When this Retro Collection Kuiil was announced it was met with apoplexy by the Vintage Collection community.  At the time of that announcement, Kuiil was either already released or confirmed for Mission Fleet, The Black Series, and The Retro Collection.  It was another low moment for Vintage Collection fans who were coming off a year in 2020 where it felt like our business was largerly unwanted.  Fortunately, the dark clouds parted when a TVC Kuiil was officially announced during the I Am Your Father’s Day livestream.  As a result, we can breathe easy and enjoy this Retro Collection Kuiil review.  Were it not for that announcement, this would have been the angriest comment section in Bantha Skull history.

I opened this Kuill and the Retro Collection IG-11 back to back and I was overcome by how great it was to get all these similarly sourced figures in one fell swoop, and I started to get a little bitter.  Getting this many figures from the Mandalorian in TVC is stretching out over years.  The Vintage Collection “Patchwork armor” Mandalorian came out pre-pandemic.  It was that long ago, and we’re still waiting on Kuiil and IG-11.  Both are confirmed, but coming later this year / early next year. But then the obvious occurred to me. This wave represents and entire year’s worth of tooling budget for The Retro Collection.  Of course you’re getting a lot at once, but it’s literally at the expense of everything else.  Still, interactivity sells figures. Hasbro should reorganize the figure year in TVC to give us as many similarly sourced figures in each wave as possible.  Call it themed waves lite, if you will.  Lando and Lobot should have been in the same wave, and likewise for Kuiil and IG-11.

Okay, so this “review” is really just a referendum on the shortcomings of the Vintage Collection so far.  I should probably talk about the figure a little.  The color scheme is a trip.  Both The Mandalorian and Moff Gideon are almost too accurate to their sources for “retro” and then this Kuiil seems to forgo any attempt at accuracy.  The color scheme looks like a reverse Robin Hood (I really hope that “reverse Robin Hood” doesn’t mean something dirty).  It almost reminds me of the vintage Kenner Walrus Man where everything below the neck is freelanced.  In that case this does evoke a “retro” feeling.  As for the above the neck, the head sculpt is absolutely recognizable as an Ugnaught, and it’s wearing Kuiil’s flight cap and googles, but I wouldn’t say it particularly evokes the character.  It’s another notch in the figure’s retro credentials, and I feel it’s tied with one other yet to be reviewed figure for best capturing the vintage Kenner spirit.

I’m going to get killed for saying this, but what this figure makes pine for is Retro beasts.  A Blurgg with a trap door seating mechanism like the vintage Dewback has more appeal to me than these vintage styled figures.