. 

The figure sports the familiar six points of articulation for the era.  The right hand is sculpted to hold the container of blue milk, but that hand is fixed with the palm rotated upward.  It’s as if Aunt Beru is intended to be slowly spilling the contents of the container as she scans the items in the room and realizes that [spoiler alert] Verbal Kent is in fact Keyser Söze.  The left hand can offer Luke a glass of that blue milk, but in no way could the figure take a sip for itself.  The legs have swivel articulation, but the plastic skirt makes it essentially meaningless.  Moreover, the figure is entirely too tall for the modern scaling.  Shelagh Fraser had a kindly maternal expression in A New Hope.  This figure bears a decent likeness, but appears more sour than sweet.  I will commend the varying tones in the paint application to the hair. It gives it a lifelike appearance.

The fact that the Lars family WED-15 Treadwell droid is included is a massive bonus even if it is fairly primitive.  If this were done as stand alone figure today, the two arms would likely articulate and the head would definitely rest on a ball joint so it could be articulated up and down.  The figure would also benefit from plastic wheels on the base.  As it stands, the included accessory has or does none of these things.  The post is a separate piece from the base and as such this serves as the only point of “articulation”.  I’m not sure if that was by design or just an artifact of the construction.  The Service Droid is basically a static display piece, but it’s a needed accent piece to either your Lars homestead display or to assist your Vintage Collection Echo Base Han Solo in repairing the Falcon.

I try to be as objective as possible when grading these figures, but sometimes subjectivity creeps in and I try to admit that to the reader when it happens.  This is one such case.  I feel this figure is more than the sum of it’s parts. Aunt Beru and the Service Droid are probably rate a 2 and 1 objectively.  But my heart says two never before made and never likely to be updated figures in one package deserve a 4 out of 10 score.