Aayla Secura

One chick. Two chick. Red chick. Blue chick: An agile and adept Jedi Knight, Aayla Secura wields her blue lightsaber with graceful precision and sensuous form. Many adversaries are lured by the sultry Twi'lek's notable style, but few are a match for her empathic reponses and shrewd parry. Although often more impetuous than her fellow Jedi, Aayla never relinquishes to anger or agression - an indispensible Jedi trait during the galaxy's current state of turmoil. Since this is a Vintage Collection release, there is no biographical information on the back of the card - just generic marketing chatter about the toyline itself. So that paragraph up above comes from the back of the 2003 release, which is the one pictured as the inspiration for this toy (though that may have more to do with it being her first action figure than any real, intended connection). Got it? Hopefully that all made sense, and wasn't too confusing. Aayla was played by Amy Allen, a production assistant at ILM - grabbing someone out of the hallway and painting them blue was faster and easier than casting an actress (and made more sense, since she didn't have any lines). The face on this toy is the best Aayla there's ever been, even trumping Sideshow's 12" offering - nothing to shake a stick at! The figure is packaged wearing her large brown jedi robe, but no one is going to leave that on for long. Beneath it, she's clad in her usual brown leathers: a headband (mainly used to disguise the transition between actress and prosthetic) with thing strips wrapped all the way down her lekku; a shirt that's more like a sports bra with a single sleeve; a belt with short flaps in the front and back, plus a few loose strings hanging down; tight pants; and knee-high boots. That may make her sound like she's going out to a dance club, but as far as female fighters go, she's actually pretty well covered. The texture on the clothes is sculpted nicely, making each section look like a different kind of fabric. The 2003 Aayla was released when Hasbro was giving everything fixed dynamic poses, so there was a special callout on the bacck of her packaging touting "9 points of articulation for exciting poses!" Yes, nine; look at them go. This one, clearly, is a vast improvement. She moves at the ankles, knees, hips, torso, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and neck, and most of them are swivel/hinge joints. The wrists are plain swivels, but the head and torso are balljoints, meaning you can get a ton of sexy and powerful poses out of the figure. Her right hand is molded with the trigger finger extended, in case you want to give her a blaster. She doesn't come with one, but it's nice to have the option. Her only accessories (other than the robe) are two versions of her lightsaber: one ignited, the other just a hilt to hang from her belt. Both hands can hold the sabers, naturally, but her left hand is posed with the first two fingers extended - a neat and unusual choice. In the original design stages, Aayla Secura was going to be, in the words of artist Jan Duursema, "a little fish girl." That probably wouldn't have caught George's eye, she wouldn't have made it into the movies, and we wouldn't have this awesome figure today. -- 04/27/14

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