The announcement of the Bandai Star Wars Luke and Han Trooper model kits comes at a very opportune yet weird time. Just yesterday I was on the YouTubes ranting about needing some new wonderful thing in the model line, so there’s that. But there’s also the fact that I never got the Hasbro versions of these two. Strange things are afoot…
Granted, I was mostly going on about needing an IG-88 or Zuckuss as a kit, but still. Spooky.
Anyway, just look at what Bandai went and did.
They got around what I thought would be a stumbling block in this line: Faces. Sure, they could just release a sprue with hands and a face on it in skintone and move on to the next kit but this line has always felt like a “build and play” type situation. Sure, paint makes them look better but really, 90% of the time if you don’t want to detail, you don’t really have to. But then my new favorite thing in the world, face printing, get incorporated.
Yes, there is a dead-eye kind of look and the skin is shiny, but this is better than having to paint it ourselves, right? Well, some can paint like there’s no tomorrow, so maybe not, but this opens these up to everyone. You don’t have to be an accomplished painter or professional model builder to enjoy these.
Keeping with the odd series of events, I recommended the Stormtrooper kit to someone yesterday. I’m not making that up. Of course, I do that every other day, so that’s not too wonky. It’s probably still my favorite model. Seeing it again here is awesome, but they also tweaked the hip parts to adjust the size between Luke and Han.
They didn’t have to do that, leaving us to tweak size with the drop hips, but they did. It’s listed as about .5 cm difference, but that definitely enough. Thank you Bandai! Also notice the “High Detail/Easy Build.”
But there’s the problem of availability. These aren’t distributed outside the Japanese market. They eventually pop up on Amazon with slow shipping but c’mon Disney, open these up like you did the model ship line.
The MSRP on these is about $30. Han drops in April, Luke in May. Now, how to get these…
