Here’s a release that surprised me.  I made three quick assumption when I grabbed it on Force Friday: it was a repack of the Clone Wars era AT-RT, it was going to be boring, and it was likely not going to be in The Force Awakens.  Meatloaf was wrong. Two out of three is pretty awesome; that’s a great batting average.  Actually, one out of three is really good, too, if we’re going by batting average standards.  I was wrong on the first two, but nailed it on the last.  Yay for me!

I was surprised that this is pretty much an all new vehicle.  At first glance it appears to be the same as the AT-RT, but it’s only similar.  It has new sculpt. The legs are articulated at the “hips” and “ankles”, giving it some nice posability.  The cab has a new shape to it, and is designed more like a box to accommodate the 5POA figure, rather than having pedals and a seat that the clones used to occupy with their old fashioned super-articulated-ness.  Fortunately, those days are gone, amirite?  The vehicle has a decent, if not mind blowing, paint job.  Not a lot of details, but a few pops of color here and there to break up the gray, along with a front facing piece of armor with a camouflage pattern.

The camouflage pattern on the vehicle would indicate that it would have been best suited as part of the attack on Takodana.  However, to my knowledge, the Assault Walker was never seen on film.  It could have been a complete fabrication by Hasbro, or perhaps they had some pre-productdion drawings.  If it was just Hasbro’s choice to fill a small vehicle need for Force Friday by making their own design, it’s interesting that they opted to go for an all new vehicle, rather than just re-issuing the AT-RT.  Perhaps they really liked that design, but decided it needed an update after almost 50 years had passed since the Clone Wars. 

The Stormtrooper Sergeant is basically a repack of the First Order Stormtrooper from the basic line, but it actually is a bit different, thanks to it likely having been manufactured in a different factory, or even a different country.  The figure falls shy of being identical in sculpt, but the differences are really negligible.  The main variable here is the color of the trooper.  The basic figure is close to a bright and pure white color. This figure is almost an off white, and is not as shiny.  It’s almost like the trooper rolled around in sand to scuff the armor and remove the shine, and then took a swim in some tea for a while to alter the white color bit.  It gives him a bit of a used look, but not exactly battle-damaged.  It’s a bit odd, actually.  The black sergeant pauldron is removable, so he can be a standard stormtrooper as well.  You can see in the comparison shot the color difference from the TFA basic trooper, the slightly different helmet shape in the TLJ basic trooper, and the boredom in the Black Series version.  (He didn’t want to be in the shot, frankly.  He was complaining the whole time, and mocked the other troopers mercilessly until the shoot was over.)

Whatever the reason for this release, I think it worked well. Despite not being in the movie, it’s a neat toy, does its job admirably, and is built to interact well with a figure pilot.  The figure isn’t particularly interesting, but it is unique to this set.  Overall, it’s pretty good, despite the budget figure included. It gets a commendable 6.