Dash Rendar

"Han and Chewie as they appeared in SOTE. Chewbacca is shown in 'Snoova' Bounty Hunter Disguise and Han appears in Temporary Surrogate Knockoff Character Outfit." We still love you, POFToo!!!. Pilot and mercenary Dash Rendar flew a snowspeeder during the Battle of Hoth, and Princess Leia later hired him to protect Luke Skywalker from Black Sun and Prince Xizor's ruthless bounty hunters. Yes, and what you think happened next depends on what version of the story you read - see, since Shadows of the Empire was "a movie with everything but the movie," its story was told in several different media, and each of them focused on different facets of the full tale. Like, did you think Boba Fett went straight from the Carbonite chamber on Cloud City to Jabba's Palace to deliver Han Solo? You fool. You utter chump. Why would you believe a thing that you never had any reason to not believe, you senseless dunderpate! The Shadows of the Empire comic shows the other bounty hunters trying to steal Han's body from Boba so they can get the reward from Jabba themselves. Doesn't your life feel richer now that you know that? None of the other materials show that, just the comic. Similarly, while both the novel and the comic suggest Dash's ship blows up during the climactic battle, only the trading cards (and an epilogue scene if you beat the videogame on hard mode) reveal that he jumped to hyperspace at the last second, leaving him available for use in future stories. That multi-pronged approach to storytelling did have its drawbacks, though: this was the first time the various licensees were trying to portray characters who didn't have a real actor playing them, and since all the things were coming out at the same time, they couldn't use one another for reference, so they all ended up with their own details of what Dash Rendar should look like. As Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff (an author who worked on later Star Wars books) put it, "...depending on who's doing the beholding, Dash is a brunette, blond, redheaded guy standing somewhere around 6 feet, who's well-built/buff/bulging with muscles, weighing in at somewhere between 150 and 250 pounds... (But look! They're all wearing the same body armor.)" Naturally, that means this toy had a lot of options to draw from, and none of them were going to make everybody happy. So how did Hasbro deal with that? By making sure everybody would be equally disappointed! This look, with a clean-shaven face and his brown hair done in a totally '90s butt-cut, doesn't really match any of the existing art. Frankly, it looks like nothing so much as Jon Hamm when he was on that dating show. Ultimately, Dash's design was mainly driven by the needs of the videogame. Since it was developed for the Nintendo 64, that limited what could be done: building everything out of four dozen of 1995's finest polygons meant he had to have short hair, tight clothing... and big chunky shoulder pads to hide the fact the shoulders just clipped into the body rather than being attached. That's right, Dash's most memorable costume trait was just a way of getting around visual glitches. Not since Silent Hill's fog was used to conceal how little of the game map could be rendered at once has a system limitation been so influential! The pads on the figure are sculpted to look like cloth, as they should be. I admit, he does look more slender than I'd have anticipated, but the armor on his chest and shoulders gets a nice level of detail, and the center section of his suit is quilted. The card set showed Dash carrying some kind of thick pistol that had a power cord connecting it to him - or maybe just one of those retractable keychains janitors and security guards use. That was distinctive, but not copied anywhere else, so this toy just gets the same type of blaster Han Solo carried. His gun belt is a separate piece that's glued in on the spine, so it will flex out of the way of any movement while not getting pushed entirely out of a place; a good compromise! Articulation is fine. No thigh swivels, of course, because Chris Cocks needs to save every penny he can if he's going to force the entire company to move from Rhode Island to Boston, from a building they own to one they're paying rent on every month, and then to sell the entire thing to the same kind of private equity company that's done wonders for Toys "Я" Us and Red Lobster. You know, they really could have gotten rid of the neck joint, first; it's good, and adds to the expressiveness of a character, but there's already a barbell head, so a balljoint at the base of the neck isn't adding a whole lot. Not as much as thighs would. The pauldrons on his armor are soft PVC, in addition to turning with the arm, so they don't hinder any of the movement. It's surprising his gloves can turn, though. While Dash Rendar was absolutely created to fill the Han-Solo-shaped gap in Shadows of the Empire's narrative, the creators really did want him to be more than just a knockoff. Comic artist Kilian Plunkett envisioned him as Han Solo, but rougher (kind of like DJ, but even grubbier); novelist Scott Perry, meanwhile, imagined Dash more toward the successful, suave Lando Calrissian side of the equation, with a cape and long rockstar hair. The final character split the difference between the two ideas, but unfortunately, when you split the difference between "guy who's worse than Han Solo" and "guy who's better than Han Solo," what you're left with is "guy who's Han Solo." The directive Steve Perry was given was that Dash Rendar should be like one of the pilots in Top Gun - talented, but full of himself. Unfortunately, since Dash was never the focus of any of the narratives (keeping in mind that the game is about shooting, not story), that doesn't really come through, and so we only ever see him the way other characters se him. And they see him as kind of a jerk. This may not be the Dash Rendar I would have made if I were in charge of anything (he'd be brawnier, and have shorter hair the proper color), but if nothing else, at least now Xizor has somebody to fight. -- 11/01/25 What "Legends" book would you like toys from? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.