JediTricks
11-20-2008, 07:10 PM
Picked this sucker up last night, not a lot of free time to do the big review so I'll just give notes...
Packaging stands out nicely due to colors, surprisingly. Astromech droid in art is a rather crude drawing, weird. Side panels show the separated ship.
The main gimmick is that everything between the upper blasters and ahead of the main cockpit slides out, pops out wings, and drops down a cannon from the underside to create a minifighter. They call this a drone fighter on the packaging, but since this has the droid slot at the back, it's an R2-D2 fighter! The droid slot opens up to put the droid in - I was able to fit animated R2 and VOTC R2 in, but build-a-droids are too wide at the shoulders - and a nifty feature of this opening droid slot is that it can be used as a cockpit for a normal figure instead, there's room for legs and sculpted control surfaces, so it's quite clever. The back half of the ship has an opaque gold window sculpted to the front, that coupled with the side wings remaining makes the whole thing very reminiscent of the Ep 3 Jedi Starfighter, though I find this half-fighter less exciting than than the front half. :p
The upper cannons are spring-loaded missile launchers, it makes them a little bigger than they should be, but without them the rear fighter is even more boring than the front fighter - its drop-down underside cannon is a spring-loaded missile launcher as well, and more impressive.
Sculpting is fair, not as detailed as the show version and the thrust nozzles aren't entirely accurate, but it's ok. The cockpit interiors have detailing, some that makes sense and some that's just tech for tech's sake. The main cockpit has a control stick in the middle but it's WAY out of the pilot's reach, this is probably because putting animated Obi-Wan in there has that long skirt so this remains just beyond that.
The ship's overall size is about the same as the Ep 2 version, it looks smaller because of the design's proportions but front to back is about the same and the width is close as well. Animated Obi-Wan is pretty much swimming in that cockpit, it is way too big for him, I put him in there with his jetpack and he still has a little room to stretch out (he's far cozier in the droid slot cockpit). Animated R2 doesn't block the cockpit too bad, he stays low like the show design, but VOTC R2 stands very tall, nearly as high as the canopy itself, very intrusive. Speaking of which, the canopy has a design issue I don't like at the hinge, the hinge is already ugly to begin with but the curved design around it makes the open cockpit squeeze in slightly, I fear this will warp the plastic over time.
Deco is plain, no weathering aside from some intentional wear on paint. The yellow paint in the back is very thick and easily chips, not good. The canopy has a slight gold metallic aspect to it, interesting.
I wish I liked the shape of this ship more, Hasbro executed it fairly well but I just don't like the egg cockpit or the blocky midsection. I get that the midsection was redesigned to make R2-D2 copiloting possible, but that new cockpit just doesn't get any traction with me, it's not doing a good job transitioning from Ep 2 to Ep 3 like it's pretending, it's just too Mork.
Overall, I'd say it's a good entry but not a home run. The gimmick is fun, adds tons of play potential, and actually makes the ship more interesting than it otherwise would be. The lack of weathering hurts a bit, but nowhere near as bad as the V-19.
Packaging stands out nicely due to colors, surprisingly. Astromech droid in art is a rather crude drawing, weird. Side panels show the separated ship.
The main gimmick is that everything between the upper blasters and ahead of the main cockpit slides out, pops out wings, and drops down a cannon from the underside to create a minifighter. They call this a drone fighter on the packaging, but since this has the droid slot at the back, it's an R2-D2 fighter! The droid slot opens up to put the droid in - I was able to fit animated R2 and VOTC R2 in, but build-a-droids are too wide at the shoulders - and a nifty feature of this opening droid slot is that it can be used as a cockpit for a normal figure instead, there's room for legs and sculpted control surfaces, so it's quite clever. The back half of the ship has an opaque gold window sculpted to the front, that coupled with the side wings remaining makes the whole thing very reminiscent of the Ep 3 Jedi Starfighter, though I find this half-fighter less exciting than than the front half. :p
The upper cannons are spring-loaded missile launchers, it makes them a little bigger than they should be, but without them the rear fighter is even more boring than the front fighter - its drop-down underside cannon is a spring-loaded missile launcher as well, and more impressive.
Sculpting is fair, not as detailed as the show version and the thrust nozzles aren't entirely accurate, but it's ok. The cockpit interiors have detailing, some that makes sense and some that's just tech for tech's sake. The main cockpit has a control stick in the middle but it's WAY out of the pilot's reach, this is probably because putting animated Obi-Wan in there has that long skirt so this remains just beyond that.
The ship's overall size is about the same as the Ep 2 version, it looks smaller because of the design's proportions but front to back is about the same and the width is close as well. Animated Obi-Wan is pretty much swimming in that cockpit, it is way too big for him, I put him in there with his jetpack and he still has a little room to stretch out (he's far cozier in the droid slot cockpit). Animated R2 doesn't block the cockpit too bad, he stays low like the show design, but VOTC R2 stands very tall, nearly as high as the canopy itself, very intrusive. Speaking of which, the canopy has a design issue I don't like at the hinge, the hinge is already ugly to begin with but the curved design around it makes the open cockpit squeeze in slightly, I fear this will warp the plastic over time.
Deco is plain, no weathering aside from some intentional wear on paint. The yellow paint in the back is very thick and easily chips, not good. The canopy has a slight gold metallic aspect to it, interesting.
I wish I liked the shape of this ship more, Hasbro executed it fairly well but I just don't like the egg cockpit or the blocky midsection. I get that the midsection was redesigned to make R2-D2 copiloting possible, but that new cockpit just doesn't get any traction with me, it's not doing a good job transitioning from Ep 2 to Ep 3 like it's pretending, it's just too Mork.
Overall, I'd say it's a good entry but not a home run. The gimmick is fun, adds tons of play potential, and actually makes the ship more interesting than it otherwise would be. The lack of weathering hurts a bit, but nowhere near as bad as the V-19.