Rey – Star Wars Elite Series (Disney Exclusive)

The Force Awakens came out about a year and a half ago. Since it is the first part of the new trilogy, there is more attention being paid to it than there was to Rogue One, which was a one off movie. One place they are being equally represented is at the Disney Store. They get to have their own exclusive editions of figures and clothing. One of the best representations of this is in the Star Wars Elite figures. They are larger figures with real cloth clothing. Some of the figures are taller, around 12 inches while others, like Rey stand shorter, around 10 inches.

I was able to get Rey on a sale, as well as having a 25% off coupon for the Disney Store for my birthday. She ended up costing about $13. That is a great deal for a The Black Series figure, much less a larger figure with cloth clothing.

Taking her out of the box, the first thing I notices was the rooted hair. I was expecting sculpted hair at best. I was not expecting it to be rooted. And it is in her tell-tale triple buns.

Her outfit is the standard outfit she wore through most of TFA. She has a nice mix of cloth and plastic goods. Her outfit is layered, including the arm coverings, tunic and short pants. She comes with her belt pouch attached, as well as a leather strap around her left forearm.

Her boots are molded on, but they have good movement around the ankle. There is a separation there that allows a ball joint. She also has toe articulation.

She comes with plenty of accessories. She has her backpack that is molded in plastic. There are a lot of mechanical doodads that are well painted, along with weathering and straps. She also comes with her staff. It is nice and tall, as it should be. The strap of the staff is molded in place. It would have been really nice to see that staff in fabric, I may go back and build my own staff for her, and give her a proper staff, so she can wear it on her body. She comes with a gripping hand for her right hand that will grip the staff.

There are two weapons as well. First off is the blaster that Han gave her. It seems like it is out of scale for her. It is very larger in her hand. She comes with a special gun hand that can be swapped out for a relaxed hand.

She also comes with Luke’s blue lightsaber. This one seems REALLY out of scale. It is almost as long as Rey is tall. The blade is really thick, and the hilt seems to be really fat and long too. They even gave Rey a lightsaber hand, since the hand for the staff is closed too small for the hilt of the saber. The blade is not removable. So you cannot re enact the end of the movie.

Overall, I really like this figure. It makes me want to get more of these well done figures. I am bummed about the lightsaber and the gun being too big, but it is a minor problem with the overall well done figure.

Y-Wing Scout Bomber with Kanan Jarrus

It has been a LOOOOONG time since I bought any of the Star Wars vehicles. I was mostly turned off of the 3 3/4 inch figures when Hasbro went back to the 5 points of articulation. I have always had a fondness for the vehicles though, and when this one popped up on Amazon for $9, I could not resist. A vehicle and a figure for $9 is a great deal.

So, the figure is a standard Kanan Jarrus. He is in his standard gear with, yup 5 points of articulation. He also comes with his lightsaber. It is bent, and does not seem to want to become unbent. But, since Jarrus is going to be in the vehicle for ever more, hanging from the ceiling of my hobby room, it doesn’t matter much to me.

The vehicle is a Y-Wing Scout Bomber. We apparently saw this for a split second a long time ago in the Clone Wars toy line. Just like with Clone Wars, the Y-Wing Scout Bomber does not make an appearance in either show.
The idea behind the Scout Bomber is that the all of the big armament, and pretty much any extra weight was taken off and then sent out for little strike missions.
It is supposed to be an iteration of the Y-Wing bomber, more closely related to the New Republic version. Looking at the overall design of the Y-Wing and this smaller Y-Wing, it is a bit hard to think that they could have modified the Y-Wing into this version. The body is nowhere near correct. The cockpit is a single seater with the droid tucked right up behind. Really, the only thing that is the same is the placement of the engines. And even those are a bit off. I would imagine that you would want at least the same size engines, since you want to fly faster as a scout. I get taking off the support pylons hanging off the back, but to add a smaller engine seems a bit backwards thinking.

That being said, I am a bit mixed on the overall feel of the ship. To me, it feels like Hasbro went to the designers and said, “Look guys, we have a box that is this big, by this big. We put all of our smaller ships and speeders in that size box. Make the Y-Wing fit into that.” The designers went off and worked with those dimensions and made this ship. I think this is one that went toward the selling of toys, not the design of the toy itself.

Though this is a little ship, there is a lot of playability to go along with it. The cockpit opens to the side to allow Jannus, or any figure to get in. In the back, the turret opens to allow a droid to get in. The guns at the front are removable. They can swivel to the sides, but probably more to the fact that they are round ports. It is a good idea that we miss from most of the starfighters to have targeting guns.  The turret in the back looks to be used by the droid. It swivels in an arc that is less than 90 degrees.

The engines rotate up and down. I can’t really see the benefit of that happening, since they are a bit too far back for VTOL, and the Y-Wing has repulsers to aid in take offs and landings. It would help in quicker takes offs, but it seems that it would want to cause the ship to start rotating forward too much. I might be overthinking this one a bit too much.

There are two bombs that are loaded in the bottom of the engines. I like that the Y-Wing would have some bombs on board. A little fire power when on a scouting mission is a good thing. Mounting the bombs in the hot engines is a bad thing. What were they thinking? Well, the cockpit and droid cockpit take up all of the space in the fuselage, so that would only leave the engines. For play it is fine, I guess.

Overall, I am not thrilled with this one. It was a great deal on Amazon, so I can’t knock $9 for a ship and a figure. I do have to hunt down a Chopper now, so I have a droid to ride around in there with Jannus. It is already taking up a tiny piece of ceiling, and has gotten lost among the larger X-Wing, giant ARC-170 and others.