Good ol’ Squidhead.  He’s lurking in the background all over Jabba’s Palace and on board the Khetanna.  He doesn’t have any lines, but he does like to be nearby when other people are about to suffer some terrible fate.  Basically he’s a voyeur and a jerk.  But maybe that’s because the folks at Lucasfilm didn’t bother giving him a proper name and just used his physical features as the inspiration for his unflattering nickname.  I guess it would be like someone from Mon Cal calling Luke Skywalker a Blurkohead.  You know, because all humans look like a blurko and a Quarren had a baby.  What’s that now?  You don’t know what a blurko is?  Well neither do I, because I just made it up.  Like when someone pretends like they visited some nonsense place called Kamloops.  But trust me, a blurko has a really strong resemblance to a human face.  It’s hilarious.

So I’m going to just go ahead and move this conversation forward.  Squidhead was an interesting enough design that he made the Kenner roster.  He was a pretty cool figure back in 1983.  He had a soft goods cape and a nice sculpt.  I remember really liking the figure when I was a kid.  But like most kids in the 80’s, I was an anti-squidite, so I had no real respect for the guy.  But later on, Hasbro updated the character with the first modern sculpt in the 2000 POTJ line, and honored him with the now proper name of Tessek.  He even came with a little Force File insert, so you could pretend he carried around his bio and stats in a diner-menu-sized format, which he handed to people when he first met them.  He was a pioneer, besides being a voyeuristic jerk.

This figure isn’t bad, especially for the time.  Hasbro’s figures really made a leap forward in realism around the time of the Episode I / POTF2 Commtech line, and they took that knowledge to continue updating figures in the collector friendly Power of the Jedi line.  Tessek has 7 points of articulation.  In addition to the basic 5, he’s got a swivel waist and swivel right elbow.  With that elbow articulation, he’s able to do his iconic move, which is to gently rub his chin with the back of his hand.  Remember that?  It was on all the promotional posters.  Originally Return of the Jedi was billed as Squids Have Feelings, Too, but some heavy editing by Lucas’s inner circle helped save that trainwreck.  Anyway, the sculpt is quite nice.  He’s got a separately sculpted cape, which adds depth to the figure.  His lower tunic conceals a working holster that holds the included blaster well.  He can also hold the blaster firmly. 

Despite being a figure that is soon to complete its second decade of life, it certainly doesn’t look bad in the background of your Palace or Barge displays.  But let’s face it, this figure does need a modern update.  If you can take a Hasbro figure, put it next to its Kenner ancestor, and actually debate which one is better, then it’s time for a new one.  Again, that’s really a left handed compliment (because left handed people are the devil and got no reason to live).  As mentioned, both figures are actually not terrible, and one might argue that the Kenner sculpt is one of the best of that entire line, and the soft goods cape helps give it a puncher’s chance in a fight with this POTJ version.  If anyone has any doubts, just look at what Hasbro did with a modern Yakface.  Your barge and your palace both deserve a new Tessek.

The figure gets a respectable 5/10, and it’s acceptable for now to have him on display.  But Hasbro should have this towards the top of the “resculpt for TVC list.”