I’m going to break this review into two sections.  One for the carbon freeze chamber and one for the Stormtrooper.  The Carbonite Block does not get its own review as it’s just a Carbonite Block.  Enjoy.

Carbon Freeze Chamber

This is one of the most difficult items for me to grade in my entire tenure of grading Hasbro Star Wars toys.  It is at once monumental and underwhelming.  I am thrilled to own this piece while simultaneously being highly frustrated with it. The major frustration comes from the fact that the set is basically four distinct sections that don’t “connect” together in any meaningful way.  You have the upper platform, the stair case, the lower semi-circular platform, and the carbon freezing unit itself.  Essentially the only thing holding the four sections together is gravity.  They don’t “click” or “snap” together, or anything like that.  Hasbro owes a royalty to the estate of Sir Isaac Newton for this one.  The pieces just rest on one another.  I hate that.  One accidental bump or any attempt to move the playset will yield a result ranging from the pieces becoming misaligned to the entire thing collapsing like a house of cards. 

The set has been described as “modular” because you can buy a second set to recreate the entire carbon freezing chamber (minus the claw and interconnecting walkways).  Saying this set is modular is like saying my BMF and AT-TE are modular because I can stack them.  The only parts that actually plug together are the legs and the upper and lower platforms, but again the connection isn’t very affirmative.  It’s a case of literally inserting a round peg into a hexagonal hole.  This seems odd to me.  A hexagonal peg would seem to lock the legs in more securely.  The round pegs leave room for a little play in the connection and so the legs have a tendency to protrude at slight angles as can bee seen in the photos above.  The end result has the platforms looking rickety.  Finally, the legs for the lower platform are shorter than the carbon freezing unit on which it rests.  This results in the platform tilting and one of the legs not touching the surface.  You can see this in images 16 and 26 above.

This all reminds me of the recent Force Link experiment in that it needed just a tick more engineering and productization to be a really neat innovation.  The difference here is that the engineering shortfalls are not as damning.  The product is still viable despite them.  When this set is assembled and populated with figures, it’s magnificent.  It’s massive.  It’s a prodigious environment piece, and the exact type of offering that makes the world building 3.75” scale so incredible.  Once set up, this screams:

Hiya buddy, my name’s Buzz.  I got the fuzz.  I make 3.75 do what she does.

The above is a Hudsucker Proxy reference.  I hope Jimmy enjoyed it. 

Two sets connected are nearly as long as the Sail Barge.  Let me say that again.  TWO SETS CONNECTED ARE NEARLY AS LONG AS THE SAIL BARGE.  That’s incredible.  This could form the cornerstone of a striking Cloud City display especially if you added some lighting to take advantage of the translucent orange plastic on the stairs and lower platform.  It has the the precise opacity needed to recreate the lighting effects from The Empire Strikes Back.  That’s an amazing feat.  I feel like the execution of the set is a 5 out 10, but the ambition is an 11 out of 10.  So I’ll average them together for an 8.  Despite its faults, which are admitted and obvious, you will hold your collection cheap without at least one of these.

VC171 - Stormtrooper

This is the latest tiresome tweaking of 2004’s VOTC Stormtrooper.  This figure essentially takes the VC41 Stormtrooper, and ditches the removable helmet.  The neck peg is retooled to accept the 5POA Rogue One Stormtrooper helmet, which fans have universally cheered. Unlike that 5POA source figure, the neck post is a little shorter to avoid the giraffe-neck appearance.  The helmet also has cleaner and more precise paint applications as compared to the original 5POA figure.  This represents an improvement over VC41, thus an increased score to 8 out of 10.  Unfortunately, all of the other warts of the base sculpt remain, which can you can read in the VC41 review. 

One hugely disappointing aspect of this figure is the holster.  It’s still the same marginally functional holster from both VC41 and the VC143 - Han Solo (Stotmrooper) figures.  That holster was barely passable to work with the old smaller E-11 Stormtrooper blaster, and only in the sense that a “D-” is a passing grade.  With the new, slightly larger E-11 blaster, it works terribly.  It’s like the time I had to cram my size 12 feet into a pair of size 9.5 boots to pass an inspection.  Sure you can do it, but you shouldn’t.  Why this bothers me is that Hasbro tooled a new Stomtrooper belt for the VC169 - Luke Skywalker (Stormtrooper) figure which includes a new holster that works like a champ with the new E-11 blaster. If that belt had been included on this figure it would have been a fairly compelling release despite the base figure’s faults, and I may have been inspired to pick up a couple more.