Tatooine Skiff - POTF2 [FB/CT] - Vehicles (Exclusive)

MODEL: Ubrikkian Bantha II Cargo Skiff
FUNCTION: Patrol and escort
CREW: 1 Driver
LENGTH: 9 Meters
SPEED: 250 mp Per Hour

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."

Over the arid Western Dune Sea on Tatooine, Jabba the Hutt sentences his victims to be cast into the maw of the mighty Sarlacc, much to the raucous amusement of his palace minions. In the final attempt to escape from the clutches of the vile crime lord, the Rebel heroes launch a surprise attack. And so... the daring confrontation aboard the Tatooine skiff ignites!

Grab hold of the excitement with this authentically styled Tatooine skiff for all the intergalactic action you can handle!

If there was one vehicle that Hasbro just ignored for much to long, it would have to be the infamous Tatooine Skiff. We constantly hounded Hasbro to make it for us, but they just found others vehicles and things to concentrate on instead. It took Hasbro a half of a decade into the modern era of The Power Of The Force “2” line to get out this stunningly gorgeous vehicle from Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi. But it finally came to us at the tail end of The Power Of The Force “2” lineup as a TARGET exclusive. Hasbro felt this items would be the most successful as a retail exclusive, but collectors wanted to see this vehicle readily available in the general marketplace. As a vehicle that has been rare since 1985, it was especially frustrating to collectors that we would have to fight with other collectors trying to secure this vehicle for our collections. And that’s exactly what happened. The initial release of the Tatooine Skiff didn’t even come close to meeting demand. It was so bad in fact, that in a rare move, Hasbro produced more of these exclusives to help satiate demand. But it just seemed that it never got out there like it should have.

To make things even more frustrating, two major variations (perhaps “errors” is more appropriate here) were found with TARGET’s Tatooine Skiff. First, the pack-in Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker action figure was assembled with his cod section backwards. It wasn’t that obvious, but Hasbro did fix the error and produced the rest correctly once they realized their mistake. Second, the Tatooine Skiff was cast in two distinct plastic colors. The first version was cast in tan, and then the corrected running change was cast in green. Again, for variation collectors, this made tracking down both aggravatingly impossible, and it took the fun out of the hunt. Imagine driving to TARGET everyday and never seeing this item even once. It wasn’t a great way to treat collectors, and it certainly didn’t make the hobby fun. Although cast with a new date stamp, the Tatooine Skiff mirrored the vintage Kenner 1984/1985 The Power Of The Force release pretty much identically. All of the action features were carried over, as well as how the vehicle stands when not in flight. But this time the paint operations were beautifully done. You can see collections of dirt throughout the vehicle, as well as paint wear, thanks to silver slashes showing the scratch marks.

As mentioned earlier, the Tatooine Skiff comes with a pack-in Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker figure. A kit-bashed figure, it utilizes the arms from the Luke Skywalker figure part of 1998’s POTF2 [FF/TKC] Tatooine (With Luke Skywalker) Complete Galaxy set, with an all-new head sculpt, torso, cod section and legs. This time Hasbro added hinge-jointed articulation to Luke’s knees to make the figure a little more mobile, but they really don’t offer that much articulation to be noteworthy. Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker comes with a much slender frame (as do most later released POTF2 figures) and aside from some likeness issues in the face, the figure looks pretty good. He also comes with a lit lightsaber which is nicely tooled. And the Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker action figure nicely interacts with the Tatooine Skiff perfectly. Also, released right before this was 1999’s POTF2 [FB/CT] Jabba’s Skiff Guards Cinema Scenes multipack so Star Wars collectors have quite a few figures now to interact with this first time modern offering of the Tatooine Skiff. Aside from its nonexistent availability, the Tatooine Skiff is a great release. And Hasbro did eventually seem to get out more unit to help satiate demand too.