Here’s an interesting figure that you shouldn’t sleep on.  It’s made from a hard, pointy plastic that will probably be at least somewhat uncomfortable, if not downright painful, depending on what part of your body was on top of the figure when you slept on it.  Come to think of it, I wouldn’t recommend sleeping on any Star Wars figure, except maybe the Burger King Extra Squishy Jawa from the ROTS promotion. 

So instead of sleeping on it, you should maybe just pay attention enough to consider a purchase.  It’s a terrific figure, even though it is only 5POA.

First of all, the 5POA functions in an unusual manner, as described in the Rogue One basic review.  The head is the real star, with a double-ball and socket neck that allows for the figure to show off some real character.  The sculpt is outstanding, and it’s one of my favorites in the 5POA lineup since 5POA became a thing.  Hasbro should know that an SA K-2SO would an outstanding choice for TVC.

This repack isn’t technically a repack.  Like any pre-existing figure from the recent 5POA line, it had to be modified to contain the Force Link sound chip.  It would seem the chip was placed inside the torso, which does have some minor differences from the Rogue One basic carded version.  The most obvious difference is the rectangular “plate” on the upper back of the figure.  In the Rogue One version, the small, two-pronged antenna is soft plastic (presumably for safety reasons) and is a separate piece that is glued into a slot in the figure’s back, while in this Solo version, the entire rectangle of the upper back is a separate rubbery piece.  I would suspect this is where the chip was installed, and Hasbro went back to the factories with the running change to accommodate it.  It would seem that while they were at it, they also sharpened the details on the torso, or more specifically, on the crotch.  Yes, folks, if you take a close look at K-2SO’s crotch, you’ll see some additional sculpted “greeblies” are there, when they were previously absent.  Ha!  Made you look!  You totally looked at K-2SO’s crotch! What a weirdo! The figure also adds the green, and slightly raised, Force Link 2.0 logo on the sole of the left foot.

Physically, I don’t recognize any other differences that seem intentional and couldn’t be attributed to the fact that this was a later run of the figure, possibly in a different factory, or with alternate tooling.  The paint applications are close enough as to essentially remain unchanged.  They might be a bit sharper on this new version, but I don’t think it qualifies as enough to call one “battle damaged” and the other “clean”.

One other major difference is that this figure comes with an accessory:  the blaster handed to K-2SO by Jyn Erso inside the Scarif facility, which he uses to fight off the onslaught of strormtroopers before sacrificing himself for the mission.  The hand is not sculpted that well to accommodate the blaster, nor was it changed for this release.  Nevertheless, it was a nice addition by Hasbro.

By some measure, you could call this a new figure.  Unfortunately, the main selling point would be the Force Link 2.0 sound effects, but of course, as of this writing, the activator app has not been updated.  It’s a good thing, too, because I wouldn’t want to mistakenly hear K-2SO’s lines before I see the film.  (I heard he dies.) 

Before I give the score, please note that we discussed crotches, while there is also an image of Jyn wearing a shmata in the gallery.  Crotches and shmatas in the same review is something to be proud of. 

So this figure has a very slightly upgraded torso, a new accessory, and is Force Link 2.0 ready. I would love to hear K-2SO speak several of his lines from Rogue One, but that will have to wait a bit.  The sculpt upgrade may or may not be worth your time, but the included pistol is nice.  Having an extra 5POA K-2SO figure in lieu of any super-articulated versions isn’t anything that would kill you, especially since there were other KX models in the film that could be represented by this figure. 

We’ll revisit K-2SO when the Force Link tech is updated.  In the meantime, this is an upgrade over the previous version, so I’m giving this a very respectable 5POA score of 7.