J’Quille was a member of the whipid species, just like EU fan favorite, K’Kruhk.  He is barely in ROTJ, but there were enough movie stills and behind the scenes shots of him to get people interested in the character…or at least the costume.  He was “seen” mostly in the palace, but there are stills of him chilling out on the sail barge as it travelled to the Pit of Carkoon, taking him to his eventual death at the hands of the Jedi Madman. 

One of the best behind the scenes stills of J’Quille and Tanus.

A recreation using Saga J’Quille, Saga Tanus Spijek, and POTJ Tessek. 

He had enough visibility to get on Hasbro’s radar, and in 2004, as part of the Saga line, J’Quille was immortalized in plastic.  He was done so in the same wave as Tanus Spijek, another blink-and-you’ll-miss-him character.  Hasbro did something that was very common for them for years.  They retooled a mold to get multiple characters out of it.  It seems they designed these two characters together, in the most cost-efficient manner, as it was probably unlikely that either character would have been made if they were both created out of unique tooling.  This methodology has given us scores of minor characters and variants that we would otherwise never see, so despite some flaws and shortcuts, we should start the review on a happy note.

J’Quille is a rather large figure.  The body stands taller than most other figures, but is also pretty thick.  He’s got a huge, ugly, and toothy face, which is appropriate for the species that we see on screen.  The paint applications on the face really bring out the details of the hair, eyes, and tusks.  The body is covered with hair, and we get a nice bit of paint washes to highlight the sculpting details throughout.  The figure is a far cry from having modern articulation standards.  He’s got swivel joints at the neck, waist, shoulders, elbows, wrists, and hips.  The swivel/cut articulation at the elbow is usually better than nothing (take that, 5POA!), but the frustration experienced trying to make useful poses is almost not even worth it.  As far as legs, there is no real purpose to the hip joints without knees or ankles, but they do help get the figure solidly planted with feet flat on the ground. 

J’Quille comes with a weird rifle, that is reminiscent of some WW1 machine guns.  He can grip it reasonably well in either hand, but there is insufficient articulation in the arms to allow you to pose it in a realistic manner.  This type of rifle really requires a THWG, and that just isn’t possible here.  Of course, the weapon is made of very soft plastic, so you could probably bend it into a THWG position, if you wanted to try.  Also, as with most of the figures in this phase of the Saga line, J’Quille comes with a dark gray/black figure stand, embossed with a generic Star Wars logo.   

Here’s a quick note about how we rate figures.  I’m saying this figure needs a resculpt and recommend that Hasbro do that, but I assign this priority as negligible.  This means it needs work to be up to modern standards, and would deserve such an upgrade from Hasbro, but that it is way at the bottom of the list of things to do.  It’s good enough for a long time to come, but I acknowledge that there is plenty of room for improvement.  This figure is certainly worthy of display, but it’s not close to being the definitive version of J’Quille.  I give it a 6/10, but I’m happy to have it.