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Ben Quadrinaros & Otoga-222

March 31, 2012 | By Errex More

Many people may not realize this, but the creation of Jar Jar pretty much paved the way for a lot of characters with questionable designs which by virtue of having very little to do or say in the movie, were kind of accepted by the viewers with comparatively less criticism. Take, for instance, Ben Quadrinaros.

While on most other alien designs the people at Lucasfilm at least tried to approximate animal life, for Quadrinaros they went straight for a caricature and even though they made sure to add a lot of detail to the digital model, the fact remains that Ben here looks like a muscat with limbs crammed in a racing suit.

With that out of my chest, I must say that I really liked this Ben Quadrinaros (VC81) figure. Released as part of Hasbro’s Star Wars Vintage Collection just in time for the 3D premiere of Episode I, Ben’s action figure is full of sculpted detail that brings the character to life. Quadrinaros wears a gray leather outfit suited for his peculiar biology. The exposed skin looks almost as leathery as the pod racing uniform, but it’s brought to life by one of the best paintjobs I have ever seen at this scale.

The basic skin color is a light ochre hue, but applied over the gray plastic the figure is molded from, it darkens at the deeper folds sculpted onto the face providing very natural-looking shadows. In addition to this, some reddish pigments were painted on cheeks and above the mouth area for a very convincing blushing effect. The same reddish color was also used on the folds around Ben’s eyes, giving him a somewhat harder stare. Now, if there is one thing I feel I should comment on, is that this Ben Quadrinaros looks quite less goofy and good-natured than his screen rendition. In fact, he has a rather mean scowl and the look of those pointy teeth is not precisely reassuring.

Despite his unusual design, Ben Quadrinaros still got a fairly extensive range of articulation consisting of:

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Pegged hinge elbows.

• Swivel wrists.

• Pegged hinge hips.

• Pegged hinge knees.

• Pegged hinge ankles.

Neither neck nor torso joints of course, but that’s to be expected. All of the provided points of articulation work well and are stiff enough to hold any position. Even though the contact surfaces on the feet are fairly small and the center of gravity of this figure is rather high, I had no trouble making Ben stand unassisted, within reasonable expectations.

And the same can be said for Ben’s pack –in figure, the utility droid Otoga-222. This droid is a straight repack of the one that came with pod racer Ody Mandrell back in the day of the first Episode I line with no changes, other than the plastic color.

Otoga-222 has simple swivel joints at shoulders and hips, and it’s center of gravity doesn’t really lend itself for a lot of varied poses, but it is still a nice addition. Apart from the droid, Ben Quadrinaros comes with a small blaster pistol. This gun is made from silver plastic with no decoration whatsoever and no, it wasn’t shown in the movie.

But then again, the Ben we saw on-screen didn’t seem capable of harming a fly; from the facial expression on this guy, I would not be so sure. Really, the thing reminds me a bit of the Zuni Fetish featured on the 1975 film Trilogy of Terror, based on a short story titled “Prey” by Richard Matheson.

So, even though Ben’s configuration and proportions are not really suitable to interact with a lot of vehicles in this line and with no plans from Hasbro to do vehicles for each of the other pod racing characters seen in the movie, besides Anakin and Sebulba, I still consider that Ben Quadrinaros to be a completely worthy figure to add to my collection.