28FIGURES
4MAKERS
2005EARLIEST
2026LATEST
No. I am your father.
THE LEGEND
There was a boy on a desert world who was going to be the greatest of them all, and in a sense he was. What walks the Imperial corridors now is the sentence passed on that boy: a cathedral of black armour built around a burned man, breathing in mechanical prayer, more machine than man and angrier about it than anyone will ever know.
He is the Emperor's executioner and the fleet's dark conscience, a swordsman without equal and a commander who motivates through statistics of a grim kind. Officers measure their careers in how rarely he addresses them. And yet, buried under the respirator's rhythm, the boy persists: it takes a son to find him, and one final choice on one final stair to prove that the greatest of them all was, in the end, exactly that.
OFF THE PAGE
He entered in 1977 wearing samurai armour by way of Ralph McQuarrie, breathing through Ben Burtt's regulator, moving as David Prowse and fighting as Bob Anderson, speaking with James Earl Jones' impossible bass. Film's greatest villain was, from the first frame, a collaboration wearing a single mask.
The 1980 paternity reveal remains cinema's most famous twist, so embedded in culture that people misquote it in unison. Through prequels, Rogue One's corridor massacre and his television returns, Vader has only grown: the rare villain whose silhouette alone, a triangle of black against any doorway, is a complete sentence. Marketing departments have never recovered.
IN SIXTH SCALE
Vader is sixth scale's endurance exam: a fully mechanical wardrobe where every panel gloss, cape drape and helmet line is scrutinised by the most detail-fluent fanbase in collecting. Hot Toys has iterated him across every trilogy era and anniversary, each release inching the dome's sheen and the chest box's glow closer to the screen, and the Star Wars shelf treats each attempt as a referendum.
He is also the character where lightsaber electronics, breathing-audio gimmicks and magnetic capes made their pilgrimage into the hobby. Every approach to the throne is charted below, newest first.
THE SCOUTING REPORT
The Archivist's estimates, scribbled between shelf dustings. Not canon, not law, and absolutely worth arguing about in the Courtyard.
37OVR
SUPER SOLDIER CLASS· BRUISER
LIFESPANEnhanced (100–200 Years)
ORIGINForce-Sensitive
VITALITY35
STRENGTH28
DURABILITY29
SPEED22
BATTLE IQ52
POWER58
ABILITIES & WEAKNESSES
TelekinesisForce ChokeLightsaber CombatPrecognitionCybernetic Dependence
ARMS & ATTIRE
Red LightsaberCybernetic Life-Support Suit
RELEASES BY YEAR
2
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
1
3
8
5
20052026
BY MANUFACTURER
Hot Toys
23
Medicom Toy
3
Honō Studio
1
Sideshow Collectibles
1
FRANCHISES
APPEARS IN
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi 5Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith 4Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi 4Star Wars: Darkside Collection 4Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back 2Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 2A New Hope 2Star Wars Rebels 1Star Wars 1Star Wars Saga 1Star Wars: Rogue One 1Revenge of the Sith 1
EVERY DARTH VADER FIGURE
newest first
