Thursday, February 10, 2011

Wings Over Endor!

Pack 1

X-Wing Pilot Grizz Frix (Red Five) and R2-T7





"Up periscope!"



B-Wing Pilot - Palso Thern
(Blue Seven)


Tie Pilot - Major Mianda (Scythe One)




Pack 2

Y-Wing Pilot - Lt. Ekelarc Yong (Gray Three) and R5-P9


"Uncle Owen! This R2 unit has a bad motivator!"


A-Wing Pilot - Sila Kott (Red Two)




Tie Pilot - Lt. Oxixo




Group Shots
Hangar Backdrop Shelves





Battle Over Endor 4-Packs (Toys 'R Us Exclusives)

Last week I stopped by the local Toys 'R Us in search of the next waves of The Vintage Collection--which have still yet to make it here (Why, Hasbro? Why?) and found these two packs instead. They were pretty reasonably priced at $24.99 each (about $6.50 a figure) so I snatched them up. Lately I've been keen on filling my Rebel ranks--mostly with pilots. The four rebel pilots featured in these sets were all seen on screen during the battle over Endor. Scythe 1's tie fighter is one of the Ties that pursues the Falcon through the guts of the second Death Star. Sila Kott was originally played by a female actor, but a male voice over artist later dubbed her dialogue and thus was dubbed a male pilot. Too bad, we almost didn't have to wait for the expanded universe for the introduction of female pilots. Grizz Frix's name says it all. He's awesome! With an R2 unit to boot, this pilot looks a bit like Lando's younger brother or cousin. He's definitely fly for a fly boy and packs a DL-44 and not to mention an awesome color scheme on his helmet. The only flaw here is the fact that his visor is made of such thick plastic it's barely translucent--almost glows in the dark it's so neon orange. The three other pilots, Ekelarc, Sila, and Palso take their bodies from the Legacy collection Ten Numb and Nien Nunb figures which featured the too-tall-for-a-sullustan pilot bodies. The bodies look better on these human males however. Ekelarc is an awesome figure and gives us a new style helmet--complete with cool bat wings (mynock wings?) design. Sila Kott's helmet is also pretty neat and features the wrap around headphones style of World War 2 pilots. We also get Palso Thern with yet another helmet sculpt... this one leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn't fit snugly, tends to shift around a lot and is too small for Palso's face/head. He would have been fine with a helmet like Sila Kott's. Next issuing maybe? Also Both Palso and Ekelarc come with 3 holes on their bodies to receive life support system hoses, and two hoses. It's only possible to have 1 hose completely attached with another dangling loosely--leaking air. This hearkens back to Ten Numb and Nien Nunb's bodies in that both of their helmets have an oxygen mask that affixes through a hose to their bodies, as well as one hose that affixes at both ends to their bodies. All in all still some great figures! We also get two new droids, Grizz's personal R2 and Ekelarc's personal R2! One with periscope action feature the other with the "bad motivator" feature. Maybe we'll see a Y-Wing and an X-Wing at some point with slots to fit these droids?

Next we have two hot shot Tie Pilots with removable helmets! Oxixo (say that 3 times fast!) features a solid silver bar on his helmet's paint scheme and Mianda has the familiar two stripes on his which we've seen before (Target's Exclusive Special Action Figure 3 packs). One pilot comes with an Imperial blaster pistol (the standard side-arm for Tie Pilots) the other with an E-11 blaster... perhaps he was a stormtrooper at one point? Lately the scopes on the blaster pistols included with some of the Tie pilots are very flimsy. Also why do most of the imperial military figures with helmets look like clones? Certainly by the battle of Endor the remaining clones from the Clone Wars era would be mostly dead or aged considerably. During the early days of the Empire Palpatine forbade the use of clones as their behavior becomes erratic once they reach a certain age. From then on the Empire recruited non-aliens and humans of normal breeding practices to fill their ranks. Hasbro must be unloading there millions of clone heads that they made on us in our Imperials. So, sadly these two pilots (and many stormtroopers, Snowtroopers, AT-AT drivers, etc.) have identical clone heads under their helmets. Still though, an amazing group of figures and a great way to round out any pilot collections.

Lastly an awesome feature of these packs are the diorama backgrounds that are included. Two hangars with different view ports and "3D" seeming card board inserts to offer perspective give us a view of the ensuing battle behind our figures. They also can be mounted on the wall for instant shelving! I'd buy more of these packs just for the shelves! So hopefully we'll get more figures with backgrounds like these soon as I can use all the shelves I can get. I highly recommend you pick these two packs up for yourself as soon as you can!

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