Review : Star Wars Black Series Enfys Nest & Swoop Bike, Solo : A Star Wars Story
- Mephitsu
- Jan 20, 2019
- 10 min read
Welcome to our review of the Star Wars Black Series Enfys Nest and Swoop Bike. This is a deluxe release in the Star Wars 6 inch scale Black Series and is number 5 in the vehicles released to date in the red, phase 3, packaging.
Packaging
On arrival, the Enfys Nest set looks to follow the same principles as the two smaller vehicles from 2017, Luke & Rey's speeder. The colour scheme of the packaging is consistent with the Black Series phase 3 with a black colour base colour and white Star Wars logo and red character text. The vehicle releases do go a step further on the black of the packaging and alongside the usual grey lined illustration are snippets and panels of blueprints and stats for the vehicle included.
The figure, Enfys Nest, is presented in a window to the bottom right. She sits against a red card back as with the standard releases. Above her, and to the side, are two further novelties for the Black Series - colour images of the contents. These are of course important in this case as the Swoop Bike itself is not displayed in anyway and is hidden inside in parts.
When you turn the box round the usual red side spine is in place and is stamped with the #05 and the character name. As you look at this you realise this side of the box looks quite fat and the numbering looks a little misplaced. The reason for this is the decision to pack this set in a different size box to the other releases. The width and height are reduced, while the depth of the box is nearly 50% bigger.
Looking at the bike I can only assume this was a decision made to reduce the number of parts the collector would have to assemble as the chassis of the bike and the fins are quite wide.
The box dimensions in full are 40cm across, 25cm high and 12cm deep.
The opposite spine of the box carries a second Gregory Titus image, this time sloley of Enfys Nest with her staff - above which sits the Star Wars Black Series logo.
The rear of the box and to the left is identical almost to the back of a single figure. We have the logo, the red numbering and then a snippet of text about the figure. Beneath this the Swoop Bike also gets a short write up.
"ENFYS NEST
An extremely dangerous marauder, Enfys Nest is brutally carving out a nefarious reputation for herself and her gang of swoop-riding pirates, the Cloud Riders.
ENFYS NEST'S SWOOP BIKE
The Cloud-Rider gang led by Enfys Nest terrorizes the skies atop their mean-looking swoop bikes. Little more than engines with seats, swoops are hard to control but capable of incredible speed."
The remaining two thirds of the rear of the box are taken up with 6 panels containing different views of the Swoop Bike. These include some text highlighting features of the bike such as "tilting stand" and "open hood to reveal engine" (that last one is somewhat misleading as we will see).
Even the top of the box is decorated with a clear view of he Swoop surrounded by grey technical illustrations and blueprints.
The contents slide out from either of the two side panels. Enfys herself sits in a plastic tray that then sits into the red cardback. Neither are secured well to the rest of the inner brown box and lift out easily. There are no twist ties in use on the figure.
The bike however is tied in place in numerous locations and these are easiest snipped to get the parts out for the bike. Make sure you don't forget the stand and the small bag of parts that sit under the figure.
Constructing the Swoop
For the Swoop you will be presented with 4 parts and a sealed bag of smaller items. You sould also find a small folded instruction leaflet which is pretty useful when you are figuring out some of the smaller items.
The first part is to slot the main body of the bike onto the stand. This stand is similar to the one used with Rey's speeder and is clear, but with a sculpted base to look like billowing hot air. From this rises a peg with a ball joint on top. The ball joint snaps into a single socket on the base of the bike.
Next is the steering vane. The main length of this comes with a triangular black piece that holds all the lengths separate in the box. This needs to be pulled off and discarded.
You then take the separate vein and clip this on to the end to make the three fanned shape.
It is then just a case of combining the two halves. The various points of the steering vane correspond to sockets on the main body of the bike and each need to be lined up and kept lined up while you push and lock in place. It is a touch tricky to get lined up, but not frustratingly so.
With the bulk of the bike assembled you can now move onto the final bag which contains four shaped pieces of beige plastic. These are pistons essentially so one half slots into the other half and they can be moved up and down.
The wider end of these hooks onto a matching hook on the chassis of the bike. The smaller end lines up with and clips onto a protruding piece just under the handlebars. Again these are a bit tricky to start with.
Sculpt & Paint : Swoop Bike 4/5
The first thing with the Bike is the sheer scale and size of the thing. While Luke and Rey's speeders were big, they were still fairly petit and shelf friendly. This beast, once assembled is enormous and weighs in at 53cm (21 inches) from front to back. It is tall too, standing 23.5cm (over 9 inches) high from floor to the top of the rear fin.
These dimensions are fairly consistent with the reported dimensions of the modified Caelli-Merced Skyblade-330 as per the Solo Visual Guide. Hasbro therefore don't seem to have scrimped on scale as happens with the 3.75" line.
The bike is cast in beige plastic for the outer panels and a darker grey for the internal workings. There are plenty of areas of detail to inspect, particularly around the engines. The red and black markings are painted onto the base plastic and are crisp and clear.
Weathering is minimal, but does exist with the application of silver scratches on parts of the body to simulate where paint has been chipped off. Like the previous two speeders, perhaps an attempt to weather this more would have taken it on another few notches. As it stands it is very clean, especially round those boosters which sit shiny and grey?
Sculpt & Paint : Enfys Nest 3/5
Enfys Nest, like her Swoop, cuts an impressive figure on screen. Here in hand she is a little less intimidating in 6 inch form.
The figure comes only with a masked head, so no removable option to reveal an Erin Kellyman head beneath. This sculpted mask is a good representation of the screen prop with good proportions and angles for the various protruding elements. It is just far too clean and light and needs to be much darker and dirtier.
The soft goods are too fluffy and shiny and not the ragged cloak Enfys wears. The material sheds massively, is too bulky, and is not easy to coax into place and you end up with tufts sticking up all over. While I like soft goods in places, this might have been better as rubberised sculpted piece. In fact part of it is just that as we have a section of sculpted cloak attached to the rear of the helmet? This looks much better than the feathery cape.
At the end of each arm are the panels we see in the film convert into shields. These are sculpted closed with red and grey paint over the beige. It might have been nice to see these open up, or have a swap out piece to make the shield - something they managed on the 3.75" Vintage version.
The remainder of the body is quite plain as a grey undersuit down to the grey boots with just those silver booster sticking out to either side. Of course over this at the top is the tribal necklace of teeth and regalia - very shiny clean teeth. This piece is again too clean and tidy.
The lower skirt does not work either. Here they've ditched soft goods for rubbery plastic. That means there is no flow to the skirts and they sit too straight when posing the figure, and they aren't great when riding the Swoop either. The skirt is also bright and clean, not what we see on Enfys at all - and certainly an odd choice to leave it this way when other Solo figures like the Mimban Trooper and L3-37 have been weathered successfully.
The figure is finished by the cloak, back to soft goods with a black outer colour and red inner colour. Lando would be proud of this, all shiny and new and not a drop of dirt or fading. It is cut of a very thick fabric so sticks to one shape fanned out to either side like a processional piece and not a battle worn Bandit's cape.
The biggest, or rather smallest, issue with Enfys is her size. To my eye she looks too small, both in bulk with her clothing being made slim and tight and in height. In actual fact if you convert her reported height from the Solo guide (1.67m) to 1/12 scale (14cm) then she is about right. But then accuracy isn't everything and when you see Enfys on screen she is not substantially smaller than Han and stands as tall as others in her gang.
Accessories : Enfys Nest 2/5
Enfys is armed with her Electroripper staff. This is cast piece in grey plastic and is as tall as the figure itself (14cm). There is no real detail to this piece and no paint applied at all.
Can you spot a theme here when I say it would have looked much better with a weathering coat.
It fits in either hand and can be posed in a two handed position thanks to the elbow and arm articulation.
Articulation : Enfys Nest 3/5
Enfys Nest has the standard 16 points of articulation for a Star Wars Black Series figure. The head is ball jointed and can turn - but it does take the fur collar with it as it turns, I suspect the fur is attached to the helmet not the shoulders. There is also the larger piece of sculpted cloak that is part of the helmet that snakes down the back of the figure that has an impact. All of this combines reduces the range of movement and leaves the helmet a little static.
The arms have a full range of movement from ball jointed shoulders, rotating single elbow joints and pivot wrists. The one benefit of having the cloak as soft goods is that this arm movement is not impeded.
Enfys has a very mobile torso ball joint that is hidden under the necklace chest section. Without the need to sculpt anything under this decoration the body has been left slim and relatively plain so the movement is expansive to rotate the upper torso - and more importantly for that Swoop riding position to crunch those abs into a riding position.
The legs are fully mobile also with a ball joint hip, thigh swivel, double jointed knees and ankle rockers. While this gives some decent action stances, it comes into its own when riding the Swoop so the legs can be bent and adjusted to sit correctly - albeit with that rubbery skirt sticking out a little oddly.
The leg joints are pretty loose out of the box and the ankle rockers on our figure are very weak which does cause Enfys to slide over and topple if posing her on her own.
Riding the Swoop 3/5
While the bike is not articulated as such it does have some movement built in so we will cover that here. The stand, like Rey's speeder, is essentially an articulation point and is built so that the Swoop can be posed on an angle as though it is banking.
The handlebars are articulated to work with the figure and as they move back and forth those two pivoted pieces we assembled work with them.
What doesn't work is the so called "pop the hood" to see the engine. The packaging makes this look like a flip up piece - instead the seat simply pops off with a grey plastic engine underneath - with very little detail. When you pop the seat you also manage to disconnect the hydraulic couplers too - which is a poor design. We don't know if this was a planned feature that was scaled back and the box not update, or if Hasbro are trying to show the feature as more than it really is?
The boring grey staff has a home on either side of the seat with two clips to hold it in place. This works well, but with the clips being a harder plastic they may wear over time if this function is used repeatedly.
Enfys can be positioned on the Swoop reasonably easily, although there is no peg to foot setup like the older Imperial Speeder Bikes. I'd start with the hands and once they are gripped onto the steering adjust the rest of the body to suit.
As we've mentioned, Enfys may be a touch undersized, and that does show on the bike too with her feet not quite lining up with the pedals - although these are adjustable so you can play with the position.
There is only about really riding pose available for Enfys on the Swoop. Once locked with he hands on the handlebars and the feet on the pedals there is not much else that can be done and not enough torso movement to have her leaning forward as we see her ride in the film when attacking the gang on Vandor-1.
The cloak doesn't quite behave too being of such thick fabric, but you can play around and have it wrapped round the rear fin of the bike to resemble it blowing behind her in the wind.
The other posing options are of course to have Enfys stood next to her Swoop, and this looks good - although again Enfys just looks and feels a bit small.
The other option is to use these rider stirrups either side of the rear fin. These are shaped like footholds and where additional passengers might be carried. You can pose Enfys here, and if we ever get any of her gang she can take them for a ride too.
Summary
Enfys Nest and her Swoop Bike are a release that a lot of people (including myself) will look at and think it is not worth the RRP of circa £70 here in the UK. It is only when you have the thing in hand and see the sheet scale of it that you do realise the higher price.
That being said £70 is still a lot of money, comparable almost to the SDCC Luke and Landspeeder. And for that money I think this release has missed some key components. The engine bay is an obvious one which doesn't work, and when you do "reveal" the engine it is just a boring block of plastic - nothing special you'd want to display. The bike warrants more weathering and the scratches and dirt taken one step further.
Enfys herself is also far too clean for her Bandit lifestyle and the soft goods and rubber goods don't quite work for me. The top of her cape looks more feather boa than a rough fur cloak, and the cape is too clean and crisp. Moving to rubber goods for the lower section is then an odd choice and this skirt piece fails to sit well on the Swoop.
With a poor weapon accessory and some loose joints out of the box, I score the whole package of Enfys Nest and the Swoop a 3 out of 5.
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