OK Lars, it's time for Mr Exciting himself, is it? Surely every child's favourite figure, General Madine was at the very forefront of both the film and every childhood Star Wars playtime adventure!... Or not.
Why in God's name did Kenner choose this tedious offering over a Slave Leia, a Y-Wing Pilot, an Ishi Tib, a Gargan or an Oola?! They could have made any of those characters (hell, they could have made *ANY* other character!), but instead they chose to make this POS; a character so dull and boring he makes John Major look like Indiana Jones. I bet most kids wouldn't even remember him from the film (Madine, not Indiana or John ;-))! And then, just in case any child anywhere in the cosmos was still labouring under the impression there might be something remotely interesting about him, they dispensed with his brown jacket and made it grey instead; a perfect visual metaphor for tedium if ever there was one!
You might have guessed this isn't a favourite figure of mine ;-). However, I will say this much for it; it is, quite astonishingly, responsible for one of the rarest carded variants out there, in its Tri-Logo version. Plus, the figure itself does actually have some vaguely interesting loose variants, if you like that sort of thing... which I do! :-D
Jokes aside, this figure holds the dubious distinction of being the first MOC I ever owned after I started collecting again in the early 90's. Way back in the late 1980's, I was amazed to find a pair of carded Madines whilst rummaging in my mother's bedroom drawers for some sellotape. I wasn't collecting again yet, but I was still astonished to find them there and so I asked her what she was doing with them. She replied she'd bought them cheaply and thought they might make nice presents for some young lads. I rolled my eyes at that, and felt very sorry for the poor sod who was randomly given a General Madine as a present years after the films had ended! Little was I to know it at the time, but it turned out that I was one of those poor sods, as when, a few years later, I did start collecting again, my mother still had one of them and was quite happy to offload it onto me!
And here it is! A mint Palitoy 65B twin-stemmed General Madine that spent years of its existence languishing unloved in a drawer :-D
General Excitement - 01.jpg
And here are three loose variants. From left to right, a Hong Kong moulded face, light grey hair, light brown belt. A Taiwan moulded face, green-grey hair, dark brown belt. And lastly, a Hong Kong, painted face, dark grey hair, dark brown belt:
General Excitement - 02.jpg
General Excitement - 03.jpg
And just for Lars, those COO's!:
General Excitement - 04.jpg
General Excitement - 05.jpg
is the other a moc ?
