There’s been… a touch of controversy recently about the representation, or lack thereof, of the character Rey in merchandise related to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We’ve already said a fair bit about it here on GeekDad, and it’s definitely important to talk about the situation. But I was browsing the shelves at my local Target the other day, and I was inspired to create an actual solution to the problem.
Hasbro has said they’re going to be coming out with lots of Rey toys, but who knows when those are going to be ready to ship? In the meantime, what can you do for your kids (or yourself) if they want a Rey action figure? It’s LEGO to the rescue! Since autumn, LEGO has been coming out with Star Wars-related buildable characters. The second wave came out recently, and is all Force Awakens: Kylo Ren, Captain Phasma, Poe, Finn, and yes, Rey. They’re a little unrealistic in appearance, seeing as how they’re built from LEGO pieces, but the faces are remarkably similar to those of the actors. Of course, because nothing Rey-related has a lightsaber, the LEGO buildable Rey doesn’t, either. (Yes, I know they wanted to avoid spoilers, but the movie has been out for a month – I don’t believe that there’s no way they could have had them ready by now.) But the buildable Finn does, and of course it’s exactly the lightsaber that Rey should have! And these are LEGO, which means the parts are interchangeable…
So I bought a Rey and a Finn, and worked from there. I assembled Rey according to the instructions, including her staff and gun, because there’s nothing wrong with them – I mean, she was pretty badass with both.
And then I opened the bags in the Finn box, and found the appropriate page in the instruction booklet that came with him.
And so Rey has an awesome blue lightsaber, just like the one that used to be Luke’s and Anakin’s that she used in the movie to knock Kylo Ren on his whiny patricidal backside. Every major joint is articulated, wrists and ankles included; and there’s a little wheel on the back that, when you rotate it, raises or lowers Rey’s right arm. Sadly, this doesn’t work very well if you have her hold the lightsaber with both hands.
I did think it was somewhat unfortunate that the folks at LEGO obviously had the idea of having the figures fight each other, but for some reason decided that only Finn should have the lightsaber, even though it’s pretty obvious that Rey was way better with it than he was.
So if you, like my kids and me, don’t want to wait to have the Rey action figure that should have been for sale at least for the past month, it couldn’t be much simpler. Buy yourself buildable Rey and Finn, and go to it. The only thing that would make it better would be to get the Kylo Ren one, too, so you could have her defeat him (though as far as I’m aware, the LEGO one doesn’t have a removable helmet) – they didn’t have him at my local Target or anywhere else I looked near my home, alas. But I have a feeling you just might be able to find some other Kylo Ren figures – in a variety of sizes – at pretty much any store that sells toys.
Photos by Matt Blum.
It’s genuinely possible Lego didn’t know Rey would wield a lightsaber. Take a look at their model of Kylo Ren’s Shuttle; the wings don’t fold down to the correct position, because they were working from early designs. Similar lack of information could apply here.
Nice review. If there’s one thing that bothers me about the Rey buildable figure, it’s that her head has her headscarf and goggles molded onto it. In general I tend to prefer the buildable figure heads that don’t have headgear, because that headgear limits its use in original creations, especially non–Star Wars creations. It also limits her articulation — I feel like Finn’s head moves a lot more freely. My brother had hoped to try and build a large-scale version of Rey’s speeder for her, but that turned out to be impossible since she can’t really tilt her head backwards at all. We’re both hoping that when Episode VIII comes out, we will get a new version of Rey that doesn’t have headgear.
With that said, before we got pics of the set, I was worried that LEGO might decide to have her entire face covered, given the hard-to-kill “conventional wisdom” that girls don’t buy action figures and boys don’t buy action figures of girl characters. LEGO action figure themes like Bionicle and Hero Factory tend to have rather poor gender ratios to begin with (1 in 6 at best), and even then I sometimes worry that the only reason LEGO gets away with that is because the characters from those themes are basically robots who can’t be identified as male or female at a glance. Would LEGO designers and execs be afraid to release an action figure of a character who has an overtly feminine-looking face and build? Thankfully, the answer to that was no — there are no attempts in this set to hide that Rey is a female character. I hope this set sells well and that its success bodes well for future LEGO action figures, not just from Star Wars but also other themes.
In spite of the whole headgear issue, she’s my favorite of the buildable figures so far. She looks very authentic to the character, she has great proportions, she has an interesting color scheme (much less monochrome than the Luke, Kylo, Phasma, and First Order Stormtrooper figures), she has a unique outfit (not just generic trooper armor), and of course she’s based on such an epic character to top things off. ^_^ She’d be a little bit better if she had some curved slopes on the back of her thighs to fill them out a bit better, like the Finn, Poe, and First Order Stormtrooper buildable figures all have. But that’s an easy fix, and I think she still offers a great value for a $20 figure.