Sith Speeder (With Darth Maul) - SW [TPM 3D] - Vehicles (Class I)

Darth Maul rides a Sith speeder across the Tatooine desert to capture Queen Amidala, who has escaped from Naboo. Maul's speeder is pared down to its essential components to make it as swift as possible. He flies quickly across the desolate landscape on the speeder, heading toward the location provided by a probe droid.

2012 is clearly all about The Phantom Menace in 3D. Hasbro is ensuring that the focus on products released for this year are mostly based on themes from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. While we are getting some cool new toys, Hasbro is dusting off many of the sculpts from 1999 and early 2000 and “reinventing” them for re-release in 2012. These changes mostly come via updated paint operations, but Hasbro is also using better (and worse) figures to pack-in with the Class I vehicles assortment. There isn’t any rhyme or reason it seems to what vehicles Hasbro are releasing back into the line, but many do seem needed again. Take for instance the Sith Speeder (With Darth Maul) Class I vehicle set. Aside from updated paint operations on both the Sith Speeder as well as Darth Maul, this is essentially the same exact thing we received in 1999. The sculpts on both figures are perfect, but they’ve held up reasonable well 13 years later. And the updated paint jobs on these sculpts are also helping them to age less. Still, all-new sculpts at this stage of the game would have been most appreciated by longtime collectors. No matter how much things get repainted, technology has come so far where Hasbro can define their sculpts significantly better.

The 1999 EI Sith Speeder And Darth Maul Deluxe set was a massive seller in back in the day. And Hasbro tooled a fantastic Darth Maul figure so that he would look natural riding it as well. This particular version of Darth Maul has seen countless re-releases (particularly in the many Saga Legends lines) and while the paint job has been significantly updated the 1999 release, it is also appears a bit different than the 2007 TAC Darth Maul Saga Legends versions. This probably has more to do with being produced during a different era than an intentional revised paint job. You could almost consider the differences an accident for lack of a better word. We’ve also noticed that Darth Maul has a noticeable wider stance than previous releases which works very well in this case since he comes with his speeder once again. The Sith Speeder has been colored in a more accurate darker color which is how it appeared in the film. But other than that, not much else differs. The back of the Sith Speeder opens up and houses a Sith probe droid projectile. And the Darth Maul figure comes with a Sith probe droid accessory in addition to a double-bladed lightsaber, macrobinoculars and a soft-goods cloak. You do get a nice selection of accessories that were all utilized in the scenes where he’s riding his Sith Speeder during Episode I.

The Sith Speeder (With Darth Maul) Class I set is part of an interesting wave of four releases in this line. Hasbro cherry picked various vehicles from The Episode I and The Clone Wars lines and paired relatively random figures with them to create these pairings. Some are obviously better than others but some are just aging too quickly, like this set. Fancy new packaging and some updated paint applications do not make excellent toys, but Hasbro is in the game of cutting back on tooling costs and rehashing as much as they can to help their bottom line. Just look at the Movie Heroes line. If given the opportunity, we would have betted money that we would have never seen most of those Movie Heroes figure released again. And here they are. So we really shouldn’t expect any less from the other sub-lines like the Class I vehicles assortment. Collector may be interested to learn that the Galactic Battle Game swag is also included in the Class I assortments. You get a colorful game card featuring Darth Maul and his battle stats. You also get a golden/copper colored display stand (different from the tan ones included with the basic figures) and a black die with gold detail. We’re concerned with the health of the Class I line. There are too many things rehashed here. And rehashing only goes so far with the collecting community.