Anakin’s Jedi Starfighter - SW [DV/ROTS] - Vehicles

Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi make a desperate attempt to rescue Chancellor Palpatine, who has been kidnapped by General Grievous. Anakin's expert piloting of his Jedi starfighter gets him past swarms of deadly vulture droids to reach Grievous' flagship.

In what may be one of the most controversial moves in Hasbro’s illustrious career, the mid-size vehicle assortment may never return to what it once was. Hasbro is intent on reducing the scale of these vehicle, removing features, and hollowing out as much plastic as they can in an effort to reduce cost while still bringing “quality” vehicles into the basic figure line. We don’t know how much more we can handle personally. Despite their efforts to save some money, we don’t see this newly scaled vehicle line selling like hotcakes, and they are just producing the same old vehicles that we have seen much better versions of now multiples times in the past, in a now spoofed approach. We don’t know who is buying these things, but it certainly isn’t adult collectors. And if there are kids out there buying them, we don’t know how much long term play value they’re going to get out of them when nearly half of the original features have been removed. What’s more, the “better” versions can still be found on the aftermarket for almost their original retail in many instances. So how long will this game be played before it’s completely played out? We don’t know.

Now Hasbro has tooled an all-new vehicle for Anakin’s Jedi Starfighter. Again, this is a vehicle that has been produced and sold multiple times in a much larger scale, with a toy loaded with features and details that are unprecedented. The reduced scale is laughable for many reasons, but perhaps the greatest comedic element here is the size of the astromech droid and its socket. In this case it’s R2-D2 and if you hold up any R2-D2 action figure up next to it, it’s completely laughable. At least when Hasbro reduced the scale of a Jedi Starfighter for Yoda (released as 2013’s SW [Y/AOTC] Yoda’s Jedi Attack Fighter With Yoda & Super Battle Droid Deluxe set) Hasbro gave a true scale Build A Droid astromech dome to attach to the droid socket. It’s ridiculous that Hasbro expects us to find these mini vehicles as the new mid size vehicles. It would behoove them to just retire the line, or only offer the original large scaled vehicles as store exclusives. We honestly don’t know what the answer is at this point, but we can confirm that they are wasting their tooling dollars as well as our time creating products that a huge portion of the buying public has no interest in other than interpreting them as jokes.

Aesthetically, Anakin’s Jedi Starfighter looks pretty good. But once you hold it in your hands, you’ll see how so many parts of it have been skewed to accommodate the smaller scale. The cockpit is terrible. It’s basically a hollowed out oblong sphere that is barely big enough to hold an action figure. And while we will concede that an inordinate amount of detail has been etched into the vehicle from top to bottom, it ultimately fails because it’s a caricature of the real vehicle that we have received years ago. Two projectiles have been included and shoot when buttons are pressed. Besides an opening canopy, the only other articulation this vehicle has are four hinge-jointed wing panels, which definitely add some versatility to the starfighter. Again, it’s almost laughable to expect that this is the new Class II assortment. In fact, it’s utterly depressing and painful. Even if Hasbro absolutely had to go this route, wouldn’t it have been better if they attacked vehicles they have never produced before and especially include some Original Trilogy “mini rigs” to help engage those purists? We are apparently in an endless circle and the hope of things changing for the better grow dimmer and dimmer. We believe there should be some vehicle format available at retail, but Hasbro is just creating more enemies than friends with this approach.