Jango Fett’s Slave I - SW [Y/AOTC] - Vehicles

Jango Fett flees Kamino in his ship Slave I to escape from Obi-Wan Kenobi. Slave I is a highly modified Firespray-class patrol and attack ship originally used in law enforcement, then rebuilt by Fett for bounty hunting. The ship's shield generators, sensor systems, and concealed weapons make it an ideal craft for the bounty hunter to track his prey – or escape his pursuer.

There is really only one single word to describe the new approach taken for the Class II vehicles line. And that word would be “enigma”. It may not be an adjective, but this noun best represents the direction Star Wars vehicles are headed in 2013. In an era where Hasbro has expressed a need to keep tooling costs at an all-time low, they ironically found it fit to develop three all-new tools for the first wave of the reduced scale vehicle line instead of digging deeply into their parts vault and dust off something that was already "done". Instead of going back to larger and more “in scale” ships that were previously designed years ago, they spent the time, money and energy to create a line of vehicle that look about 50% as big as their “normal scaled” counterparts. The change in direction is nearly laughable and frustrating at the same time. What makes this even more difficult is that it’s evident Hasbro spent some time developing and adding as much quality detail that they could here, so why not refresh what exists instead of trying to reinvent the wheel of Mack truck by making it the size of a tricycle wheel? At face value, the detail etched into these vehicles is pretty cool, but it’s the size of these vehicles that will make you scratch your head. Frustratingly, Jango Fett’s Slave I vehicle looks rather fantastic from a distance. But as you hold the vehicle in your hand, you may puzzle yourself into thinking that you’re holding a Class I vehicle in your hands by mistake. They might as well added two simply articulated figures and added four dollars and charged the Class I price instead.

All is not entirely lost in the new Class II assortment. The paint job is frankly quite gorgeous. Jango Fett’s Slave I has been given the royal treatment and both the colors and accentuated details look impressive. Three decals accompany the vehicle and are almost unnecessary in the light of the painted details given to the vehicle. If you turn the vehicle upside down, it truly looks like a miniature replica of the awesome Slave I that came as part of 2010’s TCW The Rise Of Boba Fett Ultimate Battle Packs set. Unfortunately, if you see them together as you can in our photo gallery, the first thing that will come to mind is that the size difference is comparable to a mother and baby whale in the ocean. That is how distinctly different their sizes are indeed. Would it have behooved Hasbro to dust off the 2002 tooling and revitalize its paint job and squeeze it into the Class II assortment instead? We would say yes. The same goes for its case assortment neighbors. The Republic Fighter Tank and Obi-Wan’s Jedi Starfighter have also both been tooled in the past and kids as well as collectors would have preferred to get these vehicles again with the additional play features, value and size than to just get something that is essentially an enlarged McDonald’s happy meal toy. It’s aggravating, it’s frustrating and it’s something that saddens us to say the least. Yes, our discontent for these is redundant, but sometimes things have to be said repeatedly to become poignant.

The 2013 version of Jango Fett’s Slave I vehicle comes with three features. The wings pivot (and without the ease of its larger ancestors we’d like to add), the cockpit opens up and a missile fires via and action feature at the bottom of the ship. OK, so that’s a decent amount of play value for a vehicle of this size, but there isn’t a removable hatch or door and there are no bombs to drop out of the hull. All that’s here is on the surface and that doesn’t make playtime engaging and exciting as far as we're concerned. It just reinforces to us that this was the completely wrong direction to go for the Class II vehicle assortment. As you can see in our photo gallery, we tried both the Boba Fett figure (also from 2010’s TCW The Rise Of Boba Fett Ultimate Battle Packs set) and 2011’s TVC Jango Fett (VC34) figures in the pilot seat. Both fit well inside, but just forget about the option of posing a secondary figure in there with them. It is just not going to happen. It looks like Hasbro has decided to alienate collectors once again by pulling the wool over kids’ eyes and developing a product that is geared for them only. What we don’t understand is how come we got a Slave I vehicle in the 80s that had a ton more bells and whistles? And wasn’t getting a Han Solo in carbonite the main reason to even get a Slave I? And wasn't it kids (and NOT collectors) buying those back in the day? Forget about that here! Times have clearly changed, for the worse we feel, and the magic that was brought forth in the line when we were all kids is clearly dying. We hope that Hasbro can keep some of the magic alive with the “adult” vehicles they plan to release as exclusives. Otherwise, the love for the line may one day be lost.