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Whatever you do, don't put this figure on the same shelf ss Tobias Beckett.
A feared bounty hunter known for her chalk-white skin and built-in comlink antenna, Aurra Sing was an expert sniper and trained assassin who would work for anyone who paid her.
We often say that such-and-such character "is the Boba Fett of" whatever property they're from, but that sounds weird when in this case, where Aurra Sing would be the Boba Fett of Star Wars. She appeared for about six frames in The Phantom Menace, doing nothing other than watching Anakin's podrace, but fans were intrigued. She then proceeded to never appear in another movie again, making that popularity and anticipation meaningless. Fortunately, picking up dropped threads is what The Clone Wars was all about, so there we got to see her training young Boba for his future job as a bounty hunter, working with the likes of Hondo Ohnaka and Cad Bane. She was planned to appear in some Season 6 episodes, including one that would have seen her death; but when that season was cancelled, the storyarc wasn't far enough along to warrant getting completed for those bonus Netflix or Disney+ seasons, so now all we get is an off-hand mention in Solo.
This figure is sold with a Clone Wars logo on the packaging, but it still gets the new Photo Real paint printing for the face. That doesn't make sense on things like the Rebels re-releases (who, exactly, are you supposed to be representing when all they've ever been is a cartoon?), but Aurra does have a real actress behind her. Is this supposed to look like Michonne Bourriague, or did they just use the technology to make sure the generic eyes were painted in the right place?
Aurra wears a red jumpsuit to contrast with her white skin. Well, normally red, more of an orange here, which does match the way she was rendered in the cartoon. She has strips of cloth tied around her wrists and left bicep, and wears a brown vest and crossed holsters around her waist. A pair of silver chains dangle from the holsters for fashion reasons, presumably, and there are a few little beads tied into her hair. And you know she's definitely got the long antenna sticking out of her scalp!
We mentioned how her clothes are orange instead of red, but that's not the only paint issue here. If you look at the last Aurra Sing figure, she's got all sorts of paint for the details on the back of her belts and the stuff tucked onto her vest. This release is almost entirely bare back there, despite being 50% larger and having a lot more room for detail in the sculpt. This might be acceptable if the price of the figures hadn't just gone up three bucks - I got an online order in while Target still listed her at $19.99, but everywhere else had already bumped her to $22.99 - but if you're going to raise the price, you can't skimp on production at the same time.
Even the accessories get short shrift this way. Her pistols are entirely unpainted, and her sniper rifle only gets some brown on the grip and stock. Compare those to what we got in the smaller scale, and they look really simple. She doesn't even get her case full of stolen lightsabers.
She does at least still get the high level of Black Series articulation, with the only thing we'd maybe want added being a swivel for her ponytail? The hips seem to be the type that rotate at an angle, and her long-fingered hands are dhaped to put two fingers on her pistols' twin triggers.
Aurra's "death" happened in the most easily reversible way imaginable: she was pushed off something high and they're "pretty sure" the fall killed her. That's a recipe for a surprise future return! Whether she turned out to be an important character or not, Aurra Sing remains popular with fans, so it's good she finally appears in The Black Series. It's just a shame it couldn't have happened sooner, when she'd be painted better, have more accessories, and cost less.
-- 11/28/21
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