Hoth Patrol - TAC - Battle Packs (Exclusive)

The Rebels establish their new base on Hoth, a world of snow and ice where daytime temperatures are bone chilling and nighttime temperatures are deadly. Rebel patrols riding indigenous tauntauns venture into the freezing landscape to guard the base's perimeter. On one of these routine patrols, Luke is captured by a wampa ice creature, one of the planet's most vicious predators. The wampa drags Luke back to its ice cave and suspends him from the ceiling, planning to make the Jedi its next meal. Only Luke's skill with the Force saves him from an untimely end: he uses the Force to retrieve his lightsaber, which enables him to free himself from the ice and escape from the wampa.

The 30 (77-07) line from Hasbro was certainly the collection to tackle some of the most prominent scenes from the entire saga. While toys based on The Empire Strikes Back were indeed represented, it didn't get as much attention as some of the other films did (like Revenge Of The Sith for example). But Hasbro seemed to make up for this by focusing some Episode V focused multipacks into the line like the Battle Packs for example. The Toys R Us exclusive Hoth Patrol Battle Packs set came at the perfect time as we needed to get a wampa and tauntaun back into the line quickly, but these aren't the consummate versions of these creatures. And no paint job in the world came make them become definitive. No, we are going to need all-new sculpts at some point to make them definitive, so this set can only serve a temporary satiation for collectors (if they even bothered to pick this up in the first place). Because this is a set that contains three figures that are in desperate need of updates, you have to look at it for what it is and accept the standards of years ago to judge this set as a whole, or you can just ignore it altogether. Hasbro did their part by repainting them, but the technology of 1997-2004 just doesn't come close to what Hasbro considers bare essential articulation today. Coming right before The Legacy Collection was about to start, the Hoth Patrol (and STAP Attack) Battle Packs sets graced the shelves at Toys R Us as their spring 2008 exclusives.

The Tauntaun is a repaint of the 1997 The Power Of The Force Tauntaun beast. Interestingly, the Tauntaun has been painted in a color scheme that more closely matches the original 1997 version rather than the one included in 2003's TRU exclusive multipack The Battle Of Hoth (the precursor to Battle Packs). The Tauntaun from the 2003 set is painted much darker and it seems as if Hasbro thought they got it right the first time. Coming with the same limited articulation of its ancestor, the Tauntaun doesn't bring anything interesting to the table and it is our desire to see this creature built from the ground up when Hasbro decides to revisit it. The Wampa is a repaint of the 2004 SW Wampa (Hoth Attack) Ultra figure. We have found extreme varying degrees of the color of its fur from one Battle Packs set to the next. And quite honestly, we never though the Wampa looked more yellow that it does in this Battle Packs set. The Wampa comes with the same play feature that he did years ago where you can remove his right arm to recreate his injury at the hand of Luke's lightsaber. The Wampa looks a lot happier this time around and doesn't look as vicious as he should be thanks to quickly done and very poor paint applications. But probably the bummer of this set isn't the Wampa, but the Luke Skywalker figure instead. How many times can you recycle a terrible figure? Coming with the same funky head jont and limited articulation, it is literally impossible for Luke to sit atop the Tauntaun at all. And what may be worse than that is the goggles he comes with do not fit on his head. This of course is very annoying. Why would Hasbro expend the cost to create this accessory when it hasn't even been designed to fit over an action figure's face? It's maddening!

We attempted to do the math to figure out if this set is a value. And while it may seem like a no-brainer to calculate, because the figures are anywhere from four to eleven years old at the release of this Battle Packs, it will throw off our calculation a bit. Clearly you are getting two large creatures in the set with one action figure, but the standards of the figure's are from 2004 at best. We would pay double the $24.99 to buy this set with all new versions of the figures. That is how much we wish Hasbro would start these figures all over again with super articulation and better scale. So it's definitely hard to gauge if this set is a much of a value as it may initially seem. Oh yeah, the scale is not perfect in this set. The Wampa looks too small and the Tauntaun looks too big. Luke appears to be fine for his size, but it doesn't help that the two creatures are off the mark. This is a great set for fans of Episode V and it looks pretty cool packaged, but you definitely have all of these figures already in some other fashion even though these figures are repainted. (Some collectors do not constitute this as new. We do.) Luke comes without the battle-damage on his face, so obviously the attack by the Wampa is imminent. We also hope that new versions of all three characters are imminent in the modern toy line too! We are thankful for the updates to the figures, but they need a lot more than a simple paint job to make them all better. Let's go with the all-new sculpts! (Editor's Note: 2011's The Vintage Collection line has updated Luke Skywalker's Tauntaun and Luke Skywalker (Hoth Outfit) figures. They are tremendous updates. Now all we need is the Wampa redone.)