Ah, the U-Wing.  A neat design for a ship created for Rogue One to be the iconic vehicle used by our heroes throughout the film.  It’s a fighter that doubles as a troop or cargo transport.  Some key scenes were filmed inside the ship, and Hasbro wisely chose to release a U-Wing on day 1 of the line.  So we’re all happy, then.  Or are we?

Hasbro’s U-Wing, no doubt, is a good looking ship.  The sculpt is very good, although it is clearly scaled down from the movie - more on that later.  All the pieces are sturdy plastic, with the exception of the wings.  The wings, which can easily move to switch between attack and flight mode, are of a lighter plastic that will likely sag over time.  If the wings are displayed in the forward position, they are able to rest on part of the hull of the ship, so the support should keep them straight enough.  When flexed backward, they have no support, so displaying this way over time may result in the dreaded “wing droop.”  Nevertheless, this may be impractical for many people, as this wing position greatly expands the footprint of the vehicle, making it harder to find room to display.

The canopy opens to reveal a single seater cockpit for the included Captain Cassian Andor figure.  The 3 landing gears can be deployed or retracted manually.  Then, of course, there’s the dreaded Nerf Launcher.  The canon itself is very large, but fortunately, for the most part, it retracts into the belly of the ship so as not to harm the profile of the ship too badly.  When deployed, using a well hidden button on the top of the ship, the large cannon fires Nerf missiles in a very Nerf-like manner.

The figure itself is boring.  The sculpt of the body and uniform is adequate, as is the paint application, although neither is special in any way.  The figure fails with the face sculpt and paint is decidedly un-Diego Luna-ish.  As stated in some other reviews, Hasbro really needs to work on beards.  Cassian interacts with the ship’s seat just fine, and he can hold his pistol firmly in hand or tuck it away in the holster.  Besides the face, the other issue is the non-neutral pose necessary to get Cassian to stand upright. 

As for being scaled down, that’s should be okay, because most vehicles have been scaled back throughout the history of Hasbro’s offerings.  Even the “BMF” versions of vehicles are not to scale, and we’ve been fine with that.  However, in most cases, even scaled down ships and ground vehicles maintain the features necessary to allow you to recreate the essential scenes from the movie.  There are two huge drawbacks to this U-Wing that make it almost unacceptable as movie-accurate toy.  The first is the cockpit, which only has one seat.  In the film, the cockpit had two seats for a pilot and co-pilot.  Not only that, but it was roomy enough to allow for other characters to be there as well.  In the film, the cockpit was open to the body of the ship, which was large enough for a squad.  At a minimum, it held the entire 6-character Rogue One strike team.  This toy has no interior besides the single-seater cockpit.  While definitely built too small for figures to stand in, any room that might have been afforded to an interior space was taken up by the retractable Nerf launcher.  The film version had a large ramp in the rear of the ship, but also had a side door that could open in order to quickly deploy troops into battle, while also allowing for a door-gunner to mount a cannon and blast away at enemies.  None of this is possible with this Hasbro version.  The pre-BMF Millenium Falcon had plenty of room inside the ship to recreate just about every key movie scene.  The pre-BMF AT-AT had a 2 seater cockpit and a large interior with play and display value.  This toy is woefully inadequate when it comes to just about any interactivity or play features.

This version of the U-Wing, while nice-looking, is best considered to be a very expensive mini-rig.  It really does look nice, and could completely serve adequately as a display piece for a parked ship or in flight mode if you had it hanging from the ceiling,  But for any semblance of character interactivity, it fails miserably.  K-2SO cannot co-pilot this ship, Bistan cannot fire his cannon out the side, Rebel troops cannot deploy from it, and the Rogue One heroes cannot bond while travelling in it.  It’s a disappointing ship, almost like a “maxi-rig”...too small for an accurate vehicle, but too big to be considered a budget mini-rig.  I’ll give it a few points for basic exterior looks, but this vehicle is currently at the very top of my wishlist for Hasbro to make into a collector-friendly film version.

Writing this review made me angry.