Haslab #5 has arrived!

Of the lot, this was the one that least excited me when it was announced.  But it seemed to me that the Gunship was a selection that checked at least one necessary box:  It’s a Prequel item.  The PT had been underrepresented in TVC for a while, and after the OT finally got (some) of its due over the past couple of years, it’s been time the PT got some much-needed Haslab love, and I was here for it. 

The problem was, there wasn’t much left to do that not only wasn’t already covered by Hasbro, but that would also be a viable Haslab candidate.  Hasbro settled on the LAAT/i Gunship as the gravitational center for the Battle of Geonosis theme.  It was hard to argue that the Republic Gunship wasn’t the PT’s most iconic and action-oriented vehicle which also served as the centerpiece of the most expansive and most important battle of the entire PT.  If you’re going to do something that hits as many notes as possible for the PT, it’s likely there was no better choice for a Haslab.

On the flip side, by selecting the Gunship, it became the first Haslab wasn’t a debut item.

For me, this was HUGE.  It was a turning point in that what I had felt was the original promise of the program - to offer dream items that could never exist otherwise - was now compromised.  Now obviously everybody has different “dreams” representing what they most want.  But since we already have had the Gunship (with no less than SEVEN different releases over a 10 year span, each with updates to deco and/or tooling), it made it hard for me to get excited for this campaign.  Not only that, Hasbro had so deeply and thoroughly covered BoG over the years, there wasn’t much they could offer that seemed missing from our collections. (Except the Orray!!)  And the Gunship was one of the most well regarded vehicles in the history of the line.  As with anything, Hasbro certainly has the ability to improve upon anything they’ve made in the past, but at what cost?

Already having these certainly dampened my enthusiasm for the Haslab LAAT/i announcement.

Despite my concerns and my lack of enthusiasm, I nevertheless was fully supportive of the Gunship.  In fact, I backed 5, because I thoroughly believed, despite everything, it was going to be an amazing piece that would blow away the previous gunships.  It was an “army builder” (as much as a nearly $500 item can be), and it offered multiple display options.

The campaign didn’t really seem to experience any environmental obstacles, it seemed poised to stand on its own.  Yet it wasn’t exactly a blistering success.  It funded, and unlocked one tier.  That is some level of success for sure, but it didn’t come close to Tier 2 or 3, and in the end, garnered only 10,500 backers - with some overtime hocus pocus to get Trebor.  So what was the problem?  Not enough interest in an item we already had?  A lackluster tier structure?  Too expensive?  Bad timing?  A loud corner of the collecting community that insisted there was enough support but then failed to step up when it mattered?  Nobody knows. 

So let’s take a closer look and see if it earned its spot as a Haslab item.

As usual, the TVC box is packed inside another protective box, which is then guarded by plastic corners and thick cardboard edge rails, and shipped inside a larger box.  My shipper was scratched and dinged, but not mangled, and it had no problem keeping the contents secure.  The middle box was nearly pristine, with just a dent or two.  My TVC box was pristine, which should make MIB collectors happy.  Once you make it through the layers, you get the instruction booklet as well as 3 cartons inside the TVC box.  The smallest carton holds a couple of sticker sheets and the 3 included figures; two carded and one in a baggie.  The pilots were part of the base offering, while Coleman Trebor was the lone unlocked tier.  There seems to be room in this setup for two more bubbles, which would represent the missed tiers of Saesee Tiin and Agen Kolar.  This was a bit of a downer to see, just as it was for the blank space meant for Ariel Schous with the Cantina.  Much noise was made by the community at that, and Hasbro will give us Mr. Schous in mere weeks.  To be honest, while I love getting the figure, I’m not sure I’m a big fan of Hasbro letting us off the hook by giving us a figure that should really have been lost to time because the exclusive tier wasn’t unlocked. It changes expectations going forward. But anyway, I don’t know if we’ll see Mr. Tiin and Mr. Kolar any time soon, because unlike Arleil Schous, you know, we do have them both already, even if they aren’t so great anymore.

Each of the other two boxes contain 2 “egg carton” trays with the gunship parts wrapped in plastic baggies.  Overall, this is a much simpler parts loadout than any previous Haslab.  My only real complaint here are all the missiles being attached to sprue.  What is this, a model kit?  This isn’t the first time, and the Cantina was a particular nightmare with all the bar glasses.  But we really shouldn’t be asked to deal with this.  Why is this is a thing, especially with a premier Haslab item?  It’s annoying, and it leaves a bit of the excess (unpainted!) nubbins if you don’t cut like a surgeon.  I don’t have time for this.  The instructions were also very simple, and much shorter than previous Haslabs, but they cover almost everything in a few simple steps.

The first thing I noted as I took out the pieces is that Hasbro has now done 3 straight Haslabs in traditional toy plastic.  I don’t know what it’s called, but the type of plastic used for the Barge and the Razor Crest was more…premium.  I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, because there were some issues with the brittle nature of the earlier Haslabs.  So while it reduces the fear of breakage, it definitely doesn’t feel as special.

Assembly is relatively straight forward.  You pop on the wings, the engines/missile launchers, and the bubble turrets.  After battling the sprue monster, you insert the missiles into the rotating loaders, add the front and rear guns, and insert the cargo chair and hanging basket. The canopy, side panels, and front doors are removable for different configurations.  That’s really about it as far as assembly.

For features, we get the soft opening side/rear doors.  This operates in exactly the same way as the 2002 sculpt, except the activation button is sculpted to be less visible.  The removable side panels are new, although later iterations of the gunship had extended soft opening doors to cover the entire cargo area.  The arched side doors are also designed to be a bit more stealth, dropping the larger “fingernail pull.”  The cockpit cover pulls off.  The round turrets on the nose rotate like the original, although this time instead of the annoying spring-loaded launchers, the barrels are stationary.  The rear gun barrel operates in much the same way, rotating in many directions.  Gone is the stupid grappling hook string on the rear of the ship - or whatever it was.  This time around, instead of the deployable platform, we have a rear drop-ramp.  At the time, the platform was kind of a neat feature where you could land your ship, drop your troops, and fly away.  To that end, the handle at the top of the ship is also gone, in the interest of realism.  Along with the rear ramp, the coolest new “feature”, if you call it that, are the individual missiles that snap into the rotating loaders.  You get a couple extra to put into the chamber of each launcher, as well as one for each that protrude from the ends of the each barrel, if you were so inclined to capture the moment the missiles are fired.  And finally, there’s a rather large cargo compartment hidden under a removable panel along the dorsal spine of the ship, between the cockpit and the engines.  You can fit your extra missiles, parts (there’s a spare rear cannon, for some reason), and whatnots.

As for detailing, the originals were pretty decent as far as sculpting and greeblies and such, and that’s carried forward here.  The paint job this time is obviously far superior.  They did a lot more weathering than they did with the Ghost.  One of the complaints was that the underside of the Ghost was unpainted.  Fixed for the Gunship, as there are paint ops, weathering, washes, wear and tear, and grease and soot stains throughout - including the underside. 

The cockpit is a little roomier, and fits the pilot figures better than the 2002 sculpt.  There’s a lot of nice detailing inside.  The bubble turrets open up along the equator, and the hinged hemisphere gives full access to the detailed chair, which fits a clone trooper perfectly.  The earlier bubble turrets only had about 1/3 of the top hemisphere open - like an orange slice, if you will - and made it difficult to insert, maneuver, and pose a figure inside.  And the new back-to-back chair piece plugs easily into the cargo area.  I don’t recall the gunships having this configuration.  Either I missed it in the films, or it was in the Clone Wars cartoon.  I know that Mace, Yoda, and Obi-Wan sat in chairs in ROTS, but I think they were facing each other like in a train compartment.  The hanging basket is new.  This piece can be seen in a few shots in AOTC, but it is most prominent when Padmé and Anakin grab on as their Gunship chases The Wicked Witch of the West Count Dooku.

One important feature that is not explained in the manual is that you can remove one of the wings, and still “hook” the corresponding engine pod onto the gunship, which allows you to fit the ship on a narrower shelf, keeping the side with the missing wing hidden from view, and making it more “shelf installable.”  Something similar was featured for the Razor Crest (One engine pod can be removed) and The Ghost (One side of the ship can be removed).  The Cantina is configurable due its modularity, while the Barge is just the Barge, and it’s perfect as is.  So the Gunship maintains the tradition of fitting on a shelf, even if it means you have to remove a sizable chunk and store it in a drawer somewhere.  For the record, the engines and the wings pop off without too much effort, once you get over being nervous you’re going to break something.

The larger size is most prominent when dealing with the cargo/troop area.  Whereas the 2002 gunship is a tight fit for a figure standing upright (they usually bang their heads on the roof), this one has plenty of room.  In one shot above, I have 5 Clones and Yoda standing comfortably with plenty of room in between, as well as 3 clones sitting on the edge of the open door.  I would think you can probably easily fit 10-12 figures standing, with several more sitting on the edge.  And you can fit one in each arched doorway, with room behind them for probably 2 more figures. That’s a lot of space.  So with the 2 pilots, you might be able to fit like 20 figures in there.

One great feature are the swappable “cheek” plates.  You’ve got plain, Crumb Bomber, and a Kit Fisto missile character.  Additionally, you get two sheets of stickers that you can use to customize your ship.  It’s annoying that there are no examples in the instructions of where these should all go, but some of it is pretty straight forward.  I took pics of just 2 examples for the gallery, but there are more possibilities.  The good thing is that the stickers seem to be reusable, at least to a point.  I was able to apply a sticker, then remove it and put it back on the sheet without too much difficulty.  I assume the larger stickers are meant to go across the body, or maybe the wings.  I didn’t try.

And finally, there are two options for stands.  One is a large black base with the Star Wars logo, and two curved plastic pieces that allow you to put the ship in an angled flight mode, similar to what we got for the Razor Crest.  There’s also a shorter, clear piece that allows you to put the ship in hover mode just off the ground, so your figures can deploy and board easily.

For figures, the base offering included 2 Clone Pilots.  These figures are in no way, shape, or form interesting or exciting, but they are necessary, and including 2 was the right thing to do.  Just like the Gunship itself, the announcement of the 2 pilots seemed like something that needed to happen, but didn’t get me excited in any way.  So we get an updated Clone Pilot that uses the new Clone body.  It’s a single helmet figure, without a swappable clone head portrait.  The newly tooled helmet is the only thing different about this figure, otherwise you’ve seen it before.  It would have been nice if it included a swappable head, but the helmet is better than having a squishy removable one.  It comes with a blaster and long rifle, both of which have a few silver details on them.  For some reason, these seem a bit rubbery, not sure why Hasbro made that switch.  You get one figure carded, and one loose in a clear baggie.  It’s exactly what you’d expect, and you’ve pretty much seen it already.

Then we also get Coleman Trebor, as he was the only tier that was successfully unlocked.  Coleman Trebor was an odd choice.  Dude was killed during the rescue attempt before Yoda arrived with the Gunships.  He died like a punk, and never laid eyes on a Gunship.  Coleman Trebor doesn’t exactly scream “Gunship”, so it just adds to the overall malaise I felt about this Haslab.  Also, we have not one, but two Coleman Trebors. One was from the old “Blue” Saga line in 2003.  Cool for its day, but it was basically sculpted in an action pose and had very little articulation, as was the style at the time.  It was upgraded dramatically when he was inclueded in the outstanding and highly coveted 2009/2010 line of Geonosis Arena 2 packs.  That figure was excellent in 2009, and holds up reasonably well today, even if it doesn’t have modern articulation.  I certainly wasn’t lying in bed at night crying myself to sleep because we needed a new Coleman Trebor figure, but here we are.

The figure is a disappointment.  Not just in that I think it’s a lame choice, but in that the final execution of the figure isn’t great. Looking at the figure standing there - it’s nice.  Hasbro rarely fails on the overall sculpt of a figure. In particular, his headsculpt looks amazing.  I’m no expert on Vurk physiology, but I like this head sculpt way more than either of the previous versions.  He’s tall, and he’s got big feet.  Even these big feet have a little of that rocking motion that should be fixed with flat soles, but he’s got enough surface area to negate it.  Articulation is JLA, including ball jointed wrists and waist, and rocker ankles.  The elbows go a little past 90, although the knees do not.  The soft goods lower tunic/tabards allow for the hips to move freely.  He comes with a Force-y swappable left hand, a hilt that plugs into his belt, a lightsaber, and a robe that fits nicely.  So far so good.

The problems, sadly, aren’t small.  First of all, the figure’s arms are short.  Again, maybe Vurk have T. Rex arms, but because of that, Trebor can’t even begin to perform a Two-Handed Weapon Grip - and that sucks for a Jedi figure.  Even though his elbows go past 90, it doesn’t do anything to help here.  The wrist articulation is severely hampered by the long sleeves, further limiting posing options and his ability to hold the lightsaber.  And then there are the shoulders.  The “shoulder pads” are wide enough that they hamper the range of the arms.  I assume Vurks are no fans of YMCA, because this guy can’t do the “Y”, let along put his arms straight up.  He can barely raise them past parallel to the ground in a “T” shape. The shoulder overhang of the tabards isn’t made with the pliable plastic that many contemporary Jedi have, so he’s severely restricted.  In the end, his arms are almost limited to about 50% range.  Charles Barkley thinks that’s turrible.

But then there are the knees.  The sculpt is fine, I don’t think there’s an issue there.  But the paint is horrendous.  The lower legs are sculpted in plastic that is the color of the dark brown boots, and the paint applied to the bit of pants above the boot is applied poorly at the knee joint, and you can see the dark color peeking through.  That’s bad for any figure, but a Haslab exclusive figure makes this egregious. 

One thing in favor of Coleman Trebor: Since he was on the council at the time of AOTC, the inclusion of the robe is nice, because neither of the previous figures had one.  And while the TLC version could articulate into a sitting pose, the plastic lower tunic made it awkward.  This one not only sits well, but Trebor wore his Jedi robe while seated in the council, as well as when he walks the temple halls.  He would have been a better selection to go as a pack-in/tier for a Jedi Council set.

Okay, so while I was put off by the Gunship choice and the figure selections, I would still be poised to give it a great score if it blew me away and was a huge leap forward when compared to the SEVEN gunships I already have.  This LAAT/i was famously billed by Hasbro as “20% larger” than the 2002 sculpt.  It is definitely bigger, and I assume 20% is accurate.  But it’s not anything that blows me away like the difference between TIE’s, X-Wings, AT-AT’s. Falcons, and so many other vehicles that have gotten the BMF treatment.  While definitely larger, it doesn’t exactly take my breath away.  The increased space inside the cargo/troop hold is definitely significant - and probably the most important thing that needed to be addressed if they were going to bother redoing this vehicle.  But even this Haslab just assembles, operates, and feels nearly the same as the original.  There is very little new here except size, the swappable cheek panels, the missile canisters, and some assorted details that I was never really looking for.

Bottom line:  When I hold this gunship in my hands and inspect it, I don’t feel the same awe that I felt with the very clear premium nature of the Barge or the Crest, nor do I revel in the fact that I have something new to add to my collection like I did with the Ghost and the Cantina.  And the included figures do absolutely nothing to elevate this.

In then end, I have a gunship (5, actually) that falls short of feeling like the premium, studio-quality item that was promised.  I like it to a point, but it just fails where the previous 4 Haslabs succeeded.  I don’t really feel like I got anything particularly special here, and that’s disappointing.

Gunship:  7/10
Pilot: 9/10
Coleman Trebor: 6/10

I don’t think Kiwi Man will be yeeting his old Gunship into his backyard.  This one is certainly an upgrade, but I don’t hold it in high enough regard to where you should be tossing your old ones.