Skattebo.

So I “won” the Banthaskull lottery, and got to do this review.  I was in the middle of taking all the photos for the gallery, when I realized that Chris should really be handling the actual review.  He’s been wanting an update to Vader’s TIE for, like, ever.  As well as being the resident Darth Vader aficionado, this is right in his wheelhouse.  However, he declined - for reasons that I won’t go into but definitely don’t have anything to do him being a ninny.  Chris has seemingly wanted this day to come almost as much as he wants a new EV-9D9.

While reviewing the mainline release of VC334 Darth Vader almost exactly 1 year ago, he wrote:

I am absolutely thrilled to have a definitive Darth Vader from A New Hope (I just wish we had a new Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced x1 to go with it).

I wish I could wish for things to happen in TVC and then they just magically happen.  OK, here it goes: 

I wish Hasbro never wastes tooling dollars on Pong Krell…

Nah, I’m just kidding.  I don’t really wish against people getting what they want in the line, even if I think it would be a catastrophic miss.  But I think the same thing about The Stranger, and here we are.  The 9 voices on social media will get their wish, while as usual, nobody listens to me.*

If you are a regular reader of this site, you probably know that I am rarely excited about updates to existing items that I already own.  An update to Vader’s TIE falls well within that category to me.  I can tell you that I have now gone through all steps of this process and it has gone exactly as I knew it would for me.  It’s kind of like the 5 Stages of Grief, except it’s my 5 Stages of Collecting.

Reveal:  I never wanted an update to Darth Vader’s TIE.  I have several versions, and while it’s certainly not perfect by any stretch, I felt any upgrade would be of marginal improvement that would do little, if anything, to improve my existing displays.  When Hasbro made the reveal, I couldn’t have greeted it with a stronger “meh” if you paid me. 

Wait:  I often forgot I even had this thing on pre-order.  I had no feeling of eagerness or anticipation for it to ship.  I only knew it was going to eventually arrive because I have it on my pre-order spreadsheet - and it happened to be the last outstanding TVC item on that spreadsheet, aside from the HasLab Gunship.

Arrive:  It arrived 3 days ago, and after getting a FedEx mobile alert, I almost forgot to bring it inside from the front porch until I remembered sometime in the late evening to go get it.

Unbox:  After opening it and getting a first crack at it, I immediately compared it to the most recent repaint mold side by side.  It is obviously an improvement - no surprise there whatsoever.  But was it enough of an improvement to justify the tooling investment and the consumer’s retail cost?  I’d have to take a deeper dive.

Review:  First of all, some context.  Hasbro has released multiple repaints of their original Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced, which dates back to 1997.  At the time, it was pretty nifty.  I got mine a few years afterwards during the Great Toys R Us Warehouse Blowout of 2000, since I hadn’t started collecting until 1999.  It seemed good enough, and I never thought much more of it at any point.  Over the years, we received multiple repaints and reissues.  Here’s a breakdown:

#1 POTF2 1997 - First Release
#2 OTC 2004 - Repaint of #1
#3 TSC 2006 - Repaint of #2
#4 TAC 2007 - Re-issue of #3
#5 TLC [Blue] 2008 - Re-issue of #3
#6 TLC [Red] 2009 - Re-issue of #3
#7 SOTDS (Death Star Trench Run TRU Exclusive) 2011 - Repaint of #2

Versions 1,2,3, and 7 had different paint operations, while 4,5, and 6 were straight repacks of the third release.  So Hasbro released that 1997 mold 7 times over 14 years - and now it’s been another 14 years of crickets before Vader’s ride has gotten new life.  So again, while the existing mold is 28 years old, at no point did I ever look at it and say to myself, “I really need an upgrade to this thing.”  And again, I assumed that a new version would be an improvement, but it just wouldn’t be anything that was going to make me feel excited.

Right out of the box and after popping on the wings, it is immediately apparent that it is far superior to what we have.  Comparing this new TVC version with the most recent one from 2011 side by side, it really highlights the differences.  The proportions of the POTF2 mold are just off.  They always were, but never enough to annoy me.  This one just looks right.  The struts/arms are now shorter, and the wings are bigger and designed with more appealing angles.  Gone are any “play” features, like launching missiles or retractable cannons.  Later for that noise.  The big sliding switch is now gone from the underside of the ship.  The greeblies are well done and well defined, although honestly, the POTF2 version did a pretty good job with that.  The detailing was done pretty nicely in the first place, so while better, the TVC version doesn’t make my jaw drop in that regard.  There is, predictably, a lack of any weathering on the ship.  Even some of the previous repaints had some weathering.  Now maybe Vader didn’t take his experimental ship into battle often.  I have no idea what it did in the old EU, or even in the new canon.  I can accept it being fairly pristine, but a few scratches and weathering marks wouldn’t kill anyone, except the bean counters at Hasbro, apparently.  One thing that did annoy me a bit was the top hatch on the old sculpt.  Viewing the fighter head on, it looks like the cockpit is wearing a yarmulke.  It just wasn’t sculpted well.  This version corrects that with flying colors.

Speaking of flying colors, we are once again reminded of the extreme range of colors that Hasbro has given their line of TIE Fighters and TIE variants over the life of the line.  It’s not all their fault, as the ships do seem to change colors almost every time they appear on screen.  They range from white to different shades of blue and gray.  This one looks gray to me (as you may know, colors are not my bag.)  But I can see the differences between colors when side by side.  In one of the gallery shots, you’ll see the cockpit from the most recent TVC TIE Fighter.  That one was sourced to ESB, but it is very different from this TIE Advanced.  Why did I take a picture of just the cockpit?  Because my TVC Imperial TIE Fighter from 2018 broke.  I had the nerve to display it on my shelf untouched, and a piece of the plastic inside one of the struts broke off, rendering the spring useless.  For my shelf display, I have a pair of TIE’s from 2005 ROTS line that fortunately seem to me to be a decent color match.  I may have to make an exception to my collecting interests and use this opportunity to stump for a new TVC TIE Fighter, sourced to ANH, without the spring loaded wings that have plagued the line since the Kenner days, and color-matched to this TIE Advanced.  And it should come with an all new TIE Pilot sculpted to modern standards, with said pilot getting a mainline release on an alternate cardback.  Put me down for 2.  Please and thank you.

The biggest change here, is interesting to me mostly because I learned something new about Star Wars.  I had never noticed the actual damage sustained by Vader’s TIE after it was crashed into by one of his wingmates in the trench after Han Solo’s attack.  Never noticed it, and never thought about it.  But you can make out the damaged wing in the film if you look closely.  Hasbro provided an alternate panel for the left wing that allows you to recreate this moment, if you so desired.  It’s a nice touch, for sure, even though I’ll likely never display it that way.

The cockpit has been completely redesigned.  The included Vader figure fits well in the cockpit, even though the chair seems to be more of a POTF2 styled flat lounge chair rather than a real pilot’s seat.  And gone is the ejector seat design that we’ve had for years.  Vader’s hands can grip the controls well, and you can see him clearly through the cockpit window.  One thing that is missing is the detail of the targeting computer screen on the cockpit controls, which is featured on the box art.  Not sure if it was intended for a sticker to be included in the package, but it is nowhere to be found.  I’m not upset about this because I don’t apply the stickers to my collectibles, but I do feel it should have been included.  If you haven’t seen it by now, Jayson at Yakface made the effort of creating a graphic that you can print on a label and make it work yourself.  Click HERE to check it out.

Darth Vader is a straight repack of VC344, and even retains that number.  However, he’s on an alternate cardback with a new photo, a new pill color, and a new parenthetical (TIE Advanced).  It’s a great figure, and you can get Chris’s full review HERE.  For the record, Vader’s gallery above was lifted straight from that review.  The figure and accessories are identical, so there was no motivation to open the package.

So what do I think?  It’s very nice.  It’s an obvious upgrade.  It’s particularly awesome if you don’t have any Darth Vader TIE’s in your collection.  It’s expensive, for sure.  I’m going to give it a 10, because I really can’t imagine it being any better.

Does that mean I love it?  Eh.  I like it.  I like it a lot.  But I still would have preferred something new.  But as I’ve lamented before, it seems Hasbro isn’t very interested in what I want.

*That’s probably an overall good thing for the line.  If I got what I wanted, Hasbro would make all my Glups within a year, and then TVC would immediately die because of it.