BT-1 (Beetee) - TBS [P3] - Six Inch Figures (88)

A hostile astromech droid, BT-1 (Beetee) works with Doctor Aphra alongside the protocol droid 0-0-0 on destructive missions. The black metal-plated droid is heavily armed with flamethrowers and other destructive weapons.

If you’ve been a longtime collector, two words are likely impossible to remove from your vernacular. They would be “Expanded” and “Universe.” In the past, the Expanded Universe was utilized as a place to store everything that wasn’t in the films: Hasbro concepts, multimedia events, comics, books, video games, and other things. Now, we have Canon and Legends. And everything we once loved from the Expanded Universe seemingly has been demoted to Legends. Whatever. It is what it is. But designating something as either Canon or Legends presents its own set of issues, and organizing things into sources and categories becomes increasingly different. And Star Wars fans have to accept at face value what’s officially in the Star Wars timeline. One comic officially in the Star Wars timeline is Darth Vader, and a character by the name of Doctor Aphra grasped the attention of many Star Wars fans, and there were enough to allow her to win the Fans’ Choice poll years ago for The Vintage Collection line. First presented in 2018 TVC Special Action Figure Set (Doctor Aphra Comic Set), she was later released as a basic figure in the mainline as well. But one figure from the set, BT-1 (Beetee) wasn’t released separately in the 3.75” line. But because of the character’s popularity, the droid is now part of The Black Series [Phase III] 6” line, and although Hasbro worked with existing astromech droid tooling that is much too small, the figure came out well. It’s not perfect, but you may not care about that at all.

BT-1 (Beetee) is, in all honesty, an expected release in the 6” line. Many 6” fans drooled over the Special Action Figure Set (Doctor Aphra Comic Set), and Hasbro graciously responded to their longing by producing all of the characters in the multipack in the 6” line, all as separate releases. Hasbro tooled a lot of extra accessories for BT-1 (Beetee), and they interact with the figure amazingly well. What’s more, the light source and cannon accessories are articulated and allow for some incredibly dynamic poses. And there are parts featured on the 6” version that were not available for the 3.75” version, most notably the leg panel weapon attachments. Like the 3.75” version, Hasbro tooled an all-new “head” and multiple new accessories to give BT-1 (Beetee) a realistic transforming feature. Two side panels detach from the head and in their place, you can attach a cannon on one side and what we’re calling a light source on the other side. But that’s not all. The removable panels can then be attached to the outside of the cannon and light source attachment to give the illusion that they popped out from the side of the dome. These same features were available on the 3.75” figure, so it’s great that Hasbro followed through for the 6” version. Although we know very little about the characters from this comic, we cannot deny that Hasbro designed a nice figure for the 6” scale with this release. The only shame is Hasbro’s inaction to design a larger-scaled astromech and “heal” the line of astromech droid scale issues.

Based on 2013’s TBS [P1] R2-D2 (#04) figure, BT-1 (Beetee) comes with an all-new head and all-new accessories inspired from the comic. Also, Hasbro gave the figure an all-new paint job which looks excellent in our opinion. BT-1 (Beetee) looks like a realistic Imperial droid seen on the Death Star in Return Of The Jedi, similar to what we saw on the 2006 TSC R5-J2 (SAGA 058). They share similar color schemes up to and including the orange detail against the metallic dark gray main color. Overall, we think you’ll find favor with the BT-1 (Beetee) 6” figure. Like we mentioned earlier, it’s not perfect, but it isn’t a terrible release either. We are quite curious to see how well all of the Doctor Aphra characters perform in 6” scale once they make it to mainstream retail and online. We must also comment that we’re beginning to see signs of fatigue with the current astromech tooling Hasbro utilizes for the astromech droids released in The Black Series 6” line. Whether it be improper panel closures or the encumbered mechanics of the third leg/foot action feature, it appears that Hasbro may have to design an all-new astromech body soon anyhow. An all-new approach would be fantastic because they’d be able to update everything wrong with the current model. In the meantime, we’ll all have to enjoy BT-1 (Beetee) as is. In our opinion, there are enough new parts presented with the figure to distract you from what bothers you about it. And we expect BT-1 (Beetee) to perform well in the line despite its faults.