Rebel Transport Speeder With Rebel Ground Crew - SW [SOTDS] - Deluxe (Exclusive)

The Rebel Alliance ground crew prepares for battle. The Rebel fighter pilots are getting ready to attack the Empire's Death Star battle station. In the busy Yavin base, the ground crew races to complete their all-important tasks, moving people throughout the base and delivering vital equipment to its destination.

It could be said that 2009’s TLC Scramble On Yavin Battle Packs set was one that didn’t meet collector demand. It’s a set that fetches a heavy premium on eBay and to be honest it’s something that perplexes us. Almost starting out shelf life as a peg-warmer, the Scramble On Yavin set began to out of the blue briskly disappear from store shelves at an alarming rate, to the point of selling through completely without any embracing warning to collectors! It obviously became one of Hasbro’s biggest hits and fans started instantly worrying themselves whether or not Hasbro was going to rerelease this item at some point. It never happened to our dismay. (We would have liked to grab a few extra for our displays.) Hasbro had decided to change the Battle Packs packaging back to the “flat box” format once the Star Wars “Shadow Of The Dark Side” line look made its debut. So there was no way the Scramble On Yavin set would have fit in this "new" format. But after a long wait, Hasbro in 2010 announced that “most” of this set would be released in the Deluxe assortment, but as a Toys R Us exclusive. After multiple delays, the Rebel Transport Speeder With Rebel Ground Crew has finally seen release in the summer of 2011, but we wonder will it satisfy collectors?

The Scramble On Yavin set included the Rebel Transport Speeder and the Rebel Ground Crew but also contained the very important R5-K6 and Garven Dreis figures as well. Collectors typically are obsessed with astromech droids (and for that matter X-wing fighter pilots too), so it’s quite a step back not to get that awesome red and black droid and a unique Rebel pilot put back into the set. But we also have to put things into perspective. This is the Deluxe line. And the format is one action figure with a vehicle so there really isn’t any room to budge at all on this. But what maybe Hasbro should have done instead was just rerelease the Scramble On Yavin Battle Packs set in its entirety as a Toys R Us exclusive. Whatever method needed to be done to make this a reality should have been completed because we believe it would be a successful set, even if it was just a simple rerelease. Back in 2007, Hasbro reissued some of their most popular exclusive Battle Packs sets as general release items. Here they could have done exactly the converse of this. We hope that the Rebel Transport Speeder With Rebel Ground Crew is nonetheless a successful exclusive for Hasbro and Toys R Us because it’s so rare for Original Trilogy product to get released anymore. So this exclusive Deluxe set’s success may assure Hasbro that the demand for this product is alive and well. (So buy one, OK?)

To add a little bit of drama to what should be a straight repack, Hasbro did (accidentally or intentionally) change up some of the colors used from the original set. The body of the Rebel Transport Speeder is pretty straightforward, but there are some slight deco changes that are easily seen and make this release unique from the original. We know that in the “new” version you’ll find additional instances of paint variations. We'll only point out the obvious. The red "lights" throughout the vehicle are very shiny this time. Gone is flat and dull red color and in its place is a very shiny paint job instead. Also, the doors to the compartment hatch are a different color (which is hard to see in our gallery, but very evident in person). And even the rolling wheels are a different shade of brown. On the other hand, we can find little to no differences at all on the Rebel Ground Crew figure at all, which is actually kind of amazing especially since the last time this has graced shelves was two years beforehand. (His eyebrows are darker, but do you really care?) Despite being produced during two different production times, little to no variances appear at all. That is quite impressive actually. He even still comes with his removable helmet and pistol that loosely fits in his holster. A super-articulated figure, it would have been sublime if Hasbro gave him a new head sculpt, just to make it enticing to those who already have purchased the Scramble On Yavin Battle Packs set. (We have yet to understand why Hasbro doesn’t just add new head sculpts to figures that they decide to release a second time or in a new format because it would sell like crazy. Well, it likely would sell, we feel.) This set is great if you missed out on the original Battle Packs set, but if you’re looking for the other two characters, this set just isn’t going to cut it!