Geonosians were an insectoid race whose industriousness was harnessed to help turn out immense numbers of battle droids for the Confenderacy during The Clone Wars.  The design of the Geonosians were taken from early sketches of the Neimodians.  Initially, Neimoidians were to have elongated faces, but this evolved into what became the on-screen species in The Phantom Menace.  These sketches were repurposed later as the basis for the Geonosians.  The idea, in-universe, was that the B1 Battle Droids were generally modeled after their Geonosian builders.  Their flying bug-like attributes made the species a striking departure from what we normally saw in Star Wars, at least in large numbers.  We saw insectoid species before, but never in large numbers in their home territory.

Unfortunately, Hasbro struggled for a while to make a good Geonosian figure.  This was the first attempt.  The coloring, lack of articulation, and balance issues made it a less than ideal figure, which probably stopped many collectors from army building them.  Hasbro would later figure it out, and eventually produced some excellent Geonosians.  This figure has some odd coloring, lacks any sort of “pants” (most Geonosians that we see on screen had some kind of armor or clothing around their hips, at a minimum), and has balancing problems.  Getting it to stand upright can be a bit frustrating due to the odd positioning of the feet and the soft plastic used for the legs.  Once you manage this, the figure is in an aggressive stance.  Not necessarily ideal, but it does serve the intended design purpose.

The warrior has swivel articulation at the neck, shoulders, hips, and waist.  But it also has ball joints for both wings.  The wings add some nice value to the figure.  They are clear membranes, attaching to the figure’s back in such a way that they can be posed for flight or just folded down neutrally.  In a pinch, if you can’t get the figure to stand, you can also move the wings into position so that they touch the ground and act as another point of contact.  Not bad.

For a weapon, the figure comes with an electropole.  He can hold it to his side like a ceremonial staff, or he can grip it in both hands like a spear.  Additionally, there is an included blue energy field which wraps around the electropole to simulate its activation.  The Geonosian wranglers, riding orrays into the arena, used these electro poles to help control the trio of beasts that were guided towards the hero prisoners.

The figure isn’t great, and saw some huge upgrades later on down the line, but it definitely still works in your Geonosis dioramas by giving variety, numbers, and depth to the local species.  I’ll give it a 4, but it still deserves a place somewhere in your collection.