Hrchek Kal Fas - LC - Basic (BD33)

Hrchek Kal Fas is a Saurin droid trader who frequents Chalmun’s cantina when he’s on Tatooine. He saw a report about two “lost” droids and tried to follow C-3PO when the protocol droid left the cantina, but lost him in the busy streets.

Is Hrchek Kal Fas the Mini-Me of Bossk? It almost seems as if Hasbro would like to think so. Fans have waited years for Hrchek Kal Fas to grace the pegs of retail and while the figure looks great as it is, there are some inconsistencies in the action figure which aren’t faithful to the film (at all). First, he is barefoot! Obviously utilizing artistic license as radically as Kenner did in the late seventies for the Cantina patrons of that time, (flippers for Walrusman, a teal blue shell for Hammerhead, et. al.), Hasbro neglects the space boots in favor of a more organic appearance. While it looks pretty good on the figure, it isn’t authentic. Hasbro did replicate the hands very well and they have the five digits on each. This is one of the details that sets apart the Saurin from the Transdoshans. (Transdoshans have four digits on each hand.) Hrchek Kal Fas also fails in the “eye” department. Another example of appearing to imitate Bossk a bit, his eyes have been colored in bronze with two tiny black pupils in the center of them. Saurin have completely black eyes without any pupils (and all you need to do is look at the picture on the card back to see this). Hasbro has claimed that a running change is already in effect to fix this but only time will tell if it hits the shelves. We are honestly a little defeated in our hope to see this change come to fruition and will have to wait and see. After all the other promises made by Hasbro, forgive us if we are weak in our excitement here. But we do hope this change does indeed come. We question if the update will be made because if Hasbro cannot master adding a running change of an army building action figure in the line, how will they possibly communicate a fine painting mistake and fix it? We want to be hopeful and not so skeptical but we just don’t know. We will be sure to update you if it does happen. Speaking of his eyes (and face), we urge you to check the samples you buy because we had to pass on about five before we found eyes that were painted evenly and chins that weren’t scraped. Typically, many of the first batches of figures tend to have sloppier paint jobs than later cases. Quality control must be able to make fine tweaks in the middle of the run so we believe our ‘good’ sample came from a later batch. Hrchek Kal Fas clearly falls some where within the scale of Zutton and Takeel so he is shorter than many other cantina patrons (but definitely not as small as Kabe). Hasbro nailed his height excellently and he looks great next to the bar sections.

Hrchek Kal Fas is an awesome alien! While you know that he isn’t perfect, he does have it where it counts. Known as a droid trader, it fits in well that his action figure representation is included with a droid part! Fully super-articulated, his 14 points allow for a very wide range of movement. Hrchek has long arms (in comparison to his frame) and they can be posed in very alarming ways (no doubt due to his nails and spread out fingers). His skin color has been given a paint job of the finest caliber and it is complemented with his very casual outer wear. If you can find a sample of him with a good paint job on his head, you will be thoroughly impressed. On top of a beautiful outer skin that has been made so lifelike and realistic, the inside of the mouth has been painted in pink and every tooth is accounted for by being painted white. How Hasbro managed to do this so well is fascinating. His lower jaw is made form a slightly softer plastic than the rest off him, so you can give his mouth some movement if you want. Not something we would have asked for, but it is just a little extra Hasbro decided to include (and it works). He has a green shirt with a dramatically darkened yellow (or tan) vest. These pieces of apparel are then complemented by dark gray pants that fall beneath his knee at which point you can see his scaly and lizard-like lower legs. He really does look fantastic and Chalmun’s Cantina enthusiasts will undoubtedly eat him up. Hrchek comes with a cantina bar glass (one of the best designed we have seen and one that is also included with Leesub Sirln) and a blaster pistol that will fit perfectly into his functioning holster. Don’t expect him to hold the blaster in his hands however. The right hand has been designed to hold the glass (and we are actually quite happy about this) and his left hand has all of the fingers spread apart, so the best place to put the gun is in the holster. This is absolutely alright with us. How many cantina patrons besides Greedo waved their blasters at other patrons while in the cantina? (Not too many – so we are very impressed with the approach Hasbro took with this figure.) Hrchek is action figure making at its finest and this is solely based on the final product in the bubble on the card back and not a measure of how authentic he is to the film costume.

Hasbro has been kind to collectors by adding two to three new cantina aliens (or more) every year into the line since 2005. All of them are holding up very well as time moves forward and we expect that Hrchek will be another example of a classic action figure that won’t need a revisit (unless they want to fix their errors). Hrchek was clearly made with exacting and high standards and we believe he is one of the better cantina aliens we have received. While 2007's TAC Elis Helrot (30 23) was perhaps one of our favorites, he suffered from a stance that was too wide. Hrchek Kal Fas does not have this issue at all and he can be posed pretty much any way you want him to in fact. Versatility to stand or sit or form into an action pose are all of the options we want for our Star Wars action figures to have and this figure has it all. We never get tired of the same old “good” things including excellent sculpts, brilliant paint jobs and likenesses that are dead ringers for the actor or costumes that played our favorite Star Wars characters. Hrchek Kal Fas scores high marks in most of these areas and while he does have some issues, they are not enough to detract from how awesome this action figure is. Indeed we would have preferred utter and complete authenticity, but this version is going to have to hold us over for a while. And it won’t work that hard to make us feel that way. Hrchek Kal Fas serves his purpose very well. Besides, we are much more desperate to see the likes of Ponda Baba and Dr. Evazan updated and upgraded in favor of the more background aliens that populated the cantina or correction of already great figure. (Editor's Note: Both Ponda Baba (Walrus Man) and Dr. Evazan (Cantina Patron) have received glorious updates in The Vintage Collection.) We are not sure if you see it the same way, but there is no denying that Hrchek Kal Fas has made a big splash in the basic action figure line.