Everyone knows that George Lucas was into cars.  While many of the starships and space battles were inspired by reels of World War II air combat, Lucas made sure to weave his love of cars into Star Wars.  A New Hope showcased Luke’s X-34 land speeder, and the garage in which he maintained it.  Later, he spoke about flying a T-16; an “air car”, if you will. Return of the Jedi rounded out the OT with an exhilarating speeder bike battle through the forests of Endor.  Sixteen years later, Lucas revisited his love of racing when he introduced an entire set piece in The Phantom Menace revolving around pod racing.  In Attack of the Clones, Anakin and Obi-Wan partake in a good ol’ fashioned high-speed car chase in the “streets” of Coruscant.  In the upcoming Solo, it looks like Ron Howard, who was in the cast of American Graffiti, decided to pay homage to the Lucas love for cars by introducing Han’s M-68 landpeeder.  We got a glimpse in the trailers and previews of a very Lucas-y car chase.

The speeder is pretty neat.  It looks like it might be the Star Wars equivalent of an Oldsmobile.  Or, perhaps, even a big blue Volvo.  (Despite their propensity to be rather block-ish in their appearance, they are still regarded as being generally quite worthy of consumer ownership.  It would seem Han Solo was less inclined to own a flashy sport speeder, instead placing a premium on quality, dependability, and safety.). The speeder is a solid toy.  It’s painted in a bright blue, and has some exposed parts here and there.  The sculpt looks very true to the on-screen appearances we’ve seen so far.  I may have preferred some kind of “hover effect”, like we got with Luke’s land speeder toy.  At least wheels would allow you to roll it along a surface.  The car has one feature, and works pretty well.  Remember the two speeders Hasbro released for the Saga (Blue) line during Attack of the Clones (pictured in the gallery above)?  They each had neat crash play features.  There are spring-loaded front ends that allow you to crash the cars, and the soft, rubbery plastic used in certain areas would warp into crash damage.  It was effective.  Well, Solo’s car has the same type of feature - almost.  Unlike the previous AOTC cars, the spring loaded front-end does not lock into the crashed mode.  So you can’t see “permanent” damage, which is a bit of a downer.  However, activating the crash feature, in turn, springs the driver’s seat to cause the driver to launch out of the car.  Now, this may be a spoiler from the film, if Han is launched out of his car in some kind of wreck.  If not, and Hasbro invented it for the toy, it’s both clever and bizarre.  It’s a fairly well-executed feature, but if it’s not in the film, it seems strange that a kid’s toy would feature the awesome ability to launch a driver from a crashing car.  Kids love this stuff!  Anyway, it works well, but you’ll likely need to have the figure’s (presumably Han’s) arms pointing upward, or else the figure kind of gets hung up on the windshield.  It’s delightfully morbid.

Han wears an outfit unique to this figure.  The outfit sculpt and paint are decent, as they are on the head and face.  It’s not a dead ringer for Ehrenreich, but it’s not bad.  Han comes with a pistol, which he grips well, but unfortunately there’s no holster, nor any hidden compartment in the car in which to stow it away.  A glove compartment for the pistol would have been pretty cool, even if not in the film.  Han can fit well in the driver’s seat, although he has to be forward of the backrest in order to grip the steering wheel (which he does nicely).  A second figure can fit in the passenger seat, which has no play feature. The figure is basic 5POA.  He has a removable vest, for an alternative display option.  For whatever reason, he has a mottled, white weathering effect on his black pants, which really just looks like white paint splatter from a sloppy renovation he must have been doing to his apartment on Corellia. 

Force Link 2.0 brings the figure, and more importantly, the speeder, to life.  The crashing action feature is fairly well executed, and the figure is neat, despite 5POA.  Wheels are a bit of a miss here, along with some other feature like a pop-up hood, or some compartment inside the car for the blaster.  I would have preferred the crashing front-end be lockable.  Also, and this might have been too much to ask for, but the gold dice we see hanging from the windshield in the previews are missing.  It would have been a nice touch.  Anyway, I like the car.  I give it a respectable 7.  It could have been better, but it’s still pretty good.