Accessories: (1) a pair of pants

That fact alone should make this Bantha Skull’s favorite figure of all time.  The problem is with the source of the figure.  It’s from 1997’s Special Edition of A New Hope.  If you think fans complaining is a new thing, you’re new.  By 1983, some of the fans, who were kids when A New Hope Came out, were now working on terrible peach fuzz mustaches.  About half the fans their age and up, had a meltdown over walking teddy bears taking out a mechanized imperial army.  It’s when the notion that Star Wars was more about merchandizing than movie-making was cemented as public opinion.  Fan “outrage” is hardly a new thing.  So it should come as no surprise that the Special Editions continued that tradition fourteen years later.  Satirists have a way of efficiently communicating things.  This is a perfect thumbnail of what’s wrong with the Special Editions and, more specifically, the character of Ketwol:

I like soul and soulfullness.  I like humanity over antiseptic artificial perfection.  I’d rather listen to a slightly imperfect performance that was recorded live in the studio, than listen to a pasteurized compilation of dozens of different takes that are reassembled by the W.O.P.R. in an attempt at musical flawlessness.  There’s something about us humans that makes us reliable detectors of artificiality (pre T-800 Terminators, of course).  That is why I am saddened by the replacement of the imperfect cantina characters, Arleil Schous and Lak Sivrak, with the sanitized Melas and Ketwol respectively (Melas is merely the Ketwol mask backwards) in the Special Edition.  Now here’s the irony.  “Ketwol” is a play on words.  It’s meant to represent “low tech” backwards.  The Ketwol/Melas mask was a physical prop that was digitally composited over characters they replaced.  But the effort to eliminate flaws came at the expense of soul.  It comes across as an exercise in perfection and not an attempt at art.  I need to stress that this is the perception.  I’m sure that was not the intent.  It feels like an exercise in what could be done instead of what should be done.

So (finally) on to the figure.  The big bombshell was the removable pants revealing mechanical legs.  Apparently Ketwol is the Star Wars equivalent of three kids in a trench coat trying to sneak into an R-rated movie.  This design decision is utterly non-sensical.  Ketwol’s natural form, where his legs look more like vestigial appendages, seems to lack any logical Darwinian advantage.  It’s a bit of unearned bizarreness.  I honestly do not know if the mechanical stilts are a Hasbro invention, or if that was a Lucasfilm design.  Either way, the objection stands. 

In the figure’s favor, it amazingly stands unsupported on these spindly limbs despite being top heavy.  So a hat tip toward the engineering is deserved.  The wash on Ketwol’s shirt is too overdone, which seemed to be a problem of the time.  The head sculpt is nicely done and is expressive, with plenty of pachydermatous creases that add detail.  It’s the highlight.  After that, you’re left with your standard 6 point of articulation (POA) figure with a pair of removable slacks that he probably got at Caldor.  It’s a 4 out of 10.

I personally only own this figure for reference and diorama shots for this site.  I do not display this figure in my cantina. I have set the “definitive status” to close, which I need to remind you stands for close enough.  It’s close enough to definitive for a Ketwol figure.