General Rieekan With Hoth Tactical Screen (Hoth Evacuation) - SW [S - P3] - Ultra

A battle-weary but capable commander, General Carlist Rieekan was the Rebel officer in charge of Echo Base on Hoth. Rieekan had to make the difficult decision of evacuating the base that the men and women under his command had worked so hard to build. Most of the evacuation transports were able to escape Imperial pursuit and regroup elsewhere, ensuring the Rebellion's survival. Born on Alderaan, he was off-planet, inspecting a new satellite transmission system when the Death Star obliterated his home.

Despite its potential flaws and/or shortcomings, we would be extremely taken aback to find any collectors who didn’t thoroughly enjoy at least a couple of the fine releases in the Star Wars “Saga” Ultra line. Hasbro really buckled down and reinvented how they approached the Deluxe line, gave it a new name and decided to focus on collectors instead of kids. They managed to bring forth an affordable line of “bulkier” figures and accessories that not only gripped the hearts of collectors everywhere, but created interest in new young fans who were just beginning to enjoy the Star Wars saga themselves. Many releases in the Ultra line were Original Trilogy heavy. And many believe that is why the line was so successful. Hasbro was even clever enough to carry forward some very difficult to find Deluxe assortments and include them in the Ultra line as well. Hasbro got instantaneous good footing in this line and it’s a shame there aren’t more releases in it than there are. Hasbro utilized the Ultra line to bring forth a long-awaited character into the toy line. General Carlist Rieekan had been on wish-lists forever and Hasbro finally made the dream a reality in the Star Wars “Saga” Ultra line.

Released as General Rieekan With Hoth Tactical Screen (Hoth Evacuation), man their product descriptions are wordy, this Ultra set introduced the character to the action figure line for the very first time, as well as an incredible accessory to complement him; a tactical display map, just like the multiple ones we saw in Echo Base on Hoth. We’ll describe the tactical display map in a moment, but you should know that the true highlight of this release is the General Rieekan figure. We won’t debate that Hasbro could have made him more articulated than they did, because he is in need of more articulation, but the head sculpt is astounding. By that we mean you have to pick your jaw up from the floor astounding. And the rest of the figure isn’t too shabby either. One look at his face and you’ll know EXACTLY who he is in the film. It’s that good. We hope if this figure ever gets updated that Hasbro will return to this portrait and just put it on a significantly updated body. Although he only comes with five points of articulation (and sadly no waist joint), Hasbro did a decent job at capturing body language that interacts well with the tactical display screen accessory.

You can have General Rieekan point to a certain bit of activity as portrayed on the screen, you can have him looking at it from the front, or from behind, and there is enough detail in the controls that will add hours of play value for adults and collectors alike to recreate these amazing scenes in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. We bet collectors will buy multiples of this set to attain more than one of the tactical display screens. We would totally understand why. They’re incredibly detailed and they’re quality accessories for the figures. General Rieekan With Hoth Tactical Screen (Hoth Evacuation)may just be one of the most exciting releases of 2004. We love this set the way it is, but we highly encourage Hasbro to reuse this portrait of General Rieekan if they ever decide to update him in the future. We can reiterate that enough. The Star Wars “Saga” line is really doing a fantastic job interacting and complementing the many basic figures in the line. When Hasbro wants to create nice and big accessories that just will not fit in the basic figure packaging, it’s nice to know that they’re willing to find other ways to bring us them and not give up doing so. For $9.99, this is a steal and we hope Hasbro continues to bring us more things like this.