Hey BarneyFife,
you can open this baby up without a second thought.
Although the figure is somehow difficult to obtain (therefore keeping a good value), the misspelled word: IMPERIAL as IMPERAL was never corrected.
There are quite a bit of sellers benefiting from the figure's misspelled word by creating confusion and advertising it as "rare" or as a "variation." This is only a trick to make some extra cash.
People should not listen to this. The R2-Q5 is just a figure with a misspelling, AN ERROR that never got fixed.
I hope this helps.