Ah, Rune Haako and Nute Gunray.  Nute Gunray and Rune Haako.  The Tango and Cash of 1999 peg warmers.  Wherever you’d find one in a store, you’d find the other.  Together they formed a symbiont circle of poor retail sales.  In the Nute Gunray review we covered the reasons for the fan backlash agains the Neimoidian figures.  It ranges from offense to annoyance, with the latter likely assuming the brunt of the blame.  A poor reception of a character almost always translates to poor performance at the cash register.  The dynamic is currently playing out at the time of this review with the Vintage Collection Snoke.  But as time marches on, and the library of figures from a given source grows, you realize you need these figures in your displays to complete scenes regardless of how you feel about the character.  if you have the Mechno-chair Darth Sidious, you need Rune Haako and Nute Gunary figures as companion pieces.  That is our way in the one true scale.  It’s the better way.

According to Wookieepedia, Rune Haako is Nute Gunray’s right hand man, but at the start of the movie it feels like he plays second fiddle to Daultay Dofine.  Either that, or Dofine had a vicious habit of talking out of turn.  It feels like Haako is the third man in the well-hatted Neimoidian management triumvirate at the start of the movie.  But once holo-Sidous hits Dofine with the “stunted slime” slam, from which there is no comeback, he slinks away to the background, and Haako assumes a prominent role for the remainder of the film.  This means, like it or not, an Episode I collection is incomplete without a Rune Haako figure. 

From the neck down, this is a more viable figure than the Episode I Nute Gunray figure for a couple of reasons.  The first is that it sports an extra pair of articulation points with swivel elbows.  This allows for more display options, including the ability to strike Haako’s iconic pose which looks like a nervous hand ringing.  The other reason is that the costume did not require those arms to be pinned under a plastic outer robe which would limit the range of motion.  The swivel hips are restricted by the lower plastic robes, however.  That doesn’t matter much because this is another “just needs to stand there” figure. The head sculpt is dated however.  As with the Gunray figure, there is zero subtlety or nuance when sculpting the texture of the facial skin.  It’s crude and exacerbated by a highly contrasting wash.  Again, look at image 13 above and notice how much better the head sculpt on 2012’s Dofine figure was executed.  Because of the additional articulation and the ability to strike a perfect on-screen pose, this figure earns a somewhat respectable 5 out of 10.  BUT, as with Gunray, we need a modern figure of Rune Haako.  He is too prominent of a character to be relegated to a 20th century figure.  I know I’m going to get flamed for this stance in the comments (again).  BRING IT ON, SUCKERS!  YOU AIN’T GOT NOTHIN’ ON ME!  YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF STUNTED SLIMES!