Mustafar Panning Droid - TAC - Basic (08 08)

Obi-Wan and Anakin engage in their penultimate battle on Mustafar. During the lightsaber duel, they must quickly avoid falling into the burning lava when the collection arms collapse. Obi-Wan jumps onto a replusorlift platform, while Anakin leaps onto a panning droid.

Hasbro likes to create beautiful and large accessories for action figures then yank them away from collectors before the figures see ultimate release. This has always been a bone of contention with collectors and apparently Hasbro didn't want to create any more sour taste in collector's mouths so they did something a little different with the release of the Mustafar Panning Droid. See, the Mustafar Panning Droid was intended to be the glorious "accessory" for the TAC Darth Vader (08 02) figure and the platform base it comes with was supposed to be the large accessory that came with the TAC Obi-Wan Kenobi (08 01) figure. But before Hasbro announced that these accessories were going to be canned due to the inability to cost them into the wave assortment, a lovely female Jedi named Stass Allie suffered from production issues and was ultimately canceled from this 30 (77-07) wave. (Editor's Note: But she would see eventual release in The Legacy Collection as BD 23 at the end of the year in December of 2008.) Obviously a space opened up for the wave, so Hasbro managed to salvage these two accessories and combine them to make one new figure (thus performing a "hail Mary" and gave collectors a "collective" sigh of relief) and released them entitled as the Mustafar Panning Droid basic figure. This elated many fans because these two pieces are wondrous display pieces for the Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi figures!

The platform display/stand is absolutely stunning. Its top/face is decorated in an alternating chevron pattern. And the color choices used by Hasbro make it look so authentic to the film. It is one solid piece of plastic. It is a small work of art and you will likely want a couple for your collection. Hasbro went above and beyond to make it look like it has battled against the harsh elements of Mustafar as it is plagued by various imperfections from the raining of lava sprays and the damage borders on alarming. Underneath of it attaches a wave of erupting lava and it looks absolutely extraordinary. Cast in a clear and very bright orange plastic, the lava is a nice touch that competes the base very nicely. While separate parts from the Mustafar Panning Droid, the platform, the lava and the droid together make for a very weighty package and it gives us a lot a product for the MSRP of the total package. The Mustafar Panning Droid is very beautifully sculpted. It is cast of a weaker plastic than the platform (but this is probably due to the fact that its pieces are much thinner and delicate) and can bow over time if not properly displayed. It is a bit harder to balance Darth Vader on it so you may grow weary of trying to make it look just perfect. But if you are patient, the benefits of a beautiful display miniature diorama are worth it.

While there may be many collectors out there who thought this was a sneaky way for Hasbro to give us one less figure, well, as skeptical as we are, we think it was in the end a very nice gesture. We would have considered it more of a travesty if these two piece didn't see ultimate release. We tend to be of the opinion that great accessories and cool backdrops for figures should never become victims of tooling costs or for other budgetary reasons. Would have it been a lot more ideal for the Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi figures to have been included with their respective accessories? Of course! But it is more important that we at least got them via a different method. And we think they turned out sublimely. The Mustafar Panning Droid set is really one of the best things Hasbro has given us. And it really makes us wish that more of these great scene additions would get released more frequently than they do. We recommend not skipping over this figure. And if you're interested, you will be a personalized action figure stand that reads "Mustafar Panning Droid". This is bizarre because this figure doesn't need a stand in any way. In fact, it's basically rendered useless.