Yay!  My season is extended another game before the inevitable painful end.  Whatever.  It’s been a good ride.  Hopefully The Knicks don’t get completely embarrassed in Game 6 in Indy.

In the interest of (my) time, I’m cutting/pasting Agen Kolar’s background from the review we did for his TLC [Red] BD43 figure:

Agen “Eeth Koth” Kolar is one of those characters that is thoroughly confusing.  After checking out his Wookieepedia page, it’s still kind of a mess.  Basically, it seems that Eeth Koth was portrayed by one actor for the council scenes in TPM (with archival footage used for council scenes in AOTC).  He was then portrayed by another actor for the fight scenes in the Geonosis Arena.  During the editing process, it seems Lucas felt that it seemed the portrayals were different enough that the second performance was then made into a separate character, Agen Kolar.  Since all Zabrak Jedi look the same, nobody thought this was racist at the time.

Agen Kolar eventually replaced Eeth Koth on the Jedi Council.  It’s unclear to me from Wookieepedia as to why, but Eeth Koth was kicked off the council.  I can only assume this is because they were rounding up all the Zabraks living on Coruscant and putting them in internment camps as a response to the whole Darth Maul fiasco.  But the Jedi were brilliant, and knew that by replacing Koth with another Zabrak that looked almost exactly like him, it would appease the Zabraks across the galaxy, and they would look the other way while their brethren on Coruscant were subjected to internment.  In case you are wondering, I just made almost all of that up.  But it is true the Eeth Koth was booted off the Council for some reason, and replaced by Agen Kolar.

Now that this is all cleared up, here’s Agen Kolar from ROTS.  It’s almost as if I never knew this figure existed, even though I’ve had it in my collection since 2005.  Keep reading to find out why!

Anyway, the figure isn’t very good for a few reasons, but Hasbro definitely tried.  To start, they must have approached Agen Kolar the same as most of the other background Jedi in the the line.  They attempted some “cutting edge” stuff to pack more value into it.  Most other such figures included additional articulation or sculpting that put it a half step above most other figures in the ROTS line.  Kolar has a ball jointed neck, shoulders, and knees, along with swivel elbows, wrists, waist, and hips.  Again, sadly, no ankles - something that was bestowed upon Aayla Secura. 

The robe is big and plastic, but looks fairly nice, and is the proper outfit for Kolar when he has his big moment of getting killed immediately by Palpatine.  I always thought it was a poor design where the robe seems to come apart at the shoulder, and it’s one of the reasons I never really cared for it.  But when I needed to pose it for this gallery and review, I was almost literally stunned when I realized that the robe is a 3-piece design mean to be removable.  Mind blown.  I seriously never knew this!  It is possibly the only figure in the entire history of the line to have removable sleeves!  Many other similar characters have the body of the robe as a separately sculpted piece, which is effectively removable, but is also rendered nonsensical to do so because the sleeves remain in place.  But holy crap - removable sleeves!

When the robe is taken away, you’re left with a figure that is only a little more possible.  Whereas the sleeves erased the usefulness of the arms, you can use them to their full effect without the rebe.  Unfortunately, while the shoulders are ball jointed and work well, the elbows are stupid.  They’re swivel, but even that is minimized because the “cut” is at almost no angle, so rotating the elbows accomplishes almost nothing.  The cuffs of the tunic are also sculpted in such a way as to inhibit the usefulness of the wrists.  As for the lower body, it was also useless with the robe, but the lower skirt, which is made of a papery soft goods, is Lilo and Stitched in such a way as to restrict the range of motion of the hips anyway. 

For accessories, you get a hilt that plugs into the belt, and has the dreaded removable green blade.  Kolar also gets the ubiquitious “ship floor” figure stand.

It’s all rather poorly executed and frustrating, but I do have to give the nod to Hasbro for giving it a good try at something new that could have been cool - it just isn’t.  Notable is that this figure is the basis for some welcome tweaks (minus the robe) that became the aforementioned BD43.  That’s a solid figure representing Kolar in AOTC. 

Extra points for effort, minus points for execution.

5 stars.
5/10.