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^^^THIS^^^

One of the most popular “expressions” in TVC is the army builder 4-pack.  It’s not a new concept for Hasbro, as they had done something similar back in the POTF2 era when they released 4 Endor Troopers, or when they did the four Entertainment Earth Clone Trooper variant packs.  Even at $16.99, army building is still a thing among collectors.  These sets offer an opportunity to pick up multiples of desired troopers at a slight discount.  But perhaps the best thing about the sets is when Hasbro decided to add variation within the 4-pack.  Sometimes they added a different figure, as they did when they included the [unnamed] Captain Antilles with the Rebel Fleet Trooper pack.  Sometimes they do a variant for each figure, like when they sculpted 4 different heads for the Echo Base Rebel Soldier pack.  And then even still they have included 4 different characters, some known (but again, unnamed in the pack) and some generic, like they did with the Imperial Officers.  In fact, if you were to look back at all 13 of these sets released so far, there isn’t actually a specific hard and fast rule as to what mix you’ll get.  Hasbro even gave us the Modal Nodes, which was 7 figures instead of 4, and were identical except for the different accessories.  But one thing that most TVC collectors prefer, is that Hasbro not mix unique “named” characters in the same set as generic figures.  Take the Night troopers, for example.  Plenty of collectors were interested in getting multiples of this set, but what are you supposed to do with the extra Enoch’s?  We’d like either a pack of named characters or a pack of generic characters.  And even if Hasbro decides to take this preferred route instead of the mix (as they did with Enoch or the Imperial Officers), it’s clear that most of the time, collectors want a 4-pack of named characters. 

This X-wing pilot pack satisfies the collector desire for a non-mix.  That is to say, this X-Wing pilot pack has 4 generic characters.  But in the case of this theme, many of us would have preferred named pilots to help fill out the ranks of Red Squadron, for example.  Chris wrote about this a few months back, when he lamented that the message wasn’t getting clearly communicated to Hasbro.  He proposed, and many of us supported, that a pack with 4 named pilots would have been significantly more desired than a pack of generics.  Well, you can’t always get what you want.  So while this isn’t a pack of Theron Nett, Garven Dreis, and a pair of Blue Squadron pilots from Rogue One, Farns Monsbee and Vangos Grek.  I agree that while this set is pretty cool, that lineup would have been better.

Okay, so how are the figures?  Well, they’re pretty great.  That’s the good news.  The figures are derived from the very well received VC158 Luke Skywalker X-Wing Pilot.  It’s a terrific sculpt.  The downside is that the articulation is a little long in the tooth, as this 2019 figure pre-dates the most modern barbell hip articulation, while also lacking rocker ankles.  I wish Hasbro would invest in the re-tooling of such articulation before going nuts on rolling out repaints.

The four generic figures in this pack seem to differ only in that they all have unique headsculpts, as well as uniquely painted flight helmets.  The one exception is the Duro pilot, who has hands that are larger, with thicker fingers, than the human/near-human figures in the pack.  These hands are not new, but are re-used from VC283 Cad Bane.  For some reason, the pilot is wearing fingerless gloves.  Whatever.

Duro has brand new headsculpt and looks great.  It’s hard to tell if Hasbro took liberties with the shape of the skull to accommodate the helmet.  Or maybe it’s more accurate than the head of the Ellors Madak figure from 2001.  a Mirialan pilot in included with green skin and face tattoos.  This female pilot has a long ponytail that rests on her right shoulder.  Also included are two humans, a male and female.  I didn’t immediately recognize any of these heads as being re-used from a previous figure, but let me know if that is the case.  The helmets fit fairly well, sometimes a bit loose, and look graet.

The set includes 6 blasters; 3 are the DH-17’s commonly used by the Rebel Fleet Troopers, and 3 are the DL-44 models used by Han Solo.

I would love it if we got another pilot set including named characters from Yavin or Endor.  Hopefully Hasbro can deliver on that.

The set gets an 8.  Nice variety of figures, but the lack of the most modern articulation holds down the score.