Giant scary beasts almost eating the heroes is a staple of the Star Wars movies.  In Attack of the Clones, there were three scary beasts that tried to eat the heroes during the attempted execution in Petranaki Arena.  The other two were somewhat grounded in real life, and were perhaps a bit less terrifying.  You had a space rhino and a space tiger.  Definitely intimidating, but not too crazy.  Then this thing was led out (its name was Ronnie, by the way) by its Geonosian handlers.  It’s a space crab the size of a tyranosaurus!  Now that’s terrifying.

The three animals were brought out into the arena, and then were each guided towards one of the convicted felons chained to the stone towers.  Obi-Wan belonged to this acklay.  Or did he?  [Spoiler follows:  All the acklay are belong to Obi-Wan.  - End of spoiler.]. The acklay was huge, strong, and surprisingly nimble.  It also possessed a frightening roar (one of my favorite sound effects from the films, actually.)

Hasbro produced a beast to go in your collection along with the dianoga, wampa, rancor, and the opee sea killer that came before.  As a toy, it has it’s good points.  The sculpt and paint job are the main positives here.  It looks pretty great.  The head sculpt is sufficiently scary, and includes a snapping jaw feature.  Actually - it’s more like a snapping skull.  The “crown” is actually the movable part, along with most of the skull, while the jaw itself stays in place.  I know this may be trivial, but it’s important to note that this figure has a movable cranium (not mandible), which may is rare, if not unique, in the Star Wars line.  This is the type of hard hitting journalism that you’ve come to expect from Bantha Skull.  Our display case of Pulitzers (currently empty, for some reason) is testament to this.

The articulation is strange and upsetting.  The six “shoulders” each have a sort of ball joint looking point of articulation, but because of the way the legs are designed, there are limited positions in which they can be posed.  The “elbows” and “wrists” are hinge joints, so just like human figures with swivels (or no articulations) at the elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles, it basically renders the ball joints moot.  It’s not easy to manipulate the arms/legs, despite a total of 18 points of articulation.  But with some patience, you can coax a few good display poses out the thing.

A 19th point of articulation is the right front claw.  There’s a hinge so you could have the acklay grab victim.  The cranium is a 20th point of articulation. Both the claw and the head have “snap” articulation, so they can’t be permanently displayed in the open position, as they snap back to close.  I’d prefer to have my acklay roar, but Hasbro ruined this dream for me.

Finally, for some reason, the acklay has a removable panel for a belly, which reveals an opening stomach cavity, and removable guts.  In a move that most people never saw coming, Hasbro repainted the guts of a previously released tauntaun for this purpose.  Yes, these are the same, just a different color.  It’s one of the oddest repaints in the history the line.  It also proves, at least via Hasbro, that acklays and tauntauns shared some internal physiology, which makes complete sense.  These 2 toys, along with the exploding General Grievous, each have separate gut pieces.  Star Wars is fun!

This is a great addition to your Geonosis Arena setup.  It’s not a perfect toy, but it looks great on display.  I’ll give it a 6, but it really could have been an 8 if the articulation were improved just a bit.