Finally, after 26 years in limbo, the Walmart exclusive Kessel Mine Escape Playset is available online.  Good luck finding it in stores.  In fact, shortly after it was found on Walmart.com, it was marked down 50% from the MSRP of $39.99.  Let me tell you, that’s when I put down my Coke and decided it was the time was nigh for me to order this baby.  Of course, after I put down my Coke, I did a few other things first.  So a week later, I finally got around to ordering it.  I had it delivered to my local store, but it was this past week, and no human being should have to go to Walmart the week before Christmas.  But I tried it anyway.  It was brutal, and it may take weeks of therapy for me to recover even a small part of my humanity.  Totally not worth it, but nevertheless, here is your gallery and review.

We already know what to basically expect here after we reviewed the Target exclusive Vandor-1 Heist Playset.  This is not that set.  Vandor-1 was only 5 dollars more expensive than this set (at full MSRP), but included in it was a larger set which included a much more visually appealing piece hardware in the Conveyex train.  You could argue that while this set takes up less surface area, its 3 vertical tiers give you more play options.  But that’s really up to the beholder. 

Like Vandor-1, which had two sides of play (the train heist and the gambling outpost).  Here we have the exterior of the Kessel mines, along with the droid control center, and we have the interior depths of the mines themselves.  As with he previous set, we have some characters painted on the cardboard, which can be insulting for collectors.  It’s very wrong to use one’s imagination.  The key here is to get movie-accurate scenes with action figures and toys.  So you’re best bet is to take a knife and cut out those painted on characters.  Screw you, Hasbro!  Imaginations are for kids!  Give us those droids in action figure form, and leave the color-by-numbers figures to the children! 

The set itself is very easy to put together.  Much easier, actually, than Vandor-1 (which wasn’t really that difficult either).  The set is very sturdy, and can be easily picked up by the base and moved around, or it can be broken down, folded up and stored in a flat space.  The artwork is nice, although, as mentioned, I could do without the characters painted on the background.

Included is a Han Solo figure, which is a slight repaint (now with Kessel mud on his boots!) of the one that was packed in with the Kessel Run Millennium Falcon.  It’s too bad that a fully unique figure wasn’t added in here, which would have made this a much more desirable purchase.  Vandor-1 wasn’t much better.  It came with a repacked Chewbacca, but with removable goggles.  Here, Han comes with. unique 8 cylinder case-pack of coaxium.  Finally, a fairly nifty canon is included.  It is similar in style to the one that came with the Lando 2-pack, although this one includes a firing projectile, but lacks the hose and charge crate.

In the end, what is most disappointing (besides the perceived lack of value) is that lack of figures available to interact with the set.  Sure, even if we forget SA characters altogether, we only have a few that work (several in the wrong outfit), and some (L3-37 and Quay Tolsite) that have so far eluded most collectors.  As such, it’s a decent environment for which there are few options to populate it.  If Hasbro gave us more action figures (especially SA), it would be a more desirable set.  As such, it falls kind of flat.