Original review by Chris 1/21/2019 7:05 AM

Bow your head.  I SAID BOW YOUR HEAD!  This figure is vintage Kenner royalty.  You are not worthy of making eye contact with it.  In fact, don’t even look at the pictures at all.  AVERT YOUR EYES.  No, that’s still not good enough.  Don’t even read this review.  Just get out.  Leave.  Your scum, and this figure is a deity. 

Are you still here?  Good.  I admire your insolence.  But you might want to go grab a cup of coffee.  We’re going to be here for a while.

You already know the story of the 1985 Power of the Force Yak Face figure.  Well maybe not the story, but the legend.  The story is muddled and feels more like a forensic reconstruction of what might have happened versus an eyewitness account.  The POTF ‘85 Yak Face was only made for the Canadian market.  That is known courtesy of the bi-lingual card.  Whether or not it was ever actually sold at retail is a matter of debate.  Some say Kenner intended to destroy the small production run, but a few samples were smuggled out of the factory.  Others say it was so plentiful that they were given away with every bacon bacon sausage and bacon sandwich at Tim Horton’s. The unclear backstory adds to the legend.  It’s like the Great Sphinx of Giza. We know that it exists, but the “how” is cloudy.  Could it have been aliens?  Of course not, but on the other hand, it might have been aliens. 

If you want to read more about the vintage Kenner Yak Face figure, click HERE for our pitch to include a carded replica with the HasLab Sail Barge…which happened.  You’re welcome!  We recently featured a front page article on a carded sample of the Brazillian Glasslite Vlix.  That is even rarer than the POTF ‘85 Yak Face, but it’s not as special.  Aside from chiding ol’ Tiggy Fromm in the 80’s Droids cartoon, both the figure and character of Vlix are pretty unremarkable.  Not so with Yak Face (now named Saelt-Marae).  There are background characters and then there’s Yak Face.  He’s the equivalent of the greatest Minor League Baseball player who never played a game in the Majors.  He’s not a background character in Jabba’s Palace, he’s the background character.  He permeates those scenes.  It’s clear the costume department was proud of their work. They worked Yak in throughout the interior palace scenes, especially for the shots from Jabba’s perspective.  It’s like when amateur graphic artists discover the “pillow emboss” filter in Photoshop.  It starts to show up everywhere.

It’s impossible to talk about this new figure without discussing the lone modern predecessor from 1997.  I don’t like to be too critical of the creative people.  No one tries to make a turd of a figure.  Creators know when they’ve delivered an Edsel and that pain hurts worse than any criticism.  So there’s no need to kick them when they’re down.  Having said that, the designers and decision makers behind the 1997 POTF2 Saelt-Marae figure deserve a round of slaps.  Nothing works.  The figure features a dopey Uncle Traveling Matt expression and that guy was a total drip even by Fraggle standards. The pastel color scheme of that figure looks animation inspired, particularly with a complete lack of depth to the paint apps, and not any serious attempt to replicate the on-screen counterpart.  The Creamsicle orange duster and pale blue pants look like the Broncos’ equipment manager accidentally washed the uniforms on hot.  Perhaps in an amazing Napoleon Dynamite prediction, the ensemble is completed with some happening moon boots.  In another callback to dipstick Traveling Matt, the figure features over-sized Muppet hands and of course, that 1997 turd burger is only 6POA.  What made this failure so painful is updating background figures tends to be on a generational cycle. 

There’s an expression that there is no such thing as a bad boss.  Your worst boss teaches you what not to do when you become a boss.  There’s a ring of truth to that.  It’s as if Hasbro took the spirit of that expression and applied it to the 1997 figure.  They looked at that figure and decided what not to do with this long-anticipated update, and they succeeded almost to the point of perfection.  Almost.  There are a couple of nits coming.  Starting from the top, the head sculpt is a revelation.  The degree to which it matches its on-screen counterpart, both in terms of sculpt and paint applications, is uncanny.  This is down to a glossy application on the snout to give it a wet appearance.  That give me an almost “pinch me / I’m dreaming” feeling.  You won’t believe the degree of articulation built into the neck alone.  This is astounding.  Where the neck attaches to the body we have the standard ball and socket joint.  Where the head attaches to the neck, we have the new barbell style double ball and socket joint.  WHAT?  YUP!  Staying above the shoulders, one of those nits creeps in.  The two piece head construction is slightly conspicuous.  There is a visible line around the entire nose.  Perhaps that facilitated the aforementioned specialized paint apps to the snout.  If so, we’ll take it, flaws and all.

Below the neck we get the now supreme standard of Jedi-Level-Articulation with ball joints throughout plus an upper thigh swivel.  This allows for all manner of action and dueling poses with the included vibro-staff. And here we see a second nit.  In a bit of surprise, the knee joint is conspicuously visible.  Recently, Hasbro has been tucking the knee joint into the upper and lower leg so well, that it becomes effectively invisible when the leg is straightened.  Not so here. The hinge is always visible.  Thankfully, that joint is color matched, so unless you’re inspecting the figure closely, you’re likely not going to notice this.  Because the two halves of the leg don’t overlap to conceal the joint, it also means the joint can hyper-extend. There is an upside to this, however.  The knee fluidly bends to ninety degrees.  For such a tall figure this is critical so that it can sit in a realistic position, which it can easily do.  Since Saelt-Marae is mostly seen seated, this is important to the figure.  If tall figures have knees that don’t bend well, they’re more difficult to place in a seated position than Kramer in tight jeans.

The plastic orange duster from 1997 has been replaced with a soft goods, light tan duster.  Not only is the coloring greatly improved, it’s a well done soft goods implementation.  It’s a very soft and light-weight fabric.  It doesn’t bunch ridiculously when engaging the articulation, nor does it give the appearance that the figure is swaddled in 20 yards of cloth. The only limitation of the articulation appears to be the hard plastic fur collar which limits the shoulders from rotating upward, but it’s a perfect hybrid-materials implementation.  The figure’s right…umm…hoof securely grasps the vibro-staff, and that vibro-staff is also worth noting.  It is made of nice sturdy plastic, and it has a subtle wash paint app to give it a metallic patina.  Jaw-dropping.  The figure’s left hoof-hand isn’t sculpted in as such a tight clamp.  I suspect it was sculpted so the figure could hold a beverage glass, which would be much more in keeping with the character’s on-screen spirit.  Such an accessory is not provided, however.

There are those two aforementioned nit picks, but nothing could compel me to move this figure off of a perfect 10 score.  Not even the threat of atomic wedgie.  It’s glorious.  This is the definitive Yak Face / Saelt-Marae figure for all time.

Updated review by Bret 7/03/2023 7:05 AM

Admittedly, I’m taking a bit of a shortcut here.  As this is an odd Monday (for those of us in the U.S.) nestled between a weekend and tomorrow’s July 4th holiday, I wasn’t particularly inspired to put forth any significant content since I figured our engagement might be less than normal, especially since we kind of took a break last week.  So instead of doing a gallery of a new figure from the latest wave (which I received last week), I bring you the 4th Jabba Goon re-issue from the fan channel wave.

VC132 Saelt-Marae was very well received by the community.  Not only was it an update to a legendary character, but it represented the mainline release of the figure that was included with the Haslab Khetanna.  Chris already detailed this amazing figure in his original review above.  Unlike the other 3 figures in this wave, Saelt-Marae is a TVC 2.0 release.  As such, there wasn’t really room for improvement without updating the sculpt itself.  This is essentially a straight repack with no discernible changes from the original figure.

I will note, for the record, that since it was made in 2019, there have been significant changes to what we would consider standard for 2023.  Saelt-Marie lacks some premium articulation that would likely have been included if it were newly sculpted today.  The hips are the old thigh swivel style, and there are no rocker ankles.  However, we had previously noted that even the full suite of 2019 contemporary articulation was going above and beyond for this rather static character.  So it’s hard to complain about the lack of these upgrades.  So while you’ll get the “kickstand” effect when engaging a dynamic fighting pose, I don’t know if anyone would really have a problem with that.

I’m not going to ding the figure even though it lacks the most modern features.  It’s still a phenomenal sculpt, with great paint applications, soft goods, and articulation - and all for a very minor backgrounder.  But that’s why it’s so incredible, and even if it debuted today, we’d probably still give it a 10.