Admiral Raddus - RO - Basic

Admiral Raddus was one of the earliest fleet officers of the rebellion. When the Galactic Empire invaded the acquatic world of Mon Cala, Raddus led the Mon Calamari into battle.

We apologize in advance, but we love Admiral Raddus. Five points of articulation or twenty-eight points of articulation, we love what Hasbro has done here. Yes, sadly the Rogue One version comes with an arguable six points of articulation (we’ll explain that in a moment), but the design, sculpt, and even the paint operations this time around all shine and work together to deliver a truly stellar action figure. Sure, you’re going to get an action-oriented poses with this figure, but it’s hard to deny just how nice this Mon Calamari looks just the way he is. There’s also no denying Admiral Raddus’ similarities to Admiral Ackbar. They essential shared the same roles in Rogue One and Return Of The Jedi respectively. Thankfully, Rogue One was done so incredibly well that these parallels weren’t terribly blatant. In other words, it worked. But in the same gruff voice as Ackbar, Admiral Raddus led the Rebel Alliance in a powerful and timeline changing battle: the Battle of Scarif. We’re so happy that Hasbro has decided to make Admiral Raddus a basic figure in their Rogue One basic figure line. Regardless of your stance on the status of 3.75 action figures, we believe you’ll quickly discover just how much merit Admiral Raddus indeed has.

While so many of the figures in this line are looking rough thanks to bad paint operations, Admiral Raddus escaped the same fate and can be considered a nicely painted action figure. He isn’t perfect, but he’s better than the average offerings by a landslide. Admiral Raddus has five distinct points of articulation. But in our opinion we feel that he technically comes with six. The hinge-jointed jaw and the swivel shoulders and hips are the easy points of articulation to isolate, but the base of his lower jaw does have some movement, albeit being very inhibited. It might as well not even be there. The same was true with 2016’s TFA Admiral Ackbar Build A Weapon (Space) figure. This is a detail we learned from Hasbro during a conversation we had with them. Otherwise we probably wouldn’t have noticed it ourselves. Everywhere Admiral Ackbar is red, Admiral Raddus is blue. The main shell is a grayish blue and then the center of his face is cream-colored. His outfit is a unique shade of seafoam green (a darker color), and it also has a bib that that looks military green. His belt is also colored in a mint green. Admiral Raddus has a truly unique color scheme, but he looks fantastic this way and Hasbro did a fine job in recreating the character in 3.5” scale.

We’d actually like to see Hasbro work him into the 6” line to see what they could do with him too. As mentioned briefly, Admiral Raddus comes with the same hinge-jointed jaw that Admiral Ackbar has. It’s a gimmicky feature for sure, but it works well once again. You truly get multiple facial expressions with this feature, something we often don’t get with figures unless they come with alternate portraits. Admiral Raddus comes with a standard blaster rifle, not that we remember seeing this in Rogue One. The blaster rifle is nicely sculpted and fits well into his right hand, but because his left hand is not cupped it is unable to accept the blaster rifle. For extra play value, Admiral Raddus comes with a large blaster rifle cannon with a colorful red projectile. It has a fire tip on it which looks equally cool and ridiculous at the same time. Clearly this figure offers something for both kids and collectors. Would it be nice to see Admiral Raddus with more articulation? Of course! It’s very defeating that we have gone this many years already without a solid basic figure line loaded with super-articulation. But it’s never wise to throw out the baby with the bathwater. And this definitely applies to Admiral Raddus. We’re honestly very happy with how he turned out. You should probably give him a try.