Imperial Throne Room - ROTS - Battle Packs (Exclusive)

The Star Wars battle rages on! The Sith and the dark side of the Force are the supreme power in the galaxy. This awesome battlepack features the Emperor and those who carry out his bidding in the New Order.

2005 was the test run year for Hasbro’s brand new Battle Packs line. Some of them blew collectors’ minds and others were just a little bit on the perplexing side. Take for instance the Imperial Throne Room Kmart exclusive Battle Packs set. All five figures inside are nothing collectors needed to see again in 2005. And with the significantly updated 2005 ROTS Royal Guard (III 23) figure, why in the world would they repack the 2002 SW Royal Guard (Coruscant Security) (‘02 #19) figure from three years prior? (We understand that figure came with a force pike which makes it a great candidate for an Episode VI Royal Guard, but why not just bring the accessory forward to the incredibly better 2005 version? We digress. The Imperial Throne Room Battle Packs sets brings you two Royal Guards, an Imperial Dignitary, a Stormtrooper and the infamous Emperor Palpatine (which utilizes 2005’s ROTS Emperor Palpatine (III 12) figure unfortunately). There are a lot of misused Episode III figures in this set aren’t there? We guess that is Hasbro thinks it works then that means we’re going to see sets like this for a while. But it’s upsetting when they have better options before them.

Seeing the 2005 ROTS Emperor Palpatine (III 12) figure packaged as the Episode VI version of him is a little bit annoying. They are clearly differences between the way he looks in Episode III versus Episode VI. The age difference alone should forbid Hasbro from using it interchangeably. But we suppose since they left out his lightsaber for this Battle Packs release will make everything alright. (We’re being sarcastic.) As mentioned, the Royal Guards are nothing new. We don’t think they are the greatest sculpts. Yes, aesthetically they look pretty good, but in addition to the very limited articulation, they also have very poor centers of gravity and you may have to contort them in weird ways to prevent them from falling over which we find extremely annoying. In fact, we almost went crazy trying to photograph them for the visual gallery in this review. The Stormtrooper is another set back for us. Hasbro needs to retire any derivation of the POTF2 Comm Tech Stormtrooper sculpt. It has had it’s day in the sun and not it’s severely burned. As far as we’re concerned, it’s no longer welcome in our collections. Hasbro needs to start using the more current sculpts they have otherwise we are going to get very upset with them.

You may be interested to know that the back of this set’s packaging shows the incorrect figure of Imperial Dignitary Kren Blista-Vanee (Death Star Procession) ('03 #41) figure instead of 2003's SW Imperial Dignitary Janus Greejatus (Death Star Procession) ('03 #35) figure that actually is packaged inside the set. There are little to no differences between the 2003 and 2005 figures. If anything, we’d have to comment that the paint job is much crisper, a testament to Hasbro’s ever-improving technology. The sad thing is that these are older figures and just don’t hold up to the articulation standards the Revenge Of The Sith line is heading. So you may find that this collection of figures is outdated and they haven’t aged well. (And this is a very fair assessment.) Then again, if you missed some of these figures the first time around (we honestly don’t know how that would be possible), this will be a great way to help you catch up on things. Otherwise, you may be able to escape buying the Imperial Throne Room Battle Packs set. Exclusive or not, it’s not really a set that warrants another sacrifice of your toy budget.