After a very long wait, this 2-pack has finally arrived!  The set was first revealed back in February, right around the time of New York Toy Fair, 2017, just 2 months after Rogue One hit theaters.  It was a long and winding road, but Hasbro dusted off the inventory and managed to get them out through our sponsor, EntertainmentEarth, several months after the line flipped to The Last Jedi look.  Was it worth the wait?

Let’s take a look at the shoretrooper captain.  It’s a fair enough figure.  It looks to be a repaint of the basic carded shoretrooper.  It maintains the naming convention from that figure, but for some reason, the recent squad leader figure from the two pack with Moroff was called a “Scarif Stormtrooper Squad Leader”. To make matters worse, the awesome Black Series figure was also called a “Scarif Stormtrooper Squad Leader”, but the markings indicated it was actually a basic soldier.  Whatever, Hasbro. 

The figure does it’s job, with a decent sculpt, a solidly held weapon, a neutral stance, and some decent paint applications.  Of note are the chest and shoulder markings that indicate this character as a captain, differentiating it from the standard trooper as well as the squad leader.  Not too much to complain about, and it’s nice that the figure, while a trooper, isn’t that much of an army builder due to the specific rank designation.  So you don’t have to shell out for multiples of this two-pack and then have a bin of Bistans stored under a table somewhere in your home.

Now, the Bistan has been a figure that I’ve wanted since I first saw the character in the trailers for Rogue One.  There has been a surprising lack of alien designs in the new movies, and even fewer than are translated into plastic form by Hasbro.  So this one has been a long time coming.  After being revealed back around Toy Fair 2017, we’ve been wondering #wheresbistan, a social media campaign that we at Bantha Skull are proud to have started. By last count, there have been no fewer than 3 uses of that hashtag.  So you can thank us for this figure finally reaching the market.  We’ll just go ahead and add this to our growing list of industry-rocking accomplishments.

Bistan is a cool looking figure.  He’s got an interesting uniform, with a neck that looks like a helmet locking ring.  No helmet of course, but it makes him look like an astronaut, and who doesn’t like astronauts?  The face sculpt and paint applications give Bistan a nice bit of character and charisma.  The neck articulation allows for a variety of “expressions.”  The figure can grip his weapon tightly.  A holster would have been neat, although probably not screen accurate. 

The huge accessory is a backpack rocket launcher, with which Bistan can interact very well.  Even the missiles have a metallic paint applied to the noses, so that they don’t look like gummy candy when displayed, which is a very nice touch.

My biggest gripe with the set was the choice for the aforementioned accessory.  Most figures in the line, like this one, have come with large accessories that are Hasbro creations.  But a few, like Bodhi’s cable pack, and Sefla’s rocket launcher (used by Baze) are from the film.  Somehow, Hasbro failed to do their own job here, and didn’t give Bistan a standing machine gun.  This is a frustrating oversight, as Bistan can’t tell that shoretrooper captain to “get some”, but hey, there’s no U-Wing side door for him to mount it to anyway, right?  Unless you customize an awesome cabin with door mounted gun assembly like I did in the pictures above.  Eat your hearts out, customizers!  Don’t try this at home folks.  It’s a complicated recipe.  I took the cargo container and cannon from the AT-ACT, and carefully glued (not) the U-Wing to the top, and wham bam, thank you, Van Damme, you have a proper screen accurate environment for Bistan.  Again, this isn’t for the faint of heart, so I wouldn’t advise anyone without the proper skill level to attempt this, but the results are nothing short of spectacular.  It also shows that all Hasbro has to do to make collectors happy is to re-issue the same crappy U-Wing, along with the cargo container accessory.  You’re welcome.

Anyway, it’s s decent set.  5POA is terrible, but I’m just a little extra happy that Bistan made it out there, so I’m going to give it a generous 6.