Original Review:  Chris - 3/12/11

The soft goods cape is a bit of a failure because of the strap.  For some reason, the strap is a piece of elastic, but that elasticity is not needed. You don’t need to stretch the opening of the cape for any reason.  A thinner non elastic clasp would not have affected the functionality and would have greatly improved the appearance.  Aside from the cape, there’s not much to complain about.  I’m not sure the ball joint hips add a lot to what you’d use this figure for, but at least you can replicate the wide stance of the POTF2 figure if you were so inclined.

The removable holster is an appreciated touch because it allows you to get a bit of a two for one.  With the cape and holster, this figure becomes the Home One General Calrissian. Remove the cape and holster and it becomes Millennium Falcon pilot General Calrissian. The only minor variant you cannot recreate is the Ewok celebration version which featured an open vest, but that would make a nice Battle Pack option. I feel like I’m becoming an easy grader in my old age, but 9 out of 10.

Updated Review:  Bret - 06/27/2018

Chris pretty much nailed it, short and sweet.  The cape is the biggest letdown, but it’s not awful.  The removable holster allows you to recreate the briefing and the space battle scenes.  I was about to take pictures of the ewok celebration, until I realized from reading Chris’s review that the outfit is slightly modified because he unbuttons the collar.  Kind of the opposite of what Han did for the Yavin ceremony.  Well, it would be annoying if Hasbro released this exact figure and titled it “Lando Calrissian (Ewok Celebration)”, but fortunately, they didn’t.  They could release a variant, with clapping action feature.  Yeah!

The head sculpt might be a bit off, as is the lack of Lando’s signature “two-part” mustache, but it’s still good.  The articulation might be a bit above and beyond, but since when are we going to complain about too much articulation?  The cape is probably the biggest issue that is hardest to get over, but beyond that, this is an outstanding figure.

As we’ve been revisiting these figures, we can see that this General Lando figure is actually the first one in TVC that originated in the POTF line (see the cardback image in the gallery above.)  Cool.  Eventually, Hasbro will probably remake the EV-9D9 figure, but I think some of you will agree that she’s just fine the way she is.

A better cape, and a tweaked face sculpt would pretty much make this a nearly perfect figure.  As it is, this stands as a definitive General Lando Calrissian, despite the quibbles.  None of these things were addressed when Hasbro opted to repack the figure in the Walmart Black Series line.  Let’s not talk about that.
Unless we get some kind of Lando Evolutions pack, with an opportunity to revisit the cape (or as Chris suggests, the casual open collar for the ewok celebration), your best bet is to pick up this figure if you can find it at a good price.  It goes for low to moderate premiums on Ebay.  This is likely due to the recent re-release of the figure in the horrifically handled Walmart line.  The figure itself is cheap and easy to find - you might even be able to find one right now in your local Walmart on clearance), so you’d only be paying a premium for the TVC packaging.  As such, Hasbro should steer clear of this particular character for a while.

Updated Review:  Bret - 08/11/2020

We originally graded this figure a 9, and doubled down on it about 2 years ago.  However, with what we’ve seen from Hasbro recently in The Vintage Collection, we’ll lower that score to an 8.  In 2020, Hasbro selected this figure for the Photoreal makeover.  Our complaints with the original pretty much revolved around the face and the cape.  With this update, Hasbro address one and half of those things.  Is it enough to bump the score back to a 9?

This is a definite, if incremental, improvement to the original.  The Photoreal application is much better than the original.  It extends to the hair/highlghts as well.  As is the case with this tech, the closer you look, the weirder it gets, but from a normal viewing distance, it looks great.  One other nice touch was that Hasbro made sure the ankle joints are now black, just like the boots.  This corrects the previous blue joints, which were unfortunate.

As for the cape, the main complaint was with the weird neck strap.  Instead of a thin chain or clasp, it has a huge elastic band.  This, sadly, went unchanged.  However, Hasbro did address another aspect of the cape.  This update has it cut a bit shorter, so instead of dragging on the ground, it is a perfect height just above floor level. 

While the hips aren’t perfect, this particular character/outfit didn’t need any real fix there, nor to any of the other articulation points.  So the only thing that Hasbro should have done was fix the cape band.  If they did that, it would essentially be a perfect General Lando.  Having lowered the original score to an 8, it seems these improvements, while nice, aren’t enough to push the score back to a 9.  Still, it’s a solid figure, and nice to see back out there again.

*This figure was meant to be a “fan channel” (online) exclusive, but a shipping error sent some cases to brick and mortar (especially Target).