Tech rounds off this wave for us and completes the original four Bad Batchers from the final season of The Clone Wars. They saved my favorite for last. The satisfaction of completing a team is somewhat lessened by some design choices I don’t care for, but there is a lot to like here. Let’s take a look at Tech!
The box protects the figure nicely and I like the red accent for the Bad Batch show.
Tech comes with a removeable pack and helmet, a blaster pistol, and three tools. The pistol is the same Clone Wars pistol we’ve seen before and it works perfectly here in the right hand. I did notice that Tech actually dual wields sometimes, so a second pistol might have been appropriate, but I think I prefer how they included a left hand with a tighter grip so he holds the claw tool in hand well and you can wedge the two thinner tools between his thumb and fingers. The tools are cast in a semi translucent metallic plastic and fit securely into his belt loops. They stay in there pretty well, which is good because I was afraid they might be eaten up by the carpet monster. I like the dimension they add to his belt and making them removeable and useable is a nice touch.
The pack is one solid piece with two antennae attached and it clips onto his back with a t-shaped peg that holds it there securely and oriented correctly. I do wish it opened up so you could store the pistol in there since he doesn’t have a holster.
The helmet is the main source of disappointment on this figure for me. It looks pretty good in terms of detail and scale, but the goggles and the moveable visor are translucent yellow on the show and solid plastic with a painted metallic yellow here. In the show Tech wears goggles and the circular lenses of the goggles show through a gap in the visor of his helmet. I could see how those two pieces might be tricky to engineer in this scale, so I understand why they would have made them one piece, but what I don’t get is why they made the goggles opaque? I’ve seen customizers cut out the lenses on the goggle part of the helmet and it lines up perfectly with the figure’s eyes, so I can only assume it was a cost cutting measure to save on painting the helmet.
Also, when he’s not wearing a mask, I can’t recall ever seeing him without the goggles, the unmasked head feels pretty useless without them. I feel like it’s within Hasbro’s abilities to make goggles for the unmasked head, they aren’t much smaller than the welding goggles that came with Hoth Leia.
Another accessory that feels vital to Tech’s character is his data pad. He uses it constantly on the show, so much so that he’s on the damn thing when they introduce the character, but it isn’t included. I think it goes in the pouch on his right hip, but that’s just a hunk of plastic on this figure. I could have gone for some thermal grenades too since that’s another thing Tech often uses on the show.
Sculpting on this figure is top notch with excellent armor and pouch detail and believable cloth folds. I like how they have translated Tech’s unmasked look from the cartoon (outside of the obvious goggle issue) and feel like he’s one of the more successful translations from cartoon to realistic style as I can see some Temuera in there. I’d rank the unmasked heads with Wrecker as number one, Tech two, and Hunter and Crosshair fighting over the last two slots.
Articulation is also really good here with super nice tilt on the ball joints in the neck and head and more than 90 degree bends at the elbow and knees. I do think the swivel/hinge knee is set a little low so the calf seems a little shorter than it should be when fully bent, but it’s otherwise good. The butterfly hinged pecs and soft chest piece allow for a cool two-handed pistol pose and I like how the head tilts enough to sight down the barrel. He’s really fun to play with and pose.
Paint is good here with some really nice deco hits with the gray and red and skull designs all over the outfit. The white parts of the armor could all use a wash, of course, because Tech’s armor looks pretty skuffed and filthy on the show. The one thing that does bug me is they went way too pale with his skin tone. There has been discussion online that the characters on the show are too pale for clones of Jango which I can see their point, but the Tech figure unmasked is even paler than he is on the show. They should have have gone with a color closer to Crosshair for consistency. And as much as I hate how the lenses on the goggles are opaque, the metallic yellow pops in an interesting way.
Overall, I’d say Tech is almost a home run, but they tripped up rounding third with the goggles. I think I would have been okay with opaque lenses on the helmet if the unmasked version had some translucent yellow goggles. Still it is really satisfying to have this group together and can’t wait to add Omega and Echo to the crew. Maybe they could throw in a set of apology goggles for Tech with Omega?
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Source: The Fwoosh
