Sebulba’s Podracer - SW [TPM 3D] - Vehicles

Sebulba pilots a Podracer in the Boonta Eve Classic Podrace. The ruthless Sebulba will cheat to win, attacking his competitors to get them out of the race. His powerful Podracer has concealed weapons to damage other Podracers. Pulling the cockpit are oversized split-X engines attached by an energy binder.

Did you know that 1999’s Episode I Sebulba’s Podracer was a potential candidate for release in 2010? Well, that’s what the new date stamp implies on the latest 2012 Star Wars [The Phantom Menace 3D] mid size vehicle assortment release. On top of a completely new paint operation, Hasbro has newly tooled the vehicle and have given it a new date stamp to prove that updates have indeed been made. No longer a pale or sun-bleached orange, Sebulba’s Podracer is now brilliant, bright and looks better than ever thanks to a perfect revised paint job and similar decals to spice it up a bit more. We have to be honest with you. When we discovered that Hasbro had plans to rerelease so many products from the 1999 toy line, we had great reservations about the thought of buying them again. Hasbro failed collectors significantly more thanks to the lack of communication with regards to the significant updates they made to these mid size vehicles. If they had advertised these enhancements clearly, perhaps they would have sold a little bit better at the retail level. Maybe we’re wrong about that. But did you know that Sebulba’s Podracer is completely different in 2012 than the version from 1999? Would that have changed your mind in the least and reconsider it for another purchase?

Sebulba’s Podracer looks fantastic in 2012. There is no other way to state it. The newly cast orange base plastic used to reissue the vehicle to collectors is just wonderful. What’s more, the black and white lines on the engines have been completely redrawn and create different shapes than the 1999 version and now the vehicle is more accurate than ever. The same orange plastic has also been used to cast Sebulba’s cockpit. Not only does this match the engines of the Podracer, this color plastic is closer in color to the decals that have been designed to go on the cockpit. As a result, the cockpit has a seamless feel to it and its hard to gauge where the decal begins and ends instead of looking like a random sticker on a differently colored piece of plastic. We’re easily impressed by this. Other color enhancements have been made to the vehicle. For example, the wires and tubes that travel from the Podracer’s engines up to the cockpit are overall much darker (and more appropriately colored) and there is a great deal less of “dirt” on the orange sections of the racing engines for the 2012 version of the vehicle which is a bit surprising quite honestly. It still looks fantastic!

Sebulba’s Podracer is truly and excellent addition to the 2012 Star Wars line. it’s a terrible shame that Hasbro didn’t really promote the enhancements they made to it. As we've stated, if they’d taken some time to even express to fan sites like Jedi Temple Archives that the paint operations were reconsidered from the ground up, it would have been phenomenal way to advertise these changes and create some buzz and hopefully interest in a rerelease of such an old vehicle. They talked about the retooling of 2012’s SW [TPM 3D] Trade Federation AAT (Armored Assault Tank) in pretty good detail, so we’re at a loss on why they would skate over the significant changes made to Sebulba’s Podracer and Anakin Skywalker’s Podracer. But hopefully a percentage of the collecting community will see this noted here and hopefully word can get out before these mid size vehicles disappear at the retail level (impossible to think that would ever happen at this point) and collectors miss out altogether. But let us leave you with the fact that Sebulba’s Podracer is a significant update to the 1999 release. Oh, and if you buy the Mos Espa Arena Battle Packs set from the Walmart exclusive Discover The Force line, you’ll get a decent (not perfect) Sebulba action figure to pilot this Podracer.