I told you all that the nineties were weird, but did you listen?  Nope.  And what did you do?  You keep tinkering with your DeLorean time machines and Large Hadron Colliders.  You’re playing a dangerous game.  Before you know it, we’re going to wake up in a time when there are no Star Wars movies in theaters.  Instead, the story of Star Wars will have to be told via crossover media event spanning novels and comic books.  Then exclusive items will be sold at stores that you would never in a million years associate with Star Wars toys.  Wait!  The High Republic…GameStop and Best Buy are getting exclusives…You arrogant fools! You’ve doomed us all!

Now, you might be saying that board games with action figures aren’t that strange.  We’ve just seen three board games come with Retro Collection figures.  But let’s be honest, the first two were really action figures that came with board games.  They were marketed and, in most stores, located with the action figures.  The most recent one, Monopoly with the Retro Collection Remnant Stormtrooper, is really more of a Hasbro Pulse gimmick. 

What you’re looking at here is decidedly a board game that comes with unique mainline action figures.  The figures are literally game pieces.  Moreover, if you weren’t a denizen of the fan sites at the time, I’m not sure how you would have even found out about this set.  I assuredly found out from either Rebelscum or Galactic Hunter.

I don’t recall any store placing this game in the action figure aisle. In fact, I only ever saw it at Toys R Us.  I had to walk to the darkened aisle at the far edge of the store.  I had to walk past Stretego.  Past Hungry Hungry Hippos.  Past Mouse Trap, Don’t Wake Daddy, and Parcheesi.  My reward for this intrepid journey into uncharted territories was paying over twice the going rate for two minor variations of existing figures, and a board game I would never play.  I assume the game has something to do with the Death Star and escaping it.  I don’t really know or care.  If you’re so curious about it, go read the instructions, lazy.  They’re up there starting at image eight. In tribute to the 90’s, I scanned those instructions on my HP stand alone flatbed scanner.

Luke Skywalker in Trash Compactor

The weirdness doesn’t stop at the whole “board game with action figure pieces” thing.  Let’s start with the Luke figure.  It’s a moment-specific version of Luke when he was wearing the Stormtrooper disguise.  After the dianoga beats tentacles out of the trash compactor, Luke emerges from the grimy garbage water with a bunch of fetzer valve-clogging goop on his armor.  He also tilts his head as he emerges from the water so it slicks his hair back like a quart of pomade.  It’s a swimming power move.  Ask Phoebe Cates.  This figure represents that appearance.  It’s a new head and some new deco on the POTF2 - Luke Skywalker in Stormtrooper Disguise figure.  The goop part is done somewhat crudely.  The hair is done passably and even includes a sculpted duck tail in the rear.  That’s not the weird part.  It’s the accessories.  Luke includes a blue light saber.  Aside from the fact that he never carried a lightsaber on the Death Star, it’s not his saber.  It’s an all black Darth Vader hilt with a blue blade.  Optionally, you could equip Luke with his green saber from two movies down the road.  Finally, in addition to the E-11 blaster, you could also arm Luke with a DL-44 blaster, or a blaster rifle.  I assume these accessories have something to do with the gameplay.  Please refer back to the section on me not caring about the gameplay.  The figure is what it is.  It’s a POTF2 figure with all the associated warts that come with that designation.  It’s a 2 out of 10.

Darth Vader with Removable Dome

Vader, on the other hand, comes with one accessory:  his lightsaber.  Like Jack Elam, he seldom needs more than that.  This is a retool of the Freeze Frame - Darth Vader (with Removable Helmet). Instead of a fully removable helmet, only the dome can be removed with the inner mask still in place and the back of Vader’s head exposed.  It uses an Episode VI figure to recreate a scene from Episode V for a game based on Episode IV.  This is all very Kenner, which was still operating as a division within Hasbro at the time. The removable hand functions as an extra point of articulation, so this figure can do a little more than most POTF2 figures.  The scars on the back of the head are nicely done, but this still amounts to a 3 out of 10 figure.