Vehicles are a funny thing for 6-inch scale collectors. I see a lot of interest for them on the boards, but the issue is always cost and space. Hasbro is dipping their toe into the pool again with medium-sized Star Wars vehicles, and they debuted the first offering of the range at SDCC. Let’s take a look at the SDCC exclusive version of Luke Skywalker and his X-34 Landspeeder!
I love the landspeeder. I have fond memories of attending a large pool party when I was a small child, and the host’s son had the original Kenner Landspeeder, a Luke, and a Bossk. I never went in the pool that day and played for hours with those figures. Oddly enough, I never got one of the newer Landspeeders, so I was looking forward to this version.
The Landspeeder comes packaged in a hefty black box with really stylish gray and orange graphics. The whole package is so pretty, it seems a shame to mess with it. Almost. If you are a MOC collector, I would recommend this version.
The speeder itself is beautifully detailed and painted exceptionally well. Usually with a Hasbro vehicle, I feel like they need a wash or some dust added, but this looks pretty fantastic and Tatooine-grungy right out of the box.
There are blast marks, paint chipping and dirty washes all over this thing. The sculpt itself has some fine details and includes a storage compartment, two opening engine compartments, controls panels, and one engine pod with a detailed mess of exposed wires.
The engine also has an action feature that spins a piece when you hit a button. It’s kinda neat and you can see Robo working his on youtube here:
It feels like a good match for the screen version, if slightly small. The clear windscreen bubble is removable to help you get the figures posed in the cockpit.
When sitting Luke and friends in there it gets a little cramped. I was thinking if it were just 1 percent bigger, it would be perfect. I love that it comes with a pretty unobtrusive floating stand that can be removed if so desired. I used Photoshop to erase the stand in a lot of these photos.
The Luke figure is pretty much the same as the one that Hasbro released earlier, but with a new head sculpt and different material for the tunic. I like the proportions of this head a bit better than the last Luke and the paint is nicer, but the eyebrows are a little high and I think it makes him look a little too intense. He also has a little shading on his cheeks, I’m guessing to simulate five o’clock shadow, but I don’t remember Luke having that.
The new robe doesn’t really work for me either. I think I actually prefer the original one. This one doesn’t want to lay down, so the sleeves always seem super puffy.
Luke comes with a bunch of accessories, including a rifle, a hat, macrobinoculars, a lightsaber, and a poncho.
The poncho, hat and rifle were accessories I wished that came with the original Luke release, so it’s good to get them here. The poncho is a nice, soft material and lays pretty well. It’s an example of well done soft goods. I just need to steam it a bit to get the folds out.
The rifle looks accurately large and clips securely to the speeder. The hat is soft plastic and actually fits pretty well which is surprising because Luke has a big head of hair.
The Macrobinoculars and saber are reuse from the original Luke, but they round out the release nicely.
Overall, I’m really pleased with this release. The speeder is so good looking and the accessories are really nice. The only real downside is that the Luke figure is still not 100 percent what I’m looking for in a Tatooine Luke, and the speeder is slightly too small for the figures. Just slightly. In order to get Old Ben in there, I had to heat and pop the figure apart at the waist and remove the long plastic skirt.
This set will be up on Hasbro Toy Shop in September and retails for $90.00. Later in the year, a slightly different version of the set will hit retail. It supposedly will have the same accessories, the only differences being that the retail release won’t have the special packaging, will have fewer paint ops on the speeder, won’t have the moving turbine, the tunic will be a different material, and it will be $30 cheaper. Might be worth waiting depending on your level of patience and interest in paint hits.
