Rathtar W/Bala-Tik Review:
The Rathtar W/Bala-Tik falls into the
new $19.99 MSRP "Beast" assortment. If you take the pack-in figure to be a $7-$8 value, this places the Rathtar at a $12-$13 price range which is fair for what you get.
The Rathtar comes unassembled in the box behind and to the left of the figure. The Rathtar consists of a fist sized main body cast in heavy vinyl with a softer vinyl ring for the end of the mouth containing teeth and several hard vinyl tentacles that need to be inserted into their corresponding cavities (the tentacles have small letters molded into them and you need to consult the instructions for proper placement). There is a small vinyl patch on its backside that leads me to believe that at some time during the design phase this creature was meant to have either a "Jurassic Park"-style damage reveal or that area was/is where the embedded electronic chip was supposed to go/is (the body has the "Force Link" symbol on its belly though). The insertion of the tentacles is tricky as they do not want to go all of the way into the cavities without applying a decent amount of force (this might be problematic for smaller kids). Many people have been complaining that the tentacles pop out easily, but I think this is more of a case of them not being fully inserted than any faulty design by Hasbro. All but one of my tentacles are in nice and firmly. The hold out has a somewhat deformed plug on the end that I will just trim down for a better fit. The paintwork is nice and crisp with very little overspray or bleed through.
The included Bala-Tik figure is pretty nice despite being a 5 POA figure. He has clean sculpt work all around and the joints all move freely. He suffers from the lack of adequate articulation and the fact that his coat tails are molded to the back of his legs instead of being a separate piece of vinyl. As a background figure for dioramas he will suffice though. I like the fact that he appears to be wearing a sci-fi tuxedo, which makes him radically different from any other Star Wars figure ever produced. The headsculpt has a lot of character, I am not sure how close it resembles the actor as I only saw TFA once and didn't really care for it, but it works as a new head I didn't already have in my fodder box. The figure includes a cool blaster rifle as well.
The Rathtar was one of the few things I liked from TFA and I am very happy to have one in my collection. At the $19.99 price point, I am hesitant to get more right now, but when they inevitably get marked down after the Holidays I will certainly grab up a few more for my dioramas.
Big thanks go out to James Gouldsmith, who sent this Rathtar to me.
